Bond items top movie & rock memorabilia sales at London auction
Showbiz Desk

LONDON—A jacket worn by Sean Connery in the 1967 James Bond film “You Only Live Twice” sold for 21,000 pounds (30,700 euros, 36,000 dollars), putting 007 items at the top of the sales list of movie and rock music memorabilia.
The London auction house Bonhams hoped to make total sales of 750,000 pounds (1.15 million euros, 1.3 million dollars) from Bond and other film memorabilia as well as rock-’n’-roll collectibles from The Beatles and The Who, with 175,000 pounds from Bond memorabilia alone. However, no exact total figures were immediately available.
Auctioned were a vast array of 007 props, clothing, autographs, posters, toys and assorted Bond miscellany associated with films starring Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan as well as George Lazenby, who starred in only one film, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” in 1969.
Though it is “well-used” and missing a few bits, Lazenby’s replica Walther PPK gun with faux cherry wood grips sold for 6,000 pounds, well above the 4,000 pounds it had been expected to fetch. With the 21st Bond film “Casino Royale” — starring British actor Daniel Craig (aka ‘the blond Bond’) — scheduled to start shooting in January 2006, Bonhams felt the timing was right.
During the auction of thousands of film souvenirs, a check signed by the late actress Marilyn Monroe was bought for 1,200 pounds, a jacket worn by Jack Nicholson in the 1980 movie “Shining” fetched 3,800 pounds, and an eye from R2D2, one of the robots in “Star Wars,” sold for 650 pounds.