Sotheby Auction facts

While investigating facts about Sotheby's Auction and Sotheby's Auction Results, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Many “Vampire killing kits”, allegedly from the 19th century, are sold in auction houses such as Sotheby’s, for upwards of $12,000. However, their authenticity is debatable as they contain materials that place them as being made in the 1930s or later. There is also no historical basis for them.

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During a NASA auction in 1976, an intern called G. George bought 218$ worth of film roll. It turns out that they were original videotape recordings of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Sotheby's has since resold it for about 1.8 million dollars.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 13 of the best facts about Sotheby's Auction House and Sotheby's Auction Catalogue I managed to collect.

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1. In 2005 an art collector had Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses play Rock Paper Scissors to decide who got to sell his twenty million dollar collection.

2. A collector with works by Picasso, Cézanne and van Gogh contacted Christie's and Sotheby's, and had them play RPS for the rights to auction the $20 million collection. Christie's director's young daughters chose scissors, because "Everyone expects you to choose rock". Sotheby's chose paper.

3. Ownership of the Lunokhod 2 moon rover was sold for $68,000 at a Sotheby's auction in 1993. Its new owner, Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British), stated 'I am now the world's only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body [...] I claim the moon in the name of Lord British!'

4. The most valuable car used in a film is the 1968 Ford Gulf GT40 from the 1971 film "Le Mans" that was auctioned at Sotheby's for $11 million.

5. A Japanese collector wanted to sell his 20 million dollar collection of art. Both Christie's and Sotheby's were competing to conduct the auction. The seller required the firms to play rock, paper, scissors to determine a winner.

6. Wikipedia has an entire section devoted to Accidental damage of art. It includes such gems as this: Sotheby's auction house in London disposed of a box using a crushing machine. They were apparently unaware that the box was not empty but contained a painting by Lucian Freud worth about $157,000.

7. An art collector made Sothebys and Christie's auction houses fight each other rock paper scissors to decide which got to auction $20M of paintings

8. A $20,000,000 game of ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS was waged between famous auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's at the behest of Japanese electronics company Maspro Denkoh

9. In 2015, a Sotheby's Art Auction brought in $70M USD for a 1968 painting referred to as "Chalkboard". The painting consists of six horizontal lines of continuous white-on slate circular swirls, similar to what a bored child might make on a chalkboard [picture of painting included]

10. Japanese electronics company Maspro Denkoh chose an auction house to manage the sale of their $20,000,000 art collection by having Sotheby's challenge Christie's to a game of rock, paper, scissors

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An auction dispute over a $20 million collection of Impressionist paintings was settled by a game of rock-paper-scissors. Christies went with “scissors” after asking the 11-year-old twin daughters of one of their directors, while Sotheby’s went with “paper” by treating it as a game of chance.