Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers From THE WIZARD OF OZ Up for Auction

The Ruby Slippers lore continues! The iconic shoes, worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, are currently up for auction. Valued at approximately $3.5 million, Heritage Auctions has the current auction price at $812,500, with $825,000 set as the next minimum bid. The auction concludes on December 7.

This is the latest in the complicated history of this piece of movie memorabilia. Earlier this year, the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota launched a fundraising campaign to acquire the pair. They were stolen from the museum in 2005 where, at the time, they were on exhibition on a loan from collector Michael Shaw. The slippers remained missing until 2018 when the Grand Rapids Police Department and the FBI discovered them. It took another five years to discover the culprit. 

According to the listing, “The Ruby Slippers are a vintage pair of Innes Shoe Co. red silk faille heels with uppers and heels covered with hand-sequined silk georgette, lined in white leather, and the leather soles are painted red with orange felt adhered to the front foundation of each shoe…This Michael Shaw pair of slippers are darker in color than any other known pair-a rich burgundy-likely the result of careful storage out of direct light.”

There are currently three other surviving pairs of Ruby Slippers from the iconic film The Wizard of Oz; one is on display at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the other is displayed at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, California. The fourth remaining pair is owned by a private collector.