1Child Auctions in Scandinavia
Child auctions were commonplace in Finland and Sweden up until the mid-1930s. Orphans or children from extremely poor backgrounds were sold to the lowest bidder. The children were expected to work in exchange for a home and education.
2. Charity auctions in 2011 featured the auctioning of several remarkably expensive bowls of pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). The chefs prepared "AnQi Pho" with type A5-Wagyu beef, white truffles, precious foie gras broth, and perfectly manicured noodles made of rare blue lobster meat.
3. Winston Churchill had his dentures designed specifically to preserve his lisp. The dentures sold for £15,200 at an auction in 2010.
4. In 2011, a bundle of cash totaling $20,000 was auctioned off for a total of $21,350 as art.
5. There was a court battle between two fans over who caught Barry Bonds's record-setting 756th baseball. One of them spent $473,530 in legal fees to claim ownership of the ball. Later, the ball sold at auction, and he received only $225,000.
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6President Wilson's Rooster Auction
In 1919, the state of Alabama held a rooster auction to help finance a bridge. President Woodrow Wilson attended to auction off his rooster, which sold for $55,000.
7. The cell phone number 666-6666 sold for $2.7 million at a charity auction in Qatar. It sold for $2.7 million. The Chinese number 8888-8888 sold for $280,000.
8. K. Rowling handwrote seven original copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Each copy contains a different semiprecious stone. She gave six copies to close friends and auctioned her own for $1.95 million.
9. In 1977, a Paris auction sold Napoleon Bonaparte's penis, which measured only one-and-a-half inches long, for $3,000. Today, Evan Lattimer keeps Napoleon's "little guy" in his New Jersey home.
10. When John Lennon was having his toilet replaced, one of the builders, John Hancock, decided to store it in his shed. About 40 years later, in 2010, Lennon's lavatory was auctioned off for £9,500.
11Norwegian Butter Crisis Black Market
During the Norwegian Butter Crisis of 2011, Norway virtually ran out of butter, leading to prices for a standard 250-gram (8-ounce) pack rising to over $50 (€42). A black market emerged where sellers auctioned off butter.
12. During a charitable auction in Kiev, Ukraine, Wladimir Klitschko auctioned off his 1996 Olympic gold medal to a buyer who bid $1 million. After the sale, the buyer immediately returned the medal out of respect for Klitschko.
13. In March 2006, a man purchased an authentic official copy of the Declaration of Independence for $2.48 at a Nashville, TN, thrift shop. It was one of 200 "official copies" commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820. It later sold for $477,650 at auction.
14. There was a Marmite Crisis (Marmageddon) in 2012-13 in New Zealand after a cooling tower at the only factory broke down. People then dubbed Marmite "Black Gold." The value of jars increased to over NZ$800 on auction sites.
15. Between 1854 and 1921 in the US, "orphan trains" transported over 250,000 children for adoption by new families. While many found new homes, sometimes the "adoptions" were little more than auctions.
16Record-Breaking Baseball Card
In 2022, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card, graded at 9.5/10, set a record as the most expensive sports item, card, or memorabilia ever sold, fetching $12.6 million at auction. The son of a reported driver of Topps products in the 50s discovered the card in an attic in the 80s.
17. In 2015, the final lunch menu from the Titanic was auctioned off for $88,000. A businessman who survived the sinking had saved it from the ship and kept it.
18. Airlines auction off unclaimed baggage, which is then bought and resold by some stores.
19. Up until the 1960s, poor Swiss children could be auctioned to farmers, who then used them as a source of cheap labor.
20. In 2006, William Shatner auctioned his kidney stone, donating the $25,000 it fetched to Habitat for Humanity.
21Debate Over Vampire Kits
Many "Vampire killing kits," allegedly from the 19th century, are sold in auction houses such as Sotheby's for upwards of $12,000. However, experts are debating the authenticity of these kits due to the presence of materials that suggest they were made in the 1930s or later, without any historical basis.
22. NASA auctioned the bag used by Apollo 11 astronauts to collect the first lunar sample for just $995 by mistake. When the buyer sent the bag to NASA for verification, the space agency realized its mistake and refused to return it.
23. French artist Yves Klein sold a series of non-existent spaces in exchange for a weight of pure gold. In 1959, almost 60 years after his death, a receipt he wrote to prove ownership of his invisible artworks sold for $1.16 million at Sotheby's auction house in Paris.
24. In 1999, porn actress Houston had her labia trimmed and auctioned off the remnants for $50,000.00.
25. During an experiment on the moon, Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott's drill became stuck. After reaching a depth of 5.3 feet, lunar soil particles jammed the drill. In 2016, the auction of the drill chuck fetched nearly $50,000.
