Bizarre Items Celebrities Owned and Sold
Fame comes with money, and money lets people buy whatever catches their attention. For celebrities, that means collections that go far beyond sports cars and vacation homes.
Some of them accumulate objects that make you wonder what they were thinking, and then later decide to sell those items to the highest bidder. These aren’t your typical celebrity auctions with designer clothes and awards.
These are the weird ones. The purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time but eventually needed to go.
The items that tell you more about a famous person than any interview ever could.
William Shatner’s Kidney Stone
The Star Trek actor passed a kidney stone and decided it was worth keeping. Then he decided it was worth selling.
In 2006, GoldenPalace.com bought it for $25,000. Shatner donated the money to Habitat for Humanity, which is probably the only redeeming part of this story.
The kidney stone measured about the size of a pea. The casino planned to display it alongside other celebrity memorabilia.
People actually bid against each other for a calcified mineral that came out of Captain Kirk’s body. That happened.
Scarlett Johansson’s Used Tissue
During an appearance on The Tonight Show in 2008, Johansson had a cold. She blew her nose, signed the tissue, and Jay Leno joked about selling it on eBay.
Someone actually listed it for charity, and a bidder paid $5,300. The money went to charity, which was the whole point.
The item description specified it was sealed in a plastic bag. Someone still paid five thousand dollars for a piece of paper with mucus on it because a famous actress touched it.
Justin Timberlake’s Half-Eaten French Toast
A radio station intern took Timberlake’s leftover breakfast from Z100 in New York and put it on eBay in 2000. The partially eaten French toast, complete with fork and syrup, sold for $1,025.
The winning bidder reportedly wanted to clone Timberlake using the DNA from the breakfast remnants. That was the stated reason.
The toast presumably went stale years ago, and nobody has successfully cloned a pop star yet.
Britney Spears’ Chewed Gum
Someone claimed to have picked up gum that Spears spit out at a London hotel in 2004 and tried to sell it online. Reports of it selling for $14,000 are unverified and likely exaggerated.
The seller claimed Spears autographed the wrapper, which apparently was supposed to make the whole thing legitimate. This kicked off a brief trend of people trying to sell celebrity-chewed gum.
eBay eventually banned these listings because they crossed too many lines. Most of these supposed sales were probably fake, but people tried anyway.
John Lennon’s Tooth
A Canadian dentist bought one of John Lennon’s molars at auction in 2011 for £19,500 (around $31,000). Lennon had given the tooth to his housekeeper in the 1960s.
The housekeeper’s daughter, who was a Beatles fan, kept it for decades before selling it. The dentist said he wanted to use it for a traveling Beatles exhibition.
He also mentioned potentially extracting DNA to sequence Lennon’s genome. The tooth sat in a safety deposit box for years while people debated the ethics of using celebrity biological material for science.
Elvis Presley’s Prescription Pill Bottles
Multiple empty medication containers that belonged to Elvis have reportedly sold at auction over the years. These aren’t collectible antique containers.
They’re regular plastic pharmacy containers from the 1970s with his name on the labels. Some sales claimed prices in the thousands, though many weren’t authenticated by major auction houses.
People reportedly pay significant amounts for containers that once held pills, simply because they have Elvis’s name printed on them. The bottles themselves have no intrinsic value beyond the connection to the singer.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s Alleged Body Part
An item claimed to be Napoleon’s preserved anatomy has been bought and sold multiple times since supposedly being removed during his autopsy in 1821. A urologist purchased it in 1977 for $3,000.
It was displayed at the Museum of French Art in New York before that. The item looks more like a piece of jerky than anything else.
It has never been scientifically authenticated, and many historians consider it almost certainly not genuine. But it keeps getting sold with the Napoleon connection, and collectors keep buying it.
Michael Jackson’s Bubble Machine
Jackson owned an industrial-grade bubble machine that he used at Neverland Ranch. After his death, it sold at auction for $1,680.
The machine was just a regular commercial bubble maker, the kind you’d rent for parties. Someone paid nearly two thousand dollars for it because Jackson owned it.
The machine probably cost $200 new. But the association with the pop star multiplied its value several times over.
Lady Gaga’s Fake Fingernail
During a concert in Dublin, one of Gaga’s artificial nails fell off on stage. Someone in the audience grabbed it and later sold it online.
The press-on nail went for $12,000. The seller provided photos showing the nail at the concert venue.
Buyers apparently didn’t question whether it was actually from Gaga or just a similar fake nail someone claimed was hers. The market for celebrity body parts, even artificial ones, proved surprisingly robust.
Marilyn Monroe’s Chest X-Ray
A set of medical x-rays from 1954 showing Monroe’s ribcage sold for $45,000 in 2010 through Julien’s Auctions. The x-rays were taken at Cedars-Sinai Hospital when she was being treated for a respiratory infection.
They’re regular medical imaging, nothing unique about the images themselves except who they depict. Hospitals and doctors are supposed to maintain patient confidentiality, even after death.
But these x-rays ended up at auction. Someone paid enough money to buy a new car for pictures of Monroe’s skeletal structure.
Ernest Hemingway’s Typewriter
Hemingway’s 1946 Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter sold for around $11,000-$12,000 in the mid-2010s. Unlike some items on this list, the typewriter actually makes sense as a collectible.
He used it to write letters and possibly manuscripts. Multiple Hemingway typewriters have been sold over the years, with varying auction results.
The machine still worked when it was sold. The buyer got a functioning piece of writing equipment that a famous author actually used for its intended purpose.
This is what celebrity memorabilia probably should be, not bodily waste or medical records.
Albert Einstein’s Eyes
Einstein’s ophthalmologist, Dr. Thomas Harvey, removed and kept his eyes after the physicist died in 1955. Harvey stored them in a safety deposit box.
They remain in Harvey’s estate custody and have not been bought and sold among collectors like other items on this list. The eyes remain preserved in a jar somewhere.
The fact that Einstein’s actual eyes were removed and kept raises questions nobody wants to answer about respect for the deceased, even if they haven’t entered the auction market.
George Harrison’s Toilet
The former Beatle’s toilet from his Oxfordshire home sold for £950 in 2010. The buyer was from Merseyside, not far from Liverpool where the Beatles started.
He installed it in his garden bar as a conversation piece. It’s a regular toilet.
Harrison used it. That made it worth nearly a thousand pounds to someone.
The bathroom fixture went from functional plumbing to display item purely because of its famous previous owner.
What’s Really Being Sold
None of these items have value on their own. A used tissue is trash.
A tooth is a tooth. An empty pill bottle belongs in recycling.
But attach a famous name to something, and suddenly people will pay extraordinary amounts to own it. The strangest part isn’t that celebrities owned odd things.
Everyone accumulates random possessions. The strange part is the market that emerged for buying those possessions after they served their purpose.
Someone always wants to own a piece of fame, no matter how literal or disgusting that piece might be.
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