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by Ben Simon Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — A pearl and diamond pendant owned by Marie Antoinette before she was beheaded during the French Revolution sold for $36 million at an auction on Wednesday, shattering its pre-sale estimate of up to $2 million. The Sotheby’s auction at an ultra-luxurious hotel on the banks of Lake Geneva saw feverish bidding for a 10-piece collection owned by the ill-fated queen, featuring jewels unseen in public […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — An exceptionally rare pink diamond of nearly 19 carats fetched 50.3 million Swiss francs ($50 million, 44 million euros) at auction in Geneva Tuesday, Christie’s said, setting a new per-carat record for a stone of its kind. The Pink Legacy, which once belonged to the Oppenheimer family who for decades ran the De Beers diamond-mining company, was snapped up by American luxury brand Harry Winston, part of the Swiss Swatch group. […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Talk about a pack rat: thousands of things that Neil Armstrong saved over the course of a career that saw him become the first man to walk on the moon will be auctioned off this week. Nobody really knew the extent of the stuff Armstrong amassed during his 82 years on earth, not even the children of the man who made history with his feat on July 20, 1969. […]
by Karyn NISHIMURA-POUPEE Agence France Presse TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — The cries of the raucous pre-dawn tuna auction rang out for the first time at Tokyo’s new fish market Thursday, just days after the world-famous Tsukiji site closed the door on its 83-year history. The location may have changed but the ritual remained the same: huge frozen whole tuna laid out on the ground, bells tolling to sound the start of the auction and a […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Art, film memorabilia and personal effects owned by the late actor Robin Williams and his wife fetched $6.1 million at auction in New York on Thursday, four years after his death, Sotheby’s said. The Oscar-winner, movie veteran, stand-up comedian and television star was one of Hollywood’s most popular entertainers whose death in August 2014 triggered an outpouring of emotion the world over. More than 2,000 fans and collectors […]
SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — An Apple-1, a rare model of the first computer produced by the now-iconic tech firm, fetched $375,000 in an auction this week, according to Boston-based RR Auction. The computer was among 175 of those sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from their production in a garage in Silicon Valley in the early days of Apple in 1976 and 1977. The model originally went for $666.66 when it was […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Indiana Jones’s signature fedora fetched more than half a million dollars at a blockbuster London auction of rare memorabilia from some of the most iconic movies of the past 40 years. But the star attraction — the sleek jacket worn by the loveable Star Wars scoundrel Han Solo in “The Empire Strikes Back” — failed to clear the £500,000 ($665,000, 563,000 euros) reserve and went unsold. Organisers said they had […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — A silver soup spoon that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on St. Helena and a hunting rifle owned by the French emperor were sold at auction in France on Sunday. Engraved with Napoleon’s coat of arms, the silver soup spoon sold for 8,375 euros ($9,700) while the rifle, originally owned by King Louis XVI, went for 80,000 euros in the sale held by the Osenat auction house at Fontainebleau. […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — The first draft of music Mozart wrote for the last act of his opera “The Marriage of Figaro” is expected to sell for half a million euros ($578,000) when it goes under the hammer in Paris. The “exceptional” manuscript from 1786 which will be auctioned on Wednesday in the French capital comes from the peak of the composer’s career in Vienna, the auction house Ader Nordmann said. Called “Scena con Rondo”, Mozart […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — A painting by a young Vincent Van Gogh was sold at an auction in Paris Monday for more than seven million euros ($8.2 million), the Artcurial auction house said. “Raccommodeuses de filets dans les dunes” (Women mending nets in the fields) dates from 1882 and was bought by an American collector in a hot bidding battle that boosted the selling price far above the estimated value of between three to five million euros. […]
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — The world’s largest known freshwater pearl, which once belonged to Catherine the Great, was sold Thursday in the Netherlands for 320,000 euros ($374,000), auction house Venduehuis said. Known as the Sleeping Lion pearl due to its distinctive shape, the pearl was likely formed in the first half of the 18th century in Chinese waters, possibly even the Pearl River. The auctioneers said the jewel weighs some 120 grams (around 4.2 […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — In the wildly popular “Star Wars” films, Han Solo once told a lightsaber-wielding Luke Skywalker: “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.” Now, fans of the space saga can own one of the blaster pistol props Harrison Ford used in his iconic role as Solo in “Return of the Jedi” — an item expected to sell for between $300,000 and […]
