RR Auction concluded its June Fine Autographs and Artifacts auction with a total of more than $1,000,000 in sales. Among nearly 800 lots, bidders had their choice of autographs from Napoleon Bonaparte, Isaac Newton, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Lee, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein.
A special section highlighted artifacts from World War II. A fully operational Enigma I cipher machine earned a realized price of $214,079, making it the highest selling item of the evening. Dated to 1943, this machine would’ve been used by the German military to transfer confidential information.
A Normandy invasion flag from the USS Burnett County earned a price of $45,125 – more than 15 times its estimate. The flag, a 48 star U.S. Naval Ensign flag, commemorates the June 6, 1944 D-Day Invasion carried out by American troops. The flag came from the collection of World War II veteran George Wimpenny Roy, Seaman 1st Class, U.S. Navy, and was accompanied by other artifacts including shell casings, currency, shrapnel, and a handwritten note by Roy.
“Artifacts like this flag are a tangible connection to the bravery and sacrifice of those who served during World War II,” said Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction in a talk with WBZ NewsRadio. “In the wake of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we are honored to have facilitated its sale and preservation.”
Outside of the World War II category, the auction played host to a PSA NM-MT 8 graded document signed by George Washington, an extensive collection of photographs signed by Hollywood’s brightest stars between the 1980s and 2000s, a perfectly graded PSA GEM MT 10 Bruce Lee signed Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute membership card, and a one-of-a-kind photograph by atom bomb creator J. Robert Oppenheimer.
If you’d like to sell your items with RR Auction, give our professionals a call at 800-937-3880 or click the button below to submit photos of your items to find out what they’re worth.
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