A rare auction of Oscar statuette held in Los Angeles on Friday and the most expensive award trophy was sold at 492,000 dollars. It was the best-picture Oscar for ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ which was released in 1947 and starred Gregory Peck. It took on antisemitism, hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. Due to some unknown reasons, the award was sold at more than twice what was expected.
The second most expensive best picture statuette for 1935’s an American drama film ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’, was sold at 240,000 dollars.
But an archive of papers on the origin and development of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ outperformed both of them and was sold at 1.2 million dollars.
Other items like TIE fighter helmet from the original ‘Star Wars’ was sold for 240,000 dollars, a Phaser pistol from the original ‘Star Trek’ TV series fetched 192,000 dollars, a hoverboard Marty McFly rode in ‘Back to the Future II’ was bought for 102,000 dollars, and a golden ticket from ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ brought in 48,000 dollars.
Auction of the Academy Awards aka Oscar statuettes is very uncommon because the winners offer it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 1 dollar before selling it elsewhere. They had to agree to this condition because the Academy firmly believes that the award must be won, not bought. The deal stand for awards won in 1951 and later.
Michael Jackson set up a record of paying 1.5 million dollars to acquire David O. Selznick’s ‘Gone With the Wind’ Oscar in 1999. This record has not been broken yet.