Christopher Lee's black cape from the 1958 film version of Dracula is expected to fetch up to £30,000. The woollen cape is one of nearly 250 lots of film and TV costumes from the archives of Angels The Costumiers.

Outfits from Blackadder, Doctor Who and the Harry Potter films are also up for sale at the auction, at Bonhams in London on June 16.

Lee's cape is being sold together with a letter signed by the actor confirming the authenticity of the item, as well as a still image of him wearing the cape as Dracula. However, fans with a smaller budget still have the chance to snap up a pair of waistcoats worn by Lee in 1976's Dracula Pere Et Fils and a 1971 production of Sherlock Holmes. They are expected to fetch the more meagre sum of £100-150.

Other items available at the auction include a full-length cloak worn by Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, two monkey masks from The Mighty Boosh and Halle Berry's wetsuit from James Bond film Die Another Day.
 

Celebrated French mime Marcel Marceau left his mark on the world through silence, but his earthly belongings are generating a great deal of noise these days. On Wednesday, Parisian auction house Drouot began the second and final day of bidding on artwork, books, manuscripts and costumes Marceau left behind when he died at the age of 87 in Sept. 2007.

"We have 4,200 over here — certainly an original Marceau merits another bid!" prodded auctioneer Rodolphe Tessier as he stoked the bidding on Marceau's painting The Audience Observing from a reserve price of €800 ($1,080) toward its final sale at €11,000 ($14,850). "Estimating the value of such rare objects as these is impossible — it's the bidding that will determine the price!"

Critics say the bazaar-like atmosphere is hardly fitting. They note that the auction was court-ordered with the limited objective of reimbursing $405,000 in debt Marceau racked up at the end of his life to finance his shows. To ensure that sum was obtained, the auctioneers set astonishingly low opening prices so everything would find a taker.

"This is reducing the artistic legacy of a man to a fixed sum to be paid off," says Stephan Martell, who worked as Marceau's musical director. "For those of us who knew Marcel and how he lived his life and art as one, this random dispersal of his possessions is very painful."

To mitigate that anguish, Martell and long-time Marceau assistant Valérie Bochenek formed the association A Museum for Bip — a reference to the mime's famous sailor-suited character. Its initial aim was to raise $135,000 and buy as many of Marceau's most artistically significant relics as possible — including Bip's trademark costume (for which bids opened on Wednesday at a mere $1,350). Despite collecting over 3,000 signatures of support in less than two weeks, Martell acknowledges the group got significantly less money than hoped for. Still, during Tuesday's auctioning, Bochenek made 10 successful bids worth nearly $7,560.
 

Has Dog’s Playing Poker or Velvet Elvis run the course in your home? Then you’re in luck, because it’s time to upgrade with a nude painting of Madonna with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie.

I know ... nude Madonna? Isn’t that the equivalent of bright sun or wet rain? Not exactly a shocker. But it was this story or something about Mexico approving bidding rules for wireless auctions.

Artist Peter Howson’s controversial depiction of the former couple in oil was painted in 2005. It is expected to fetch up to $35,000 when it goes under the hammer at the McTear’s Scottish Contemporary Art Auction in Glasgow on Saturday from a private collector. Howson has produced several portraits of the pop icon in a state of undress.

The painting depicts a very manly Madonna being groped by Ritchie who looks more like a cross between Mike Tyson and Vinnie Jones (X-Men: The Last Stand and The Midnight Meat Train). If checking out Madonna in the buff is your thing, save a few dollars and the Tums you’ll need to chew after viewing the painting, and grab a copy of her 1992 Sex book that features a little bit of everything except Ritchie.

The Material Girl and director behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, RocknRolla and Sherlock Holmes ended their almost 8-year marriage in November 2008.

UPDATED: 6.2.09 Failed to sell. 

A collector stands to make a tidy profit after discovering a rare stamp portraying movie star Audrey Hepburn smoking — one of a series that should have been incinerated by the German government.

In 2001, the government printed 14 million Audrey Hepburn stamps as part of a series featuring movie stars including Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo. The print run was destroyed after Hepburn's son, Sean Ferrer, objected to the cigarette holder dangling from the actress' mouth and refused to grant copyright. But the Finance Ministry had already delivered advance copies of the Hepburn stamps to Deutsche Post for approval. Thirty of these proof copies escaped destruction when an unknown employee pocketed them and used them to send letters postmarked from Berlin.

A minimum bid of euro30,000 (US$41,959) has been set for the stamp — of which only five copies are known to exist — at its auction Tuesday at Berlin's Kempinski Hotel Bristol.

"We can only guess that whoever took the Hepburn stamps from Deutsche Post didn't realize their value, thought they would save 55 cents and just used them on normal letters," auctioneer Andreas Schlegel told The Associated Press.

UPDATED: 5.27.09 The stamp sold for $93,800 at an auction in Germany Tuesday. Both buyer and seller were anonymous.

Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon, unveiled a mural of clouds in the sky that will be auctioned in 67 puzzle pieces to raise funds and to mark the second annual World Autism Awareness Day.

The 76-year-old Japanese artist and musician created the seven-foot tall "Promise" mural from acrylic materials. Each of the 67 pieces of art will be auctioned with starting bids of $1,000 at charitybuzz.com/yoko.

"When I was first approached to create an artwork for autism awareness I was shocked by the worldwide prevalence of this serious situation, especially among our children," Ono said at the auction launch at the United Nations. "My work, 'Promises,' symbolizes that we all hold a piece of this puzzle and we must work to raise awareness, funds for research and advocate for families who experience autism."

The 67 pieces represent the 67 million people who have autism around the world.

A rare two-seat version of the Spitfire fighter, the plane that earned a nation's gratitude in the Battle of Britain, may fetch a record price in an auction this month.

This Spitfire is unique — a one-seat World War II-era fighter that became a two-seat trainer in the 21st century. Bonhams, which is offering the meticulously restored plane at a sale on April 20, estimates it will sell for 1.5 million pounds ($2.2 million). Retrieved from a junkyard in South Africa 30 years ago, the plane is now certified to fly.

Bonhams' Austria unit, Bonhams & Goodman, sold a 1945 Spitfire Mark XVI for NZ$3.2million ($1.8 million) in September, reportedly the record auction price for a Spitfire. That plane had been on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio until 1997. The one now for sale is a Mark IX model delivered on Oct. 23, 1944, one of 23,000 Spitfires built through the war.

Rip, a stray dog who became a World War II hero after being found homeless and starving in a bombing raid in London, will be remembered at an auction next month.

Rip was saved by an Air Raid Precaution (ARP) warden during the 1940 German attacks in the Poplar area. The terrier-cross became the local ARP post's mascot and soon started sniffing out casualties trapped under burning or bombed buildings.

He located more than 100 victims and won a Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the U.K. military's Victoria Cross for bravery. His circular bronze decoration will be offered by the specialist auction house and dealers Spink on April 23. The medal will fetch as much as 10,000 pounds ($14,400), Spink said in an e-mail last night. It would not name the seller. 

With loons like Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Madonna running around the English countryside, is it really a shock that the Brits passed on taking claim of another psycho?

Bonhams was unable to unload a 20-page score to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho after the minimum price was not met. The auction house had hoped to sell it for somewhere around $56,000. The music was composed by Bernard Herrmann to accompany Hitchcock's 1960 thriller. The manuscript carries the notes to the slashing, shrieking violin sounds that play when a knife-wielding killer bursts in on actress Janet Leigh as she showers in the Bates Motel.

The score is being returned to Hermann’s third wife. Madonna? Sorry, she's staying.
 

Back when I actually read for pleasure, anything within reach was used as a bookmark. Playing card, Kleenex, page out of the TV Guide, piece of popcorn off the floor. It really didn’t matter as long as I could get back and find out what happened when the cow jumped over the moon or what became of the five little monkeys jumping on a bed.

Maybe it was my upbringing, but I never saw the value in plunking down money for a fancy bookmark when the cash could be better spent hoping for a queen on the river to give me a royal flush.

Seattle’s Christian Popescu apparently doesn’t share my sensibilities and now he’s facing 10 years in prison.

Popescu, who immigrated to the United States about 12 years ago from Romania, has plead guilty to the sale or receipt of stolen goods. According to legal eagles, Popescu was trying to find a buyer for an 18-carat gold bookmark engraved with a portrait of Hitler, an imperial eagle and a swastika. The bookmark was stolen from a Spanish auction house in 2002. Authorities nabbed Popescu when he attempted to sell the gift from Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun outside a Starbucks for $100,000.
 

Still smarting from the 2004 bomb Around the World in 80 Days, Jackie Chan didn’t exactly need a reason to go Kung-Fu Panda on someone. But following Christie’s auction of a pair of Qing dynasty bronze sculptures this week, he’s ready to remove croissants from his eating regimine.

At the heart of the issue are two sculptures … a rabbit and rat … that were stolen from Beijing’s Summer Palace during the second Opium War in 1860. After years of moving from “owner” to “owner” the pieces ended up selling for £28 million. Needless to say the Chinese government and its favorite export this side of porcelain aren’t turning the other cheek.

"This behavior is shameful," Chan said. "They remain looted items, no matter whom they were sold to. Whoever took it out (of China) is himself a thief. It was looting yesterday. It is still looting today."

The buyer’s identity was not released. The Chinese government warned it would use all necessary channels to recover all relics stolen.

Maybe this means a new plot twist for Rush Hour 4.