1 week ago
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP):
Nearly two decades after a pair of ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz were stolen from a Minnesota museum, the iconic shoes are set to be auctioned off to the highest bidder on Saturday.
Heritage Auctions estimates the slippers will fetch US$3 million (approximately J$471.5 million) or more.
Online bidding opened last month and by Friday had reached US$1.55 million or US$1.91 million, including the buyer's premium, a commission that the buyer pays, said Robert Wilonsky, a vice-president with the Dallas-based auction house.
Over 800 people were tracking the slippers, and the company's web page for the auction had hit nearly 43,000 page views by Thursday, he said.
As Rhys Thomas, author of the book, The Ruby Slippers of Oz, puts it, the sequinned shoes from the beloved 1939 musical have seen "more twists and turns than the Yellow Brick Road".
They were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in her home town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 when Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum's door and display case.
Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018. Martin, now 77, who lives near Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota, wasn't publicly exposed as the thief until he was indicted in May 2023. He pleaded guilty in October 2023. He was in a wheelchair and on supplementary oxygen when he was sentenced last January to time served because of his poor health.
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