BEVERLY HILLS—Vintage icon Marilyn Monroe’s grave marker sold at auction for $212,500. The marker, a metallic plate with the star’s name and the dates of her birth and death, is owned by a morgue employee who kept it after it was replaced in the 70s. Initial estimates expected the item to sell for somewhere between $2,000-$4,000.
Other Marilyn Monroe items auctioned off at Julien’s Hollywood Legends Auction over the weekend included the first issue of Playboy – signed by Hugh Hefner himself – which features Monroe as the magazine’s first cover girl.
The most expensive item sold at the auction was the last dress she ever wore in a film, “Something’s Gotta Give” (1962), and it sold for $348,000.
Julien’s Auctions (subtitled “The Auction House to the Stars”) sold off a number of Marilyn Monroe items last year. The least expensive Monroe item – a series of letters she received from fans – went for $64. A letter from her one-time husband Joe DiMaggio went for $78,125.
The auction house typically sells items that once belonged to dead celebrity icons – Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Princess Diana, etc. – but they have also auctioned off items that belonged to James Gandolfini and Robin Williams, mostly nondescript clothes they wore in films and on television.
Last year, a chair from the James Bond film “You Only Live Twice” (1967) went for $16,250.
