Heavy metal fans aren’t usually seen making bids at high-end auctions, but they turned out in numbers to snatch up a coat with embroidered bats, sneakers with skulls on them and other items put up for sale by Ozzy Osbourne. “We had Ozzy fans bidding against these sophisticated fine art buyers, which you don’t see every day,” said Darren Julien, whose company, Julien’s Auctions, ran the charity sale Friday and Saturday. “For the most part the metalheads were outbidding the art crowd.”
Bidders came from as far as Germany to try and buy belongings from the Beverly Hills mansion formerly owned by the rocker and former star of “The Osbournes” reality show.
Items featured on Osbourne’s hit MTV show were the most popular, Julien said. The bat coat sold for $3,300, the skull sneakers brought in $2,625 and a pair of the rocker’s trademark round glasses went for $5,250.
Julien said the “Ozzy factor” made ordinary items command big-ticket prices. An oversized coffee cup that Osbourne often clutched while the cameras rolled sold for $1,625.
A dog bed given to Osbourne’s wife Sharon by Elton John brought in $2,375.
Fine art buyers were interested in items like a sculpture by French artist Edouard Drouot ($10,500) and a painting by Gabriel Joseph Marie Augustin Ferrier ($5,312).
Julien said Osbourne almost did not want to part with his prized pool table because he cherished the memories of playing with his kids as they were growing up. The table eventually ended up on the auction block and it brought in $11,250.
The auction brought in $800,000 – more than twice the amount Julien predicted. All proceeds from the sale go to The Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
“For a celebrity garage sale, it was pretty spectacular,” Julien said.
