Nude Carla Bruni Fails to Excite Paris Auction
AFP: PARIS — A nude photo of French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, identical to one sold last year for 91,000 dollars, was Friday withdrawn from a Paris auction after bids failed to hit the reserve price.

Bidding for the black and white shot, showing Bruni standing pigeon-toed and covering her crotch with her hands, began at 4,000 euros but reached only 5,800, less than the undisclosed reserve price, the Drouot auction house said. >>> | Friday, November 20, 2009

Signed Copy of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' Sells at Auction
THE TELEGRAPH: More than 80 years after it was first published -and later outlawed- in Germany, a signed copy of Adolf Hitler's infamous manifesto "Mein Kampf" was sold on Thursday for £21,000.

The semi-autobiographical work outlining Hitler's anti-Semitic ideology, was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder at an auction in Ludlow.

Written in 1924 while Hitler was serving a four-year prison term in the southern German region of Bavaria, the book was first published in 1926.

Although it has been republished abroad, it has been banned in Germany since the Second World War.

"I am absolutely pleased," said Richard Westwood-Brookes from Mullock's Auctioneers. He said he believed the second-edition book to be a prepublication copy given by Hitler to a fellow inmate in 1925, making it a "highly prized article".

"Only a couple-dozen copies are given to the author, so they are pretty rare," he said. >>> | Thursday, August 13, 2009

Key to the Ka’aba Breaks All Records in Sotheby's Sale
Key to the Ka’aba fetches record price at auction. Photo courtesy of the BBC
BBC: A 12th Century key to Islam's holiest shrine has sold at auction in London for £9.2m ($18.1m).

The key to the Kaaba - the ancient cube-shaped shrine in Mecca - went to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's.

The auction house said the price set a record for the sale of an Islamic work of art.

Made of iron and measuring 37cm (15in) in length, the key is engraved with the words "This was made for the Holy House of God".

The key was the centrepiece of Sotheby's Islamic art sale, which realised more than £21.5m ($40m) in total.

'Important symbol'

Head of Sotheby's Islamic art department Edward Gibbs said: "Remarkably, the sale realised more than the Islamic department's annual total for 2007, demonstrating beyond doubt the burgeoning and international demand for Islamic art."

The key is the only known example to be in private hands. All of the other 58 Kaaba keys are in museums.

Sotheby's said the key was "arguably one of the most important symbols of Islam".

The auction house said the keys were dedicated to caliphs, starting with the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad.

"As a physical object, the key to the holiest building of an entire religion, it demonstrates the authority of the caliph and is the ultimate emblem of power," said Sotheby's. [Source: BBC: Holy Islamic Key Sets Sale Record]

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)