The sparkly ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard Of Oz went under the hammer (auction) recently, and sold for quite a sum.
While Wicked was luring audiences into darkened cinemas over the weekend, a pair of prop shoes from 1939’s The Wizard Of Oz sold at auction for a startling hammer price of $28m.
Famously worn by Judy Garland in the classic musical, the ruby slippers were only expected to sell for around $3m; when the sale concluded on the 7th December, however, bids had soared to almost 10 times that amount. By the time you add on Heritage Auctions' buyer premium, the winning bidder would have forked out $32.5m – a shade over £25m – for the shiny footwear.
According to Variety, there was considerable demand for the slippers, with over 800 bidders all competing to win the auction. The name of the lucky winner hasn’t been disclosed – which is understandable, given that they’re likely to have an unfeasibly valuable pair of slippers sitting in their house fairly soon.
Even by film prop standards, the ruby slippers have a storied history. Elegantly made from a mixture of silk, sequins, white leather and buckram cloth by Innes Shoe Co, the slippers were one of four pairs made for The Wizard Of Oz's production in the late 1930s. The pair recently up for auction were for years owned by collector Michael Shaw, who purchased them from a costumer in 1970.
In a dramatic turn of events usually reserved for priceless oil paintings, Shaw’s ruby slippers were stolen in 2005; at the time, they were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The shoes were finally recovered in 2018 following an FBI sting operation, while the person who nicked them, Terry Martin, was indicted five years later. By then, Martin was 76.
At the time of the theft, the ruby slippers were insured for $1m. Whoever’s recently won them will probably want to bump that valuation up a bit. Michael Shaw, meanwhile, is now rich enough to be able to build his own Emerald City.
