Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ sell for $32.5 Million

One of four surviving pairs worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, the slippers that sold Saturday are now the most famous — and, by far, the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction.

“There is simply no comparison between Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers and any other piece of Hollywood memorabilia,” Maddalena says. “The breathtaking result reflects just how important movies and movie memorabilia are to our culture and to collectors. It’s been a privilege for all of us at Heritage to be a part of the slippers’ epic journey over the rainbow and off to a new home.”

There were numerous star attractions spanning cinema’s rich history throughout this event, but none stood taller or shined brighter than the Technicolor treasures from The Wizard of Oz, which sparked a bidding war that lasted nearly as long as a walk down The Yellow Brick Road.

Live bidding opened at $1.55 million. Several thrilling minutes later, as bidding hit million-dollar increments, the slippers hit their final price, and the auction room erupted with applause. The pre-auction estimate for the slippers was $3 million and up. They surpassed that within seconds.

One pair of Ruby Slippers sold at auction in 2000 for $666,000. A dozen years later, Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio spent $2 million on the pair donated to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. DiCaprio led the group of donors that allowed for the 2012 sale, which was brokered by Profiles in History, the auction house founded by Maddalena.

The pair that sold Saturday at Heritage was famously stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., in the summer of 2005; recovered 13 years later by the FBI; and returned to owner Michael Shaw earlier this year before he handed them over to Heritage.

Upon their recovery in 2018, the FBI took the slippers to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where, the museum once noted, “smudges on the heavy glass vitrine must be routinely cleaned” because of the millions who “stand transfixed before them” each year. There, conservators compared them to the museum’s pair donated in 1979. The FBI later said, “Examination of the recovered shoes showed that their construction, materials, and wear are consistent with the pair in the museum’s collection.”

Dorothy’s slippers were designed by Gilbert Adrian, MGM’s chief costume designer and made by Western Costume Company using white silk pumps from the Innes Shoe Company in Los Angeles.

Shaw’s slippers were once known as “The Traveling Shoes” because of their long, storied exhibition history. The pair has since been renamed “The Stolen Pair” given the backstory that involved an elderly thief in ill health, 77-year-old Terry Jon Martin, who confessed in court documents last year to stealing the ruby slippers because he wanted to pull off “one last score.”