OMEN
03-25-2007, 01:14 AM
Two diaries written by Anna Nicole Smith have sold on online auction site eBay for more than $500 000 (R3,6-million) to a German man planning to use them as the basis of a book, according to the memorabilia house that sold them.
Jeff Woolf, co-partner and auction director at Universal Rarities in Corona, California, said the diaries, from 1992 and 1994, were found a few years ago by a man cleaning out a house in Los Angeles where Smith stayed during a filming project.
He sold the diaries to a memorabilia collector who runs a shop on Hollywood Boulevard who came forward with the diaries after the mystery death of the former Playmate in a Florida hotel on February 8 at the age of 39.
In the 1992 diary, which has the words "I follow my own star" on the cover, Woolf said Smith confesses: "I hate for men to want sex all the time. I hate sex." This diary sold for about $285 000.In the second diary Smith writes about the illness of her billionaire husband Howard Marshall, who died in 1995 at the age of 90, with a religious awakening with lots of references to Jesus. This sold for about $230 000.
Woolf said the demand for Smith memorabilia had been overwhelming following her death so the price realised for these diaries was not that surprising.
"I don't think I've had the luck of being in such a situation, where the timing was really that perfect as far as the peak of someone's popularity in the news," he told Reuters.
"The gentleman who bought them required to be anonymous but I can tell you he is from Germany and has the intention of making a book out of them and doing some things in the publishing world."
Reuters
Jeff Woolf, co-partner and auction director at Universal Rarities in Corona, California, said the diaries, from 1992 and 1994, were found a few years ago by a man cleaning out a house in Los Angeles where Smith stayed during a filming project.
He sold the diaries to a memorabilia collector who runs a shop on Hollywood Boulevard who came forward with the diaries after the mystery death of the former Playmate in a Florida hotel on February 8 at the age of 39.
In the 1992 diary, which has the words "I follow my own star" on the cover, Woolf said Smith confesses: "I hate for men to want sex all the time. I hate sex." This diary sold for about $285 000.In the second diary Smith writes about the illness of her billionaire husband Howard Marshall, who died in 1995 at the age of 90, with a religious awakening with lots of references to Jesus. This sold for about $230 000.
Woolf said the demand for Smith memorabilia had been overwhelming following her death so the price realised for these diaries was not that surprising.
"I don't think I've had the luck of being in such a situation, where the timing was really that perfect as far as the peak of someone's popularity in the news," he told Reuters.
"The gentleman who bought them required to be anonymous but I can tell you he is from Germany and has the intention of making a book out of them and doing some things in the publishing world."
Reuters