A pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” sold Saturday at an auction for $32.5 million, making the sparkling shoes the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction.
The slippers are one of four surviving pairs from the 1939 movie and were once stolen from a museum that housed them. The winning bid was $28 million, with the buyer paying an additional $4.5 million in fees to the Dallas-based auction house, the Associated Press reported.
Live bidding for the pair of ruby red heels started at $1.55 million, according to Heritage Auctions, and were initially estimated to go for $3 million or more.
The auction house said in a news release that the slippers passed that number “within seconds” and that no other pair of ruby slippers has gone for close to that amount.
The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), Judy Garland “Dorothy Gale” Screen Matched Ruby Slippers.Heritage Auctions/Hollywood Entertainment
One pair sold in 2000 for $666,000, Heritage Auctions said. In 2012, Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio paid $2 million for another pair and donated them to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
These slippers also helped Heritage Auctions break a record for an entertainment auction, with Saturday’s totaling almost $40 million. The auction also included the hat worn by the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz,” which sold for $2.9 million.
Perhaps this pair’s star power contributed to the high selling price.
They were famously stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in August 2005 by 77-year-old Terry Jon Martin. He used a hammer to smash the glass display case and snag the shoes, the AP reported.
Thirteen years later, in 2018, the FBI got a tip and recovered the stolen slippers in a sting operation.
The shoes were cross-referenced with a pair at the Smithsonian to confirm their authenticity because at some point, the pairs were swapped, each containing one shoe from two different pairs of ruby slippers, according to the auction house.
The FBI then returned them to their original owner, Michael Shaw, earlier this year. Shaw had loaned the shoes to the museum, according to the AP, and gave them to Heritage Auctions for Saturday’s auction.
Martin confessed to the crime in court documents last year, saying he wanted to pull off “one last score,” according to Heritage Auctions.
He pleaded guilty in October 2023 and was sentenced to time served in January because of poor health, according to the AP. At the time of his sentencing, he was in a wheelchair and on supplementary oxygen.
Martin was inspired to commit the crime after an associate hypothesized the slippers must be decorated with real jewels to justify their $1 million insurance value, according to the AP.
When a separate associate told Martin the jewels were actually just glass,