Letters and personal notes from King Charles and other royal family members to disgraced BBC television presenter Jimmy Saville are being sold at auction.
The nine items are the latest in correspondence from the Prince of Wales to Saville to go under the hammer.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Savile was a popular presenter on the BBC, hosting a number of programmes, including Top of the Pops.
He was also a famous campaigner for charities, including organisations treating sick children.
(From left: Diana, Princess of Wales and then-Prince Charles with Jimmy Savile at a public event on August 4, 1983.)
Saville was knighted in 1990. But following his death in 2011, it emerged he had sexually abused hundreds of children and women at the height of his fame.
Among the correspondence sold by RR Auction, based in the US, was this signed letter from the then Prince Charles to Saville in January, 1989, outlining the future monarch's plans for royal family members meeting survivors of disasters.
It sold for $US303 ($466).
A freestanding Holden dealership sign is up for auction through Burns and Co.
Pre-sale bidding on the item has already reached $20,000.
The light-up "Holden Bathurst" sign stands about six metres tall and the auctioneers said it was in "outstanding condition" for its age.
Other items for sale include neon signs, more Bathurst Holden signage, some petrol- and oil-related signage and some workshop plant and equipment.
The live webcast auction will take place from 7pm (AEDT) tomorrow at Burns and Co's premises at 4 Market Drive, Bayswater, Melbourne.
A set of six sneakers worn by basketball legend Michael Jordan have sold for a record-breaking $US8 million ($12.2 million) at auction.
The sneakers were worn during Jordan's six NBA championships.
The winning bid for "The Dynasty Collection" reached $US8,032,800, setting a new global auction record for game-worn sneakers, according to auction house Sotheby's.
The set consisted of Air Jordan VI (1991), Air Jordan VII (1992), Air Jordan VIII (1993), Air Jordan XI (1996), Air Jordan XII (1997), and Air Jordan XIV (1998).
"This set represents the most valuable and significant collection of Air Jordan sneakers ever brought to market," the auction house said on its website ahead of the auction.
Notably, only one of each pair was sold.
This small piece of paper is worth over $580,000.
It's dubbed the "napkin that changed Lionel Messi's life, and the history of football".
Scrawled on it is the first promise of a contract written to secure the signing of Lionel Messi for FC Barcelona.
The Argentinian prodigy, who has gone on to become one of the greatest one of the greatest players in football history, was just 13 at the time.
This writing translates as "In Barcelona, on 14 December 2000 and the presence of Messrs Minguella and Horacio, Carles Rexach, FC Barcelona's sporting director, hereby agrees, under his responsibility and regardless of any dissenting opinions, to sign the player Lionel Messi, provided that we keep to the amounts agreed upon."
Ian Ehling, head of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams New York, called it "one of the most thrilling items I have ever handled".
The reason the unusual agreement is written on a napkin was because agreements had stalled.
By December 2000, Messi's father Jorge had become impatient at the lack of commitment from the club, Bonhams says.
"He was waiting to get a final decision from FC Barcelona. On 14 December, Rexach, Minguella and Gaggioli met for lunch at the Pompeia tennis club," the auction house said.
"Rexach, sensing that things had reached a crucial moment, pulled a paper napkin from a dispenser on the table ... and began to write."
It's being sold by Bonhams on behalf of Argentine agent Horacio Gaggioli.
The wristwatch that landed Arnold Schwarzenegger in detainment at Munich Airport has raised €270000 ($AU445,454) after being sold at a fundraising dinner in Austria for his charity, the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative.
Schwarzenegger is facing criminal tax proceedings for failing to declare the Audemars Piguet watch to customs officers in Munich after he got off a flight from Los Angeles on Wednesday.
He was released a few hours later after agreeing to pre-pay potential taxes on the watch.
The first known piece of mail sent using a prepaid stamp — "one of the greatest leaps forward in human communication" — could fetch between $2.25 million and $3.75 million when it comes up for auction at Sotheby's in New York next month.
If the piece realises its estimate, Sotheby's said it would become one of the most valuable pieces of postal history to have ever been auctioned.
Dated May 2, 1840, the letter's original recipient was William Blenkinsop Jr, the 35-year-old manager of a Victorian iron works in Bedlington, a town in the north of England. Sotheby's state that all that's known about the letter's sender is that they posted the missive in London — about 300 miles to the south — and paid for it with the Penny Black stamp.
After receiving the letter, Blenkinsop Jr turned the envelope inside out and refashioned it as a "Mulready" – an ornate wrapper embellished with images representing the British Empire that acted as another method of prepaid payment introduced at the same time as the Penny Black.
That second envelope reached a Mr Blenkinsop, most likely his father, who lived 75 miles away in Dalston, Carlisle and kept it, although the contents of both letters themselves have been lost.
"Surviving over 180 years, the ornate Mulready envelope sealed with a Penny Black revolutionised the way people from all walks of life correspond, exchange ideas, share news and express themselves," Richard Austin, Sotheby's Global Head of Books & Manuscripts, said in a statement.
"At the dawn of the AI age, this remarkable object speaks to our innate human desire for connection and the ways in which it has evolved to new heights in the two centuries since."
Both sides of the envelope still bear the stamped dates on which they were sent, the first on May 2, 1840 and the second on May 4, two days before the official start date of the Penny Black.
Teacher and social reformer Sir Rowland Hill conceived the idea for the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp, to standardize the complex, expensive and unpredictable postal rates at the time, that were paid for by the recipient.
The system was unwieldy for both those using it and the postal service, who could sometimes not recover the costs of delivering items if the person receiving them did not pay.
While the stamp was wildly successful and subsequently adopted worldwide, the Mulready envelope was withdrawn after it was ridiculed by the public.
A pair of custom Nike shoes, found in a US donation bin for the homeless, sold at Sotheby's auction for $74,000 AUD.
The gold-colored Nike Air Jordan 3 shoes were similar to ones worn by 'Do the Right Thing' director Spike Lee at the Oscars in 2019.
Just a select few pairs of those personalised sneakers, designed by Nike's most well-known designer, Tinker Hatfield, were produced for Lee to present to his closest friends and family.
The shoes were never made available for the public to purchase.
The pair however made their way into a donation bin at a homeless shelter in Portland.
A previously homeless man who was volunteering at the Portland Rescue Mission's shelter on Burnside found the shoes as he was organising a donation bin in April.
Through its donation chute, the downtown Portland shelter receives thousands of pounds of clothing every year.
The designer, Hatfield, then confirmed that the shoes were in fact real Spike Lee Air Jordan 3′s. He gave the shelter a brand-new shoe box for the sneakers and a framed, autographed concept design.
All of the proceeds from the auction sale will go to the Portland Rescue Mission.
A dress first worn by Princess Diana in 1985 has sold for a record $1.4 million at auction, 11 times its estimate.
The blue and black dress, designed by Moroccan-British fashion designer Jacques Azagury, is now the most expensive dress worn by the princess to be sold at auction, smashing the previous record of $900,000, Los Angeles auction house Julien's Auctions said in a statement.
Diana wore the dress, which features a black velvet bodice embroidered with stars, in the Italian city of Florence in April 1985, and in Vancouver, Canada in May 1986.
Festive magic fuelled by nostalgia has been credited for the "astonishing" sale of a Christmas tree "bought for pennies" more than a century ago, for £3411 ($6461) at auction.
The 79-centimetre tree, complete with 25 branches, 12 berries and six mini candle holders, was estimated to sell for only £60-80 ($114-$152) at auction house Hansons Auctioneers in the south-eastern English county of Oxfordshire.
A global bidding battle meant the final result far exceeded this, according to a press release issued on Friday.
"The magic of Christmas lives on! The humblest Christmas tree in the world has a new home and we're delighted for both buyer and seller," said Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers, in the release.
The Christmas tree arrived at the home of Dorothy Grant in Leicestershire in England's East Midlands in 1920, when she was eight years old, and she was "wildly excited", the auction house said in the release.
She decorated it with cotton wool to mimic snow, since baubles were lavish after World War I.
Dorothy treasured the tree until her passing at the age of 101 in 2014, following which her 84-year-old daughter, Shirley Hall (pictured), inherited it.
"It would have been bought for pennies originally but it's sold for thousands and that's astonishing. I think it's down to the power of nostalgia. Dorothy's story resonated with people," said Hanson.
"As simple as it was, Dorothy loved that tree. It became a staple part of family celebrations for decades. The fact that it brought her such joy is humbling in itself. It reminds us that extravagance and excess are not required to capture the spirit of Christmas."
Hanson (pictured) suggested in the release that the tree could have been produced for an expensive London department store.
Even though it resembles the first mass-produced artificial trees sold by popular department store Woolworths, he said it differs from trees sold there previously due to the red paint decoration on its wooden base.
"The seller decided to part with it to honour her mother's memory and to ensure it survives as a humble reminder of 1920s life - a boom-to-bust decade," he added.
A similar Christmas tree, purchased in Scotland for the equivalent of 6 pence (11 cents) in 1937, sold for £150 ($284) at Hansons Auctioneers in 2019, according to Hanson. Another, found in the English city of Derby, sold for £420 ($796) in 2017.
"But Dorothy's tree has truly excelled," he said.
David Beckham's iconic golden boots have sold at a UK auction house for £17,360 ($33,094).
The pair of football shoes sold as part of a 1000-piece sports memorabilia auction in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, by Auction house Graham Budd.