Collectibles

It's fair to say that 2020 was an outlier year in the auction marketplace. All of the big players faced battles getting their usual live auctions to happen, and records were continually broken for online sales as the world adapted to COVID-19.

One of the original circuit boards hand-made by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak for the first iteration "blue box" phone phreaking device in 1972 is going to auction, with an estimate of US$8,000 to $12,000.

Next week's Propstore movie memorabilia auction has some very important objets d'art from some of the biggest films of all time. A Darth Vader costume, lightsabers, stormtrooper helmets, one of the most important movie cameras of all time ...

What's a little slice of the Michael Jordan legend worth? The sneakers worn by the fabled basketball player when he smashed a backboard with a one-handed dunk in 1985 have sold at auction for $615,000.

Michael Jordan was unquestionably a once in a lifetime athlete. His outrageous gravity-defying achievements on the basketball court helped him rewrite the rules of athletic merchandise and now he is creating his own new reality on the auction block.

Significant space and science fiction memorabilia continues to sell well at auction, with the Space Suit used in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" selling for $370,000 and Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 Control Joystick selling for $370,000 at Julien’s Auctions.

The value of movie memorabilia is invariably linked to the importance of the film it comes from. This makes the upcoming auction of the space suit used in Kubrick's masterpiece potentially one of the science fiction auctions of the year.

Kurt Cobain’s 1959 Martin D-18E guitar, famously played in Nirvana’s historic 1993 “MTV Unplugged" performance, has smashed the world record price for a guitar at auction, selling for US$6,000,010 at a Julien’s auction in Hollywood today.

Three bottles of whisky that had once sold for a world record price appeared at a Sotheby’s auction last Thursday, none of them near the current record, but all demonstrating that rare whisky is one of the most rewarding investments currently available.

Half a dozen guitars from Kurt Cobain, Prince and Bill Wyman will sell over the next few months, with two or three capable of cracking the million dollar barrier, most notably Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18 and Prince’s Purple Rain guitar.

The only remaining bottle of the world’s oldest cognac goes to auction next week, and will almost certainly set a new record. The 258-year-old Gautier cognac was distilled during the reign of Louis XV, almost three decades before the French Revolution.

No-one does materials technology quite like Mother Nature. Combine an infinite mix of substances with tectonic pressures, volcanic heat and endless patience and it is little wonder that we cannot yet match the beauty of natural science.