Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers From ‘The Wizard of Oz’ Sell for a Record-Breaking $28 Million

A pair of storied ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland during the making of The Wizard of Oz sold for $28 million on Saturday, becoming the most expensive piece of movie memorabilia ever auctioned, according to a statement from Heritage Auctions.

Following the sale, the auctioneer said that the record was previously held by the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore while standing on a windy subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, which sold at auction for $5.52 million (including fees) in 2011, per the Associated Press’ Steve Karnowski and Hannah Fingerhut.

With the auction house’s fee included, the anonymous buyer of the ruby slippers will end up paying a total of $32.5 million.

The sparkly shoes, which were estimated to sell for $3 million, sparked a bidding war, segments of which can be seen in a video shared by Heritage Auctions. According to the AP, bidders met the shoe’s estimated value within seconds and tripled it within minutes. A few bidders making offers over the phone drove the price up for around 15 minutes, until the shoes reached their record-breaking sale price.

Four pairs of ruby slippers worn by Garland during the filming of the 1939 musical are known to have survived. One belongs to a private collector, while two others are housed in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

But the dazzling shoes sold on Saturday have an especially dramatic past.

In 2005, the slippers were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in the Dorothy actress’ birthplace of Grand Rapids, Minnesota when a burglar broke in through one of the museum’s doors, smashed the plexiglass display case that contained them and took off into the night, slippers in tow.

The shoes didn’t resurface until 2018, when the FBI recovered them in a sting operation—and brought in museum curators from NMAH to help with identifying and conserving them.

Years passed until a burglar was publicly identified. Terry Jon Martin, a Minnesota man, was indicted in connection to the robbery in 2023. He pleaded guilty later that year.

In January 2024, Martin—who was using oxygen therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—was sentenced to one year of supervised release, avoiding jail time partially due to his poor health.

Martin had a long history of crime before the slippers heist. He had been planning to leave that lifestyle behind him until an associate convinced him to steal the shoes as “one last score,” as his attorney, Dane DeKrey, wrote in a court memo, per the AP’s Josh Funk.

According to DeKrey, Martin had never seen The Wizard of Oz and had no idea that the ruby slippers were a legendary Hollywood symbol. He only knew that their insurance value was $1 million. When he learned that the shoes were adorned with glass gems rather than rubies, he handed them off to an associate.

“Terry Martin never meant to be a criminal celebrity,” DeKrey wrote in court papers at the time of his client’s trial, as reported by the New York Times’ Michael Levenson. “He deeply regrets this decision and is ready to accept his punishment. But he’s no monster. He’s a dying man ready to meet his maker.”

Earlier this year, the shoes returned to the Judy Garland Museum, where they were handed back to their owner, Michael Shaw. Shaw, who collects Wizard of Oz memorabilia, bought the shoes in 1970 and subsequently lent them to museums across the country, charging a fee that he would often donate to charity, as the Times’ Jennifer Medina reported in 2018.

In a statement, Shaw compared seeing the shoes again to “a heartfelt reunion with a long-lost friend.”

When Shaw consigned the shoes to Heritage Auctions, the news attracted many interested buyers. One of them was the Judy Garland Museum, which began raising funds over the summer in an effort to buy the shoes, put them back on display at the museum and give them a “Hollywood happy ending,” as Janie Heitz, the museum’s executive director, told the Times in June.

In the end, the Minnesota museum was not the mystery buyer who snagged the crimson slippers over the weekend.

“We sadly didn’t win the ruby slippers to bring home to Judy Garland’s birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, but we’ll continue to follow their story and share with you,” the museum wrote in a Facebook post.

Ella Feldman | READ MORE

Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper, DCist and the Austin American-Statesman.