Bids for ruby slippers stolen from Grand Rapids museum surpass $1 million in online auction

A storied pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” stolen from a museum display in Grand Rapids, Minn., then reportedly buried in a clear container in a suburban Minneapolis backyard had brought a high bid of $1,150,000 through Tuesday morning on Heritage Auctions’ online auction.

The initial bid, when the auction opened more than a month ago, was $500,000. The slippers hit the current mark three weeks later. The sale’s finale will be a live auction that starts at 11 a.m. on Saturday in Texas.

In the 1970s, a pair of ruby slippers — once believed to be the only pair — sold in an MGM auction for $15,000 and were donated to the Smithsonian years later; Heritage Auctions has indicated this current pair could go for $10 million.

The staff at the Judy Garland Museum is hoping to make the slippers part of its display. In May, the museum secured $100,000 from the Minnesota Legislature. They are also running an active fundraiser on their website. They will be at the auction on Saturday, but won’t reveal their high bid.

“We’re going to be there — who knows what will happen,” said executive director Janie Heitz, who is ready for the end of this story.

There are four known sets of ruby slippers from the 1939 film starring Garland, who was born Frances Ethel Gumm and spent part of her childhood in Grand Rapids. They sat untouched among old costumes at MGM Studios for decades. According to Rhys Thomas, author of “The Ruby Slippers of Oz,” a Hollywood-minded Kent Warner was hired to sort through the old garments and set up an MGM Star Wardrobe Auction. There, among the 350,000 pieces of Hollywood history, he found three pairs of slippers. One went to the auction, another was sold to Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw. He kept the other. The fourth pair belonged to a woman in Tennessee who had won them in a contest.

One pair is now owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is occasionally on display at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. They were acquired in 2012, valued before an auction at between $2 million and $3 million, with the help of Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg and other investors to be a centerpiece at the museum.

The current pair is not perfect. The ones on auction (and at the Smithsonian) aren’t a match. Both are paired with the wrong shoe.

The slippers, as described on the auction’s website, are by Innes Shoe Co. They have red silk faille heels and are covered in red sequins. The man who admitted to the smash-and-grab theft that rocked Minnesota later told the court that he was surprised to find they weren’t covered in actual rubies.

The slippers, owned by Shaw, were part of a tour of his collection of Hollywood memorabilia. He would on occasion lend them to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids for display. In 2005, they were stolen from the museum — a whodunit that took more a decade to solve.

In 2018, the FBI recovered the shoes in a sting operation. In 2023, a sickly Terry Jon Martin pleaded guilty to stealing them from the Judy Garland Museum. It had been one last score for a man who had retired from a life of crime and was living quietly in rural Grand Rapids. He ditched the shoes within 48 hours after learning they weren’t covered in real gems.

Jerry Hal Saliterman, who is accused of having ties to the crime — and keeping the slippers buried in his backyard for seven years — is scheduled for a federal jury trial that starts Jan. 27.

When the slippers were returned to Shaw, he said he would put them up for auction.