August 02, 2010

Results of Recent Lucille Ball Auctioned Items

As previously reported, Heritage Auction Galleries held an auction that contained a number of Lucille Ball's personal items that had passed to her husband, Gary Morton upon her death. These items were then put up for auction by Susie McAllister Morton, who married Gary Morton in 1996, after the death of Lucille Ball in 1989.

Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball tried to block the items from going up for auction by court order. Although she won, she lost in technicality as she could not come up with the imposed $250,000 bond in order to stop the auction. The auction house then agreed to return some items to Lucie. They gave her Lucille Ball's lifetime achievement awards but the other items remained up for auction.

So what happened to those items that went up on the auction block? A trove of more than 120 lots from the Estate of Gary Morton and his wife, Lucille Ball, brought $230,780 on Saturday, July 17, as part of a $1.3 million+ Music & Entertainment auction at Heritage Auctions Beverly Hills. Lucille Ball’s 1984 Rolls Royce Silver Spur was the highest priced item from that consignment at $29,875. All prices include 19.5% Buyer’s Premium.

"What we saw here today was an amazing outpouring of love and respect from Lucy’s fans," said Doug Norwine, Director of Entertainment Auctions at Heritage. "Collectors paid top prices to obtain a cherished piece of Lucy’s personal legacy – far beyond our expectations – and they came out in droves, not only in the auction room, but by the hundreds online."

Other top lots of the Lucille Ball consignment was $7,768 for the painting L’Opera, Paris, by Regis (Count) de Cachard, from Morton and Ball’s collection, and $8,963 for her personal address book, containing the names, phone numbers and addresses of many of the top stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

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