It would appear that auction house Profiles in History had an unbelievable success with their Captain America: The First Avenger Auction event this past weekend, on behalf of Marvel Studios. The stand out single sale, of course, was “Lot #154 Captain Amerca complete hero suit“, which sold for $233,700 ($190,000 hammer plus $43,700 Buyer’s Premium). Over a quarter of a million dollars for one of presumably multiple copies of a costume from a movie that was released nine months ago. I am not easily surprised by anything in this art market, but this I find astounding and shocking. And my first thought immediately went to a concept discussed on this site in the past – the “Hype Premium” – but even that cannot come close to explaining this auction result.
Having said that, I have no other explanation to offer. More, given that this is an auction sale result, it means that two independent bidders would have to possess both the resources to pay this much money for the piece, as well as possess the same bizarre, off the charts concept of value. It really is, in my opinion, an unprecedented sale result in the hobby, for a costume from a recent film of the same quality.
Personally, I can’t think of any costume from any film released in the past ten years that would be worth a quarter of a million dollars.
Other notable sales were more within the realm of some kind of reality… around $30,000 for a Captain America USO costume and two different Captain America POW rescue costume, $20,000 each for some Johann Schmidt costumes, $135,000 for an Iron Man costume (high, but consider the cost involved in making it), $27,000 each for some Captain America shields, $24,000 for Mjolnir… while these prices were high, they were not, well, off the charts.
So I’m really at a loss for any explanation. If anyone has any ideas or theories, please comment below or e-mail me, as I’d love to have some idea of how such a costume can sell for a quarter of a million dollars.
In any event, a friend was in attendance at C2E2 and forwarded the following photos to me to share with the readers of the OPB (though there are photos from this event all over the Internet as well):
Jason DeBord