THE LAUREN BACALL COLLECTION AT BONHAMS

Lauren “Betty” Bacall passed away last year and for the last 53 years of her life, she lived at The Dakota. See next post. Her three-bed, 3.5-bath in the iconic, sought after building is on the market now for $26 million. Her extensive collection of art, furniture, collectibles and designer clothing are at Bonhams, where they will be auctioned on March 31 and April 1. The catalog for it all is a massive 375 pages and includes many photographs of her Central Park-facing home. They reveal a woman who collected pottery, vintage posters, art and among many other things, African antiquities, which likely stemmed from her being on location with husband Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen, which was directed by John Huston. She remained lifelong friends with Huston’s daughter, Anjelica and her late husband sculptor, Robert Graham. Betty was gifted and or bought many Graham sculptures, drawings and even jewelry, which you can see more of here, along with hundreds of cherished items hand-picked by this legend. Have a look. I’m buying the catalogue (I already have quite collection of celeb auction catalogues going including Liberace, Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, Jackie O, Marilyn Monroe, and Katherine Hepburn.) And I’m going to this sale too – if I can get in.

AMETHYST, TURQUOISE AND DIAMOND RING, Jean Schlumberger – est. $8,000 – 12,000

JIM DINE – est. $6,000 – 9,000

JOAN MIRÓ – est. $2,500 – 3,500

DAVID HOCKNEY –est. $ 5,000 – 7,000

HENRY MOORE – est. $500 – 800

TWO FERTILITY FIGURES – est. $800 – 1,200

ROBERT GRAHAM – est. $1,500 – 2,000

ROBERT GRAHAM – est. $4,000 - 6,000

TWO PATINATED PLASTER BUSTS OF JOHN F. KENNEDY – est. $800 – 1,200

SEVEN MAJOLICA JARDINIÈRES AND A STONEWARE JARDINIÈRE
LATE 19TH/EARLY 20TH CENTURY – est. $1,000 – 1,500

TWO LOUIS VUITTON SUITCASES – $1,500 – 2,000

LAUREN BACALL, DIRECTOR’S CHAIR – est. $200 – 300

GÉRARD FAILLY – est. $800 – 1,200

With Anjelica Huston

Betty at home in the Dakota

A $3.2 MILLION COMIC BOOK + A $38.1 MILLION CAR

The World’s Most Expensive Comic Book
An original Superman comic, sold for 10 cents at a West Virginia newsstand in 1938, was purchased at auction Sunday night for $3.2 million, making it the most expensive comic book ever sold. The copy of Action Comics No. 1, which features a caped Superman lifting an automobile, was sold on EBay by Darren Adams of Pristine Comics, above. The previous record for a comic book was $2.1 million, for another Action Comics No. 1, sold by Nicolas Cage in 2011 to assist paying his massive debts. Cage purchased the comic in 1997 for $110,000. (FYI, Nic was cast as Superman in Tim Burton’s ill-fated, never produced filmSuperman Lives and he named his son Kal-El, Superman’s birth name.)

Action Comic No. 1 had an initial print run of 200,000 copies, but only 100 or so survived, and most of those have had some restoration work done to them. Purchased off a newsstand by a man from West Virginia in 1938, it was stored in a cedar chest “at high altitude” for four decades. A couple of owners and more than 30 years later, Darren Adams purchased it for seven figures. He first saw the copy in a bank vault.

“It wasn’t just a copy of Action Comics No. 1. It was THE copy. I was floored. The emotion was overwhelming.”

Adams and EBay are donating 1% of the sale price to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation for spinal-cord injury and paralysis research.

The Most Expensive Car Ever Sold At Auction
The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, reportedly one of only 39 made, sold for $38,115,000 at Bonhams in England. The sale easily topped the previous record of any car ever sold at auction – $30 million for a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R F1 single-seat racer, sold last year at Bonhams. The Ferrari GTO was developed to race in the 1962 3-liter class FIA GT World Championship series, but it was involved in a crash early in its life that killed the driver, and was subsequently repaired. Experts say a crash involving a Ferrari of its type doesn’t decrease the value – it appears to only to increase the mystique. BTW, for about the same money you can get a used Gulfstream G550 (for around $33 Million) and with the $5 Million or so leftover you could buy a 2014 Lamborghini Veneno Roadster. Just sayin’.