The 10 most expensive celebrity possessions ever auctioned

An object that belonged to someone famous is worth what the next two bidders decide it is worth. There is no material explanation for most of the figures below: a cotton jersey, a pair of sequinned shoes, a factory-made guitar. What is being bought is the connection between the object and a moment, and that is priced entirely by demand in the room.

Below are ten of the highest confirmed auction prices for objects owned or used by public figures, each with the auction house and the date. Prices are as reported, and where a source distinguishes between the hammer price and the total including the buyer's premium, both are given.

1. The ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz — $28 million at the hammer

Sold by Heritage Auctions on 7 December 2024 for $28 million, reported as $32.5 million once the house's fees are added. The pair, worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film, was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota in 2005 and recovered by the FBI in 2018. More than 800 bidders took part. It is the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of film memorabilia.

2. Babe Ruth's 1932 World Series jersey — $24,120,000

Heritage Auctions, August 2024. The New York Yankees jersey Ruth wore during the 1932 World Series, the series in which he is said to have pointed to the outfield before hitting a home run. It is the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia ever sold at auction, and it carried a single sale to a total of $61.9 million.

3. David Gilmour's Black Strat — $14,500,000

Christie's, New York, 12 March 2026. The black Fender Stratocaster that Gilmour used on Pink Floyd recordings from the early 1970s onwards, sold from the collection of the late Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. It is the highest price paid for a guitar at auction, and the record was broken more than once during the same evening.

4. Elizabeth Taylor's La Peregrina necklace — $11,842,500

Christie's, New York, December 2011. A sixteenth-century pear-shaped pearl, once a Spanish crown jewel, bought by Richard Burton at Sotheby's in 1969 for $37,000 and later set by Cartier into a necklace of pearls, diamonds and rubies. The estimate was $3 million. It hammered at $10.5 million and totalled $11.8 million with fees.

5. Jerry Garcia's guitar Tiger — $11,500,000

Christie's, New York, 12 March 2026, in the same Irsay sale. Garcia commissioned the instrument from the luthier Doug Irwin in 1973 and played it for most of the following two decades. The buyer put it back on a stage the next night, in the hands of another guitarist.

6. Michael Jordan's 1998 NBA Finals jersey — $10,100,000

Sotheby's, September 2022. The Chicago Bulls jersey Jordan wore in Game 1 of the 1998 Finals, the series that ended his second run with the club. At the time it was the highest price paid at auction for any item of game-worn sports memorabilia.

7. Diego Maradona's 1986 World Cup shirt — about £7.1 million

Sotheby's, May 2022, roughly $9.3 million and a world record for a match-worn shirt. Maradona wore it in the quarter-final against England in Mexico City, in which he scored both the handball goal and the goal later voted the best in World Cup history. The shirt had been held for decades by the England midfielder who swapped with him after the match.

8. The Elizabeth Taylor Diamond — $8,818,500

Christie's, New York, 13 December 2011, including the buyer's premium. A 33.19-carat Asscher-cut diamond, previously known as the Krupp Diamond, bought by Richard Burton at auction in 1968 for $307,000. It went to the South Korean group E-Land and set a record price per carat for a colourless diamond. The Taylor jewellery sale as a whole made $137.2 million.

9. Kurt Cobain's MTV Unplugged guitar — about $6 million

Julien's Auctions, June 2020. The 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic Cobain played on MTV Unplugged in New York in November 1993, sold with its case. It set the record for a guitar at auction and held it until the Irsay sale nearly six years later.

10. Marilyn Monroe's subway dress — $4.6 million at the hammer

Sold by Profiles in History in June 2011 as part of the collection assembled by the actress Debbie Reynolds, and reported at about $5.5 million with fees. It is the ivory pleated dress worn in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch. Reynolds had spent decades buying studio wardrobe that the studios themselves were discarding.

What a benefit auction can take from this

The pattern in every one of these lots is the same: an object with an ordinary material value, a story that can be told in two sentences, and evidence that the story is true. The jersey is only a jersey until someone can show which game it was worn in. For a charity evening this is the most portable lesson on the page. A donated week in a cottage is worth more when the lot text says who owns it, which week it is and what the view is, than when it says "holiday accommodation". Writing lot descriptions that do that job is covered in the guide.

The second pattern is provenance as paperwork. The ruby slippers came with an FBI recovery behind them; the Maradona shirt came with the name of the player who took it off the pitch. You are not authenticating film props, but the same principle applies to a signed shirt or a piece donated by a local maker: a line saying where it came from is worth more than an adjective.

Third, all of these results came from two or three bidders, not from a full room. Six specialists may be on the phones, but the last minutes are always a duel. When you plan your lot list, the question to ask about each significant lot is whether at least two people present will genuinely want it. If the answer is no, the lot will sell at its opening bid however good it is.

Fourth, endings matter. Bidding on several of these lots ran for ten minutes or more past the point where most of the room had stopped. If your online lots close at a fixed second, a bidder who is still deciding never gets to decide, which is why a late bid should extend the lot rather than end it. That behaviour, with the countdown and the running total on screen, is set out on the how it works page.

Celebrity lots turn up at charity evenings more often than people expect — a signed instrument, a shirt, an hour with someone local who is well known in the town. The charities and galas page covers how to build an evening around a handful of lots like that, and there are more write-ups of real sales in the news section.

You can build a lot list and rehearse the whole evening before deciding whether to run it for real. There is a walk-through at getting started.

Prices as reported at the time of sale, including buyer's premium where the source states it.