Only Known Marilyn Monroe Photo Inscribed to Joe DiMaggio Sells for $300,000 to Set Auction Record at Heritage

DALLAS, Texas (Dec. 2, 2022) - "I love you Joe, Marilyn."

Heritage Auctions' latest Historical Platinum event, held Dec. 1, was filled with myriad documents written and signed by such titans of history as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Stephen F. Austin, John Kennedy, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Theodore Roosevelt and others whose names fill countless history books. Their landmark manuscripts and milestone memories brought more than 430 bidders to an auction that realized more than $2.48 million in a span of only two hours Thursday afternoon.

But five words handwritten by one woman topped them all.

The only known photograph of Marilyn Monroe inscribed to Joe DiMaggio sold Thursday for $300,000 to set a new auction record for a signed Monroe photograph. The picture, a publicity still taken in 1953 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was already among the most famous and coveted of Monroe's portraits. It is now the most valuable, as well.

"Bidding was extraordinary from the moment the auction began, with heated battles among collectors over some of the most significant artifacts Heritage has ever had the privilege of bringing to market," says Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena. "But as someone so enamored of Monroe - as an actor and icon, as someone whose fame has only increased with each passing year - I am particularly thrilled to see this benchmark realized during this event."

The photograph has extraordinary provenance, having come from The Joe DiMaggio Collection with a signed letter from the Yankee Clipper's daughters, Paula DiMaggio Hamra and Kathie DiMaggio Stein.

Only one item in Thursday's auction topped the Monroe photo: one of likely four known Sputnik 1 test models and the accompanying Tesla broadcast receiver, which soared to an out-of-this-world $375,000. It comes from the collection of Dr. Frank J. Malina, the Texan who NASA says is "considered by some to be the father of modern rocketry." Two other models reside in museums, one at the Energia Corporate Museum outside Moscow and another at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Heritage, founded in Dallas in 1976, was especially proud to offer in this auction Stephen F. Austin's handwritten (and twice-signed) foundational text authorizing the conditions of settlement within the Austin colony, circa 1825. This document from the Father of Texas, in which he authorized the colonization of 500 families, realized $225,000.

On Thursday, two Thomas Jefferson documents signed during his tenure as Secretary of State, were worth far more than their weight in gold. One, from Feb. 18. 1793, in part helped established the U.S. Mint; a bidding war drove its final price to $225,000. And a broadside from May 8, 1792, authorizing the creation of the first copper coinage realized $175,000.

A single typed manuscript page from one of President Theodore Roosevelt's speeches sold for $106,250, in part because of the two holes one might easily mistake for the wear and tear of age. This, in fact, was a page of the very speech Roosevelt carried with him in Milwaukee on Oct. 14, 1912, when he was nearly felled by an assassin's bullet. As The History Channel tells the story, "the projectile had been slowed by his dense overcoat, steel-reinforced eyeglass case and hefty speech squeezed into his inner right jacket pocket."

Speaking of Roosevelt's glasses: His pair of pince-nez eyeglasses with the carrying case, which were originally gifted to White House Chief Usher Ike Hoover, realized $35,000.

There was no shortage of bidding wars during the two-hour event.

Several bidders tussled over an extraordinary historic document: Page One of the Instrument of Surrender signed by President Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Sept. 2, 1945. It realized $87,500.

Truman's typed, signed letter to U.S. Attorney Sam Wear about relieving MacArthur of his command, was another document over which bidders fought - in part, because it's dated April 17, 1951, just days after the president made what was then an unpopular decision. Truman maintains in this missive: "There wasn't anything else for me to do under the circumstances and still remain President of the United States." It sold for $75,000.

Tail gunner George Caron's large silk map of Japan, present aboard the Enola Gay during the mission that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, opened live bidding at $5,250. But heated bidding drove its final price to $68,750.

And a model manufactured for Grumman by Precise Models, Inc. that was gifted to President John Kennedy while they and NASA were developing the lunar module prior to the Apollo 11 landing. But a bidding war drove it final price to $55,000.

Click here for complete results for the Dec. 1 Historical Platinum Session Signature^® Auction.

Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world's largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hong Kong.

Heritage also enjoys the highest Online traffic and dollar volume of any auction house on earth (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). The Internet's most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has more than 1,500,000 registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of five million past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit.

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Robert Wilonsky, Communications Director
214-409-1887; [email protected]