The bar from the television series Cheers has fetched $US675,000 ($1 million) at auction – the highest bid among almost 1000 props, costumes and sets from classic TV shows offered up from a collection amassed by one man across more than three decades.
Heritage Auctions said items sold during its three-day event that wrapped up in Dallas on Sunday brought in more than $US5 million ($7.6 million).
James Comisar has said that after his dream of creating a museum to house his collection failed to come together, it was time for the pieces to go to fans to enjoy.
“The auction’s success confirmed what I have always known: that television characters are cherished members of our extended family and that their stories and our own are inseparable,” Mr Comisar said in a statement released by the auction house.
Earlier, he said he had found the TV bar – one of the highlights of this week’s auction – stashed in a storage unit with a dead skunk.
“I just decided these pieces should go back to the fans and let them enjoy them and then when that good day comes when a TV museum is effectuated, these pieces will be well cared for in the hands of passionate fans and collectors,” he said.
Heritage said the bar – which has the cast members names scratched into its polished top – was “the singular artefact that the whole cast gathered around in the 275-episode run” of Cheers. Elsewhere, an antique brass cash register that sat on the show’s back bar sold for $US40,000 ($60,500).
The Batman and Robin costumes worn by Adam West and Burt Ward in the 1960s television series went for $US615,000 ($929,256), while the set where Johnny Carson hosted guests on The Tonight Show went for $US275,000 ($415,521), Heritage Auctions said.
The set from All in the Family — which included Archie and Edith Bunker’s living and dining rooms and stairwell – sold for $US125,000 ($188,873).
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The auction house said the same buyer also made the winning bid of $US250,000 ($377,746) for the chairs used by the TV couple in the show’s ninth season.
The couple’s original two chairs from the show reside in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
Mr Comisar said those thrift shop chairs were given to the museum when it was thought the show would end after its eighth season. When it continued for a ninth, replicas were made at great cost.
Those replicas – the chairs offered at auction – were then used in the show’s last season and in its continuation, Archie Bunker’s Place.
-with AAP
