A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz are up for auction nearly twenty years after they were stolen by a thief who mistakenly believed they were adorned with real jewels.
Online bidding has already begun and will run until December 7th, as announced by Heritage Auctions in Dallas in a press release on Monday. The current bid is just over $812,000 (£631,000).
The auction house received the sequin and bead-covered slippers from Michael Shaw, a memorabilia collector who previously owned the shoes from the 1939 musical. Shaw had loaned the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005. However, in the same year, a thief smashed through a display case and stole the slippers. Their whereabouts remained unknown until the FBI recovered them in 2018.
The museum is now one of the contenders looking to acquire the slippers, which were one of several pairs worn by Garland during the filming. Only four pairs are known to still exist.
Grand Rapids raised funds for the slippers at their annual Judy Garland festival. The money raised will supplement the $100,000 allocated by Minnesota lawmakers this year to purchase the slippers.
The individual who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, was 76 years old when he was sentenced in January to time served due to his poor health. He confessed to using a hammer to break into the museum’s door and display case in an effort to pull off “one last score,” after an old associate with ties to the mob told him that the shoes must have real jewels to justify their insured value of $1 million.
The auction of movie memorabilia also includes other items from The Wizard of Oz, such as a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West and the screen door from Dorothy’s Kansas home.