It's hard to believe that a piece of movie memorabilia like the brown hooded cloak worn by Alec Guinness as Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars," could have been laying around, forgotten, for years in a warehouse, yet it was.
Still that didn't keep things from heating up at the British auctioneer company Bonhams auctioned off movie and TV memorabilia today.
The cloak worn Guinness was the key fixture of the auction as it was eventually sold for $104,000. It had been sitting around in the company's inventory until someone discovered its provenance last year. It was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder.
Some of the other items which were sold off for insurance cost reasons were the kilt worn by Mel Gibson in "Braveheart" and the dinner jacket worn by James Bond in "Thunderball." The jacket sold for $64,700.
One of the more unusual items that sold for about 20 times what was expected was the beaten metal helmet in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," which had been worn by Terry Jones. It went under the gavel for $19,300. One bystander didn't get it saying, "It's just a metal bucket."
The company eventually sold over 400 items and costumes from their extensive 1.5 million-piece collection.
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