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.
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.
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 Associated Press 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, he ditched them, his lawyer said, according to the AP. The lawyer did not reveal how he got rid of them.
The second associate was indicted in March and will go to trial in January, the AP reported. He has not entered a plea, but his attorney has said he is not guilty.
Among Saturday’s bidders was the Judy Garland Museum, which was on a quest “to bring 1 of 4 remaining pairs of Ruby Slippers Judy Garland wore in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939) home to Judy’s birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota,” the museum wrote on Facebook.
Shortly after the auction, the museum wrote that it “sadly didn’t win the Ruby Slippers,” despite asking for donations to supplement money already donated to the cause from the City of Grand Rapids, which raised funds at its annual Judy Garland festival, the AP reported. Minnesota lawmakers also offered $100,000 to help the museum win the slippers, according to the AP.
