Free Republic

Some lucky millionaire will be able to own a key piece of the Wicked Witch of the West — for good. That’s because the iconic hat worn by Margaret Hamilton in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is going up for auction on Dec. 9. Offered by Heritage Auctions — which last year sold a pair of ruby slippers from the film for $28 million — that hat comes up for sale just as Wicked: For Good, which brings to an end a revisionist telling of the witch’s backstory (played by Cynthia Erivo in the Wicked films), hits theaters ahead of...

Why pay $1.59 million for a used Gulfstream IV jet when you can potentially acquire a Fairchild C-119L Flying Boxcar military transport plane for $150? If that’s out of your price range, how about a Boeing KC-97 Stratofreighter tanker aircraft for $25? Those are the starting bids for two of the 16 aircraft available at auction on the website Public Surplus. Big Horn County is selling the aircraft, mainly from the World War II and Cold War eras, after the Wyoming Supreme Court gave the go-ahead. “They’re aircraft in various stages of undress,” Paul Thur, Big Horn County Airport manager,...

The materials, which were put up for auction by former President Joe Biden, will reportedly soon be returned to Trump following a fierce legal battle... ...The material, valued between $260 million and $350 million, was auctioned on GovPlanet, an online government surplus marketplace, in 2023 after Biden halted Trump's border construction in January 2021... ..."GovPlanet has reached an agreement, working with the Office of the Border Czar, to return border wall materials that were previously deemed surplus and sourced by the federal government to GovPlanet via existing contracts," the company stated. "A third-party firm that has been contracted for construction...

FIRST ON FOX: The global government-surplus auction house that listed unused components of President Donald Trump’s border wall under the Biden administration told Fox News Digital on Friday that it plans to coordinate with the Trump administration to return some of the materials to the federal government. In January 2021, President Joe Biden set in motion the chain of events that would eventually lead to the sale of unconstructed border wall components and implements. "Like every nation, the United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats. But building a massive...

NEW YORK — For sale: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock. Estimated auction price: $2 million to $4 million. Why so expensive? It's the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth. Sotheby's in New York will be auctioning what's known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140...

Sotheby's famed auction room was filled with gasps followed by shocked silence after an iconic statue priced far too ambitiously failed to sell at auction. Billionaires descended on the New York City event on Tuesday in the hope of snagging a masterpiece created by the likes of Picasso, Monet or Matisse. But it was Alberto Giacometti's 1955 bronze bust, called Grand tête mince, that was billed as the auction's centerpiece by experts who gave it a $70 million guide price.

The man who set the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence on fire on Sunday morning has been identified. Police arrested a suspect on Sunday. His name is Cody Balmer, he’s 38 years-old and he lives near the governor’s mansion. Balmer torched the governor’s residence during Passover. Shapiro is Jewish. Times Now reported: During a news conference, police confirmed that Balmer scaled fences, evaded state troopers, and ignited the fire. He was arrested in the Harrisburg area shortly after Governor Shapiro and his family were safely evacuated. Dauphin County District Attorney Francis Chardo stated that forthcoming charges will include attempted murder, terrorism, attempted...

The federal government owns multiple trillions of dollars of federal assets -- from land, to buildings, to patent rights, to mineral rights, to immigrant visas, to oil fields to trucks and trains and unused office furniture equipment. The government could earn well over $1 trillion and perhaps as much as $10 trillion by selling off these assets that are simply hoarded (figuratively) in the dark and dusty basement of government buildings. These assets could then generate added annual tax receipts once they are utilized for productive purposes. I'm not talking about selling the Washington Monument or Yellowstone National Park. The...

Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a victory for President-elect Donald Trump’s border-security agenda during a hearing today before a federal judge. The hearing was called at Attorney General Paxton’s request to uncover potential legal violations committed by the Biden Administration after recent reports that segments of the border wall were auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. The Biden Administration confirmed to the court today that it will agree to an order preventing the outgoing administration from disposing of any further border wall materials over the next 30 days—allowing President Trump to use those materials as he sees fit. This...

Daily Wire @realDailyWire EXCLUSIVE: Weeks before Trump takes office, Biden is racing to auction off unused border wall materials. Video shows trucks hauling wall materials off the border to a government auction site, where a massive amount of wall is waiting to be sold.

A pair of iconic ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” and stolen from a museum nearly two decades ago sold for a winning bid of $28 million at auction Saturday. Heritage Auctions had estimated that they would fetch $3 million or more, but the fast-paced bidding far outpaced that amount within seconds and tripled it within minutes. A few bidders making offers by phone volleyed back and forth for 15 minutes as the price climbed to the final, eye-popping sum. Including the Dallas-based auction house's fee, the unknown buyer will ultimately pay $32.5...

A piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, sold for $6.2 million at an auction in New York on Wednesday, with the winning bid coming from a prominent cryptocurrency entrepreneur. "Comedian," by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, was a phenomenon when it debuted in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, as festivalgoers tried to make out whether the single yellow piece of fruit affixed to a white wall with silver duct tape was a joke or cheeky commentary on questionable standards among art collectors. At one point, another artist took the banana off the wall...

Attorneys for X Corp., the firm established by Elon Musk to take over Twitter, filed a notice of appearance on Thursday in the bankruptcy case of Alex Jones and his Infowars platform. The new owners of satirical news site The Onion had been declared the successful bidders for Jones’ controversial platform, alongside families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims. But this week, the Texas bankruptcy judge overhearing the case voiced concerns about the transparency of the auction process and called for a new hearing to discuss those potential issues. “Nobody should feel comfortable with the results of the auction,” Judge...

Things might look gloomy at CNN with layoffs, salary cuts and a new digital programming model that may or may not work. But On The Money has learned that private equity firms have been crunching the numbers on a possible acquisition of the ratings-challenged network. Don’t exactly hold your breath for anything happening soon, my sources both at CNN and in the private equity business tell me. The network’s parent, Warner Bros Discovery, isn’t yet shopping CNN. Indeed, no firm has made a bid, my sources tell me: the PE people I spoke to don’t really know how to really...

The judge overseeing Alex Jones's Infowars case just ordered a hearing into how the Onion won the bidding after Alex's lawyers alleged that the trustee overseeing the auction rigged it at the last minute to allow the Onion to win.. What they're doing to Jones is unthinkable. Everyone makes mistakes, but none of the people who made up a lie about the Trump-Russian collusion have suffered this much for it. FREE ALEX JONES. FREE INFOWARS.

Conspiracy theory purveyor Infowars and most of its assets went on the auction block Wednesday, with Alex Jones waiting to see if he will be allowed to stay or if he will get kicked off its online platforms. The private auction was being held as part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy, which resulted from the nearly $1.5 billion in defamation lawsuit judgments a judge and jurors ordered the bombastic internet show and radio host to pay to families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for repeatedly telling his audience that the Connecticut massacre of 20 children and...

A rare copy of the US Constitution that was found inside a filing cabinet sold for $9 million at auction this week. It took just seven minutes for the nearly 237-year-old document to clinch its hammer price, Andrew Brunk, the owner of Brunk Auctions, told CBS News. Most bids were placed over the phone, while two came in online and one buyer was at the North Carolina auction in person, Brunk said. The final price, including the buyer’s premium, was $11,070,000. The buyer will remain anonymous.

A lawsuit by a high school senior has been filed to prevent the sale of Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home run ball, which was scheduled to go up for auction Friday with a starting bid at $500,000. Max Matus, an 18-year-old resident of Broward County, Fla., filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court stating that he is the rightful owner of the ball (snip) Matus is seeking an injunction preventing the three defendants — Goldin Auctions LLC, and Florida residents Chris Belanski and Kelvin Ramirez — from “transferring, encumbering, selling, or concealing the 50/50 Ball.” In addition to...

Dallas has always been a hotbed for muscle cars and Corvettes, and Mecum Auctions has been on board that boogie train since the beginning. It should come as no surprise then that this year’s Mecum auction at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center (September 4–7, 2024) brought in 1,656 auction lots, a record for the company’s Dallas event. It’s pretty well known that Corvettes represent the most prolific model sold at Mecum (they account for around 10 percent of the company’s sales overall), and Corvettes represented six out of 10 positions in the top 10 muscle cars in Dallas this...

A dealership took a 2017 Genesis G90 in on trade decided to auction it off. It was listed as having an oil pressure issue, suggesting that it needed a new engine. Nobody even came near it. It just sat there week after week, waiting for someone to take it home. Nobody did until the dealership put it up for "make an offer." Sam took a gamble, offered half of the initial price for the seven-year-old sedan, and soon had it shipped to his home. He bought the car for $12,100 plus a $500 auction fee, which is less than half...