Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” Sell for $28 Million at Auction, Setting a New Record

The slippers had been predicted to fetch $3 million according to Heritage Auctions

There's no place like auction!

Judy Garland’s iconic ruby-red slippers from The Wizard of Oz went under the hammer. on Saturday, Dec. 7 at a live auction in Dallas, Texas. Surpassing their estimate by $25 million, the shoes sold for $28 million.

These are one of only four known surviving pairs of the ruby slippers worn by Garland in the movie. Auctioneers from Heritage Auctions called them the "Holy Grail of Hollywood memorabilia," according to the BBC.

“There is simply no comparison between Judy Garland’s ruby slippers and any other piece of Hollywood memorabilia,” the auction house’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena, told The New York Times.

Including the auction house’s fee, the unknown buyer will ultimately pay $32.5 million for the footwear.

That selling price made them the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction. The previous record-holder — the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch — sold in 2011 for (just) $5.52 million with fees, according to the auction house.

Related: Was The Wizard of Oz Cursed? A Film Historian Breaks Down Problems on Set and Debunks Wild Rumors (Exclusive)

Related: The Wizard of Oz Cast Salaries: Why the Actress Who Played the Wicked Witch Made More Than Double Judy Garland (Exclusive)

Per The Guardian, the “fast-paced bidding” outpaced estimates “within seconds and tripled it within minutes.” The huge winning bid prompted applause in the auction room.

It wasn't the only piece of Wizard of Oz memorabilia up for auction. One of Margaret Hamilton's black Wicked Witch of the West hats sold for nearly $3 million.

But the shoes were the major draw, their sale coming nearly two decades after they were stolen from Minnesota's Judy Garland Museum in 2005.

The sequined pumps were bought by Michael Shaw in 1970 before they were taken by former mobster Terry Jon Martin while on loan to the museum. They were found in 2018, with the FBI revealing in a press release that they discovered the shoes in Minneapolis while investigating a scheme to defraud and extort the Markel Corporation, who owned the pumps. 

Martin, meanwhile, plead guilty in October 2023 to stealing them. in January 2024, he was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release and $23,000 in restitution.

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Shaw's slippers — one of between six and 10 pairs that were created for Garland to wear in the movie — are the "cross-matched sister shoes to the pair at The Smithsonian Institution," according to Heritage Auctions.

Their sale coincides with a fresh interest in the musical following the theater release of the prequel movie Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

If fans are wondering why the legendary shoes are nowhere to be seen in Wicked, that's because L. Frank Baum didn't originally intend for Dorothy’s shoes to be red when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.

Related: The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch Actress Suffered Unforgettable Pain After Being Burned on Set (Exclusive)

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Paul Tazewell, Wicked's costume designer, recalled to PEOPLE in November that "in the book, they were these odd little silver boots." But because The Wizard of Oz movie was made in technicolor for 1939, the studio wanted to take advantage of the ability to showcase the many colors it had at its disposal, so MGM's costume designer Gilbert Adria, strayed outside Baum’s 1900 novel.

Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there.

Wicked is in theaters now.