Judy Garland’s slippers from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, were purchased at an auction for a record-breaking $28 million on Saturday, December 7, 2024, in Dallas, Texas. This happened because a man named Michael Shaw decided to sell the slippers.
The movie The Wizard of Oz first started playing in theaters in 1939. The Wizard of Oz is about a girl named Dorothy getting lost in a magical land and having an adventure while trying to get back to home. Along the way of her journey, Dorothy finds a pair of red “ruby slippers,” and, at the end of the movie, Dorothy learns that she can go back home by clicking the heels of her shoes together three times and saying, “There’s no place like home.”
This movie was based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a book by Frank L. Baum. In the book, the slippers were originally silver. But for the movie, the slippers’ color was changed to red, so that they would show up better on TV. While filming the movie, many different pairs of red slippers were used. Some were used for dancing, and some were used for taking close-up shots.
After filming, the slippers were stored away and were forgotten. Later, someone found the shoes and sold them in the 1970s. According to CBS News, the author of “The Ruby Slippers of Oz,” Rhys Thomas, said that ‘the sequined shoes from the beloved 1939 musical have seen ‘more twists and turns than the Yellow Brick Road.’”
A man named Michael Shaw bought one of the pairs of slippers for $2,000. He made money by renting out the shoes to fans of the movie. In 2005, Shaw rented out the shoes to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. However, on August 27, someone broke into the museum, smashed the glass display case, and stole the ruby slippers.
The shoes went missing for 13 years. Finally, the FBI tracked down the slippers in 2018, and it took five more years to catch the thief. “The thief had never seen the movie. Police believe the man thought the shoes had real rubies on them. When he found out that they didn’t, he got rid of them,” New for Kids says.
The thief, Terry Jon Martin, pleaded guilty in October 2023. He was 77, at the time. CBS News said that Martin admitted to using a sledgehammer to break the case and taking the ruby slippers.
Martin’s attorney, Dane Dekery, said that Martin was trying to play off “one last score” because “an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value. But a fence — a person who buys stolen goods — later told him the rubies were just glass,” according to CBS News.
After Michael Shaw retrieved the red slippers back in February of 2024, he announced that he is planning on selling the slippers. Many collectors were excited when they heard this announcement. The company that sold the slippers, Heritage Auctions, predicted that the slippers would sell for about $3 million.
However, at the auction, the price sky-rocketed past $3 million. The winner of the auction offered $28 million. With tax and costs from the auction company, the winner, whose name has not been announced, paid a total of $32.5 million.
This sale set a record for a piece of a movie item. The previous record was $5.52 million, set in 2011. The item was a white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe from the movie, The Seven Year Itch.
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New for Kids Wizard of Oz Slippers Sell for $28 Million