Valentin Flauraud / REUTERS

A Patek Philippe wristwatch from the collection of musician Eric Clapton.

An Asian collector bought a platinum chronograph Patek Philippe wristwatch owned by British rock guitarist Eric Clapton for 3.44 million Swiss francs ($3.63 million) at auction on Monday, Christie's said.

The "ultra-rare" reference 2499/100 by the Swiss luxury watchmaker, one of only two cased in platinum, was acquired by Clapton some 10 years ago, it said. 

It fetched a combined hammer price and commission that was in line with Christie's pre-sale estimate of 2.5-4.0 million francs while also setting a world record price for this reference at auction, it said in a statement on its semi-annual Geneva sale. 

"The Eric Clapton watch was bought by an Asian private collector," Christie's spokesman Cristiano de Lorenzo told Reuters, adding that the buyer had been in the room. 

But the top lot at the seven-hour sale was another platinum chronograph Patek Philippe, reference 2458, made in 1952 for legendary American collector J.B. Champion. It fetched n early 3.78 million Swiss francs and set a world record for a watch without complications, or features beyond the display of hours, minutes and seconds, it said. 

Precious Time, an investment watch fund launched by Luxembourg-based Elite Advisers, was the buyer, Christie's said in a statement. 

In all, 96 percent of the 315 lots on offer found new owners, netting 27.04 million Swiss francs ($28.52 million), the auction house owned by French billionaire Francois Pinault said. 

Clapton's Patek Philippe, made in the Swiss city in 1987, has a perpetual calendar with moon phases, as well as windows for day and month and dials for seconds and minutes. 

Most experts would rank it among the world's 10 most significant wristwatches that stand out for historical importance, mechanical complexity, beauty, original condition, rarity and superior provenance, Aurel Bacs, international head of Christie's watch department, said before conducting the sale. 

Clapton, the former Cream musician, last year sold more than 70 of his guitars at a charity auction in New York, raising $2.15 million for the Crossroads Centre drug and alcohol rehabilitation center that he founded in Antigua. 

Last month in London he sold an abstract painting by German artist Gerhard Richter at rival Sotheby's for $34.2 million, setting a new record for the price paid at auction for the work of a living artist. 

Antiquorum's sale of modern and vintage timepieces, held in Geneva on Sunday evening, netted 8.63 million Swiss francs ($9.10 million) for 485 lots sold out of 613 on offer, it said in a statement issued on Monday.

The top lot was a Rolex Single Red Prototype, known as the Sea Dweller Submariner, one of only six produced in 1967 for use by divers. It sold for 490,900 Swiss francs -- four time its pre-sale estimate -- in its first appearance at auction. 

"It is the highest price ever paid for a Rolex sport watch and for a Sea Dweller," Antiquorum said.

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Dorothy’s blue gingham dress and white blouse from “The Wizard of Oz” is a Halloween costume favorite, and now, if you have a cool half a million dollars to spare, you could buy the real deal. Julien’s Auction House in California is putting the original outfit worn by actress Judy Garland in the 1939 film up for sale.

The iconic costume traveled from the yellow brick road to New York City to make its media debut on TODAY Thursday.

The starting price is $200,000, but “we estimate it at $400,000 to $600,000,” said the auction house’s Darren Julien.

Turner Entertainment, AP

The white blouse and blue pinafore Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" will be auctioned for an expected $400,000-$600,000.

The pinafore is part of the “2012: Icons and Idols Hollywood auction” — an enormous sale on November 9 and 10 of more than 800 lots of film memorabilia, as well as items from Hollywood stars’ personal and professional lives.

Two dresses from “The Sound of Music,” a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, and two slices of royal wedding cake will go under the hammer in Beverly Hills next month.

Story: Marie Antoinette's supposed slippers sell for $81,275

Die-hard fans and serious collectors won’t be the only ones to bid, according to Julien.

“People are starting to collect pop culture in the hopes that it will continue to increase in value,” he said.

The simple dress worn by Garland was the work of legendary Hollywood costume designer Adrian. According to the fantasy film, it was made by Dorothy’s Auntie Em, so to make it look authentic, Adrian made the garment from cheap gingham on a treadle sewing machine.

Although several identical dresses were created for the production, Julien’s Auctions claim it was the only version used in the film and is the only complete dress still in existence 73 years later.

The short, puff-sleeved blouse has a label inside reading “Judy Garland 4461.”

In one of the seams, there is a hidden pocket where Judy kept her cigarettes.

It has been claimed that Garland had to wear a painful corset to look flat-chested and fit into the youthful costume, which is being sold by an anonymous New Jersey couple. The husband purchased it in 1981 for his wife, who loved the film.

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To give an idea of what "Oz" memorabilia can sell for, the film's famous ruby slippers were expected to garner $2-$3 million at auction last year. A group of “angel donors” headed up by Leonardo di Caprio and Steven Spielberg purchased them for an undisclosed amount on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

juliensauctions.com

Julie Andrews wore this dress in several scenes in "The Sound of Music." It is expected to sell for $40,000-$60,000.

Julien’s also displayed two rare dresses from “The Sound of Music.” 

“Like 'The Wizard of Oz,' there’s very few items that are available from 'The Sound of Music,'” Darren Julien told TODAY.

The demure green, floral dress Julie Andrews wore as Maria in the 1965 film is expected to fetch $40,000 to $60,000. Andrews wore the butterfly-sleeved confection while singing “The Lonely Goatherd,” in the gazebo while singing “Something Good” with co-star Christopher Plummer and while Plummer sang “Edelweiss.” The dress has a “20th Century Fox” label attached at the waist.

Another dress was worn by Charmain Carr in her role as Liesl von Trapp as the children sing "Do-Re-Mi" and is expected to sell for $8,000 to $10,000.

John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration film is a media treasure in the auction's collection: Shot by a member of Ella Fitzgerald’s band, it shows Marilyn Monroe’s famous serenade to the president.

“It’s 50 years since Marilyn passed away and the love affair still goes on; people can’t get enough of her,” said Julien’s Martin Nolan.

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Though there's no sound in the film, which was shot less than three months before Monroe's death, it's expected to sell for $5,000 to $8,000.

Some of Monroe’s personal photographs and makeup will also be featured at the auction.

juliensauctions.com

This gown, worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1951 film "A Place in the Sun," is estimated to sell for $20,000-$30,000.

Among other costume highlights will be a yellow gown designed for Elizabeth Taylor in the 1951 film “A Place in the Sun,” estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000. The style became the template for popular 1950’s prom dresses. Designer Edith Head won an Academy Award for her costumes in that movie. 

Auction hopefuls will also bid on Bruce Lee’s weaponry, clothing, and jewelry, a special effects costume worn by Superman Christopher Reeves, and Angelina’s Jolie’s "Girl, Interrupted" costume.

In addition to Hollywood memorabilia, a couple of royal slices of souvenir wedding cake will go under the hammer; one from the 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and another from the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

“This is where you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” joked auctioneer Nolan.

He added that the confection was well “past its sell-by date.” Despite being preserved in a freezer and on dry ice, it is no longer edible, he said.

Given that the last piece of Charles and Diana cake the Julien’s duo sold went for $6,000, one hopes it wouldn’t be consumed anyway.

After wrapping up their media appearances in New York City, the iconic dresses and costly cakes will return to Beverly Hills. A free public exhibition will be held at Julien’s Auctions from November 5 to 9.

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AP

This image provided by RMK Services shows a Colt .45 SAA revolver that belonged to Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, the legendary bank thief, train robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang—the notorious Wyoming-based bandits that stalked the American West throughout the 1890s.

LOS ANGELES — A gun the Wild West outlaw Butch Cassidy wielded in the late 19th century and later tried to exchange for amnesty has drawn a $175,000 bid at a California auction house, the owner of the company said on Monday. 

The Colt revolver was turned over to a sheriff in Utah in 1899 as part of Cassidy's failed attempt to obtain amnesty from the state's governor, said John Eubanks of California Auctioneers & Appraisers.

"He tried to become a regular citizen by turning over his guns," Eubanks said.

The $175,000 bid for the Colt came over the weekend from a buyer who wants to remain anonymous, Eubanks said.

Cassidy and his partner Harry Longabaugh, who went by the nickname "Sundance Kid," robbed banks and had an outlaw gang called the Wild Bunch.

Their exploits were featured in the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Cassidy had long been thought to have been killed in a shootout in Bolivia, but his fate remains mysterious as members of his family and former associates have said he returned to the United States and lived under a false identity, according to a web page about the outlaw on a Utah government website.

The sale of Cassidy's gun was part of an auction of Wild West items that California Auctioneers held on Saturday and Sunday in Casitas Springs, 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

A beaded jacket that belonged to the American Indian leader Crazy Horse sold for $10,000 in the auction, to a couple from upstate New York, Eubanks said.

Other pieces of memorabilia from the Wild West have fetched even higher prices. Last year, the only authenticated photograph of gunslinger Billy the Kid was auctioned off to the billionaire William Koch for $2.3 million. 

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An auctioneer takes bids for Edvard Munch's "The Scream" in New York in May 2012. "The Scream's" mystery buyer has been revealed to be Leon Black, an American financier.

U.S. billionaire Leon Black is the mystery buyer who paid a record $120 million for Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" at Sotheby's in May, the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.

Citing several sources close to Black, a New York businessman and avid art collector, the newspaper said his intentions for the iconic painting and whether it would be loaned to a museum were unclear.

A spokesman for Sotheby's declined to comment on the report. Black could not be reached and his spokesman also declined to comment.

Black, the lead partner of Apollo Global Management and No. 330 on Forbes list of billionaires, sits on the boards of both the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

A Sotheby executive took the winning bid at the May 2nd sale in New York. It was one of an initial group of seven bidders who drove the price up during a feverish auction.

"The Scream," Munch's masterpiece from 1895 depicting a bald figure with hands pressed to the head and swirling colors in the background, is one of the world's most famous paintings. Three other versions, including two that were stolen and later recovered, are in museums in Norway.

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Samuel Dietz / Getty Images

The film was silent, but the poster roared. When German artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm created a poster for the Fritz Lang's 1927 German science-fiction dystopian "Metropolis," he probably didn't imagine it would fetch a record $690,000 nearly a century later.

The poster's selling price in 2005 is still a record. And it's slated to set a new one.

Earlier this year the illustration, with its jagged lettering, stoic skyscrapers and blank-faced femme-robot has been appraised at $250,000 in a bankruptcy filing by owner Kenneth Schacter, a collector.

But in March, it went up for sale with an $850,000 list price, and some appraisers estimate it could be the first poster to sell for $1 million.

The painting is centered around an animatronic woman, called the Robot, used by a mad scientist to seduce oppressed workers living in a futuristic city where the wealthy rule from chic, towering buildings. Filmed during the pre-Nazi period of the Weimar Republic, "Metropolis" was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou.

Poster dealer Sean Linkenback told the Guardian that Schulz-Neudamm's poster is "the crown jewel of the poster world."

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Handout / Reuters

Michael Curtiz's best director Oscar for "Casablanca" will be up for auction and is expected to fetch up to $3 million.

Michael Curtiz's best director Oscar for the movie classic "Casablanca" is going up for auction this week and is expected to fetch $2.5 million to $3 million, auctioneers Nate D. Sanders said on Monday.

The Academy Award won in 1943 by the Hungarian-born Curtiz, who died in 1961, will be sold on June 28 by the Los Angeles-based company. Online bidding, which opened last week, had already reached more than $369,000 on Monday, well past the reserve price that was not disclosed.

"Casablanca," starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and set in the Moroccan city during World War II, is one of the most enduring romances in American cinema. In 2007, the Los Angeles-based American Film Institute named it as the third best film of the past 100 years.

Curtiz's Oscar for directing the movie was previously sold by Christie's in 2003 for $231,500 to U.S. magician David Copperfield. The auction house declined to name the latest seller.

Sanders said the market for Academy Awards has more than tripled in the past 10 years.

"In some cases, especially for the best movies of Hollywood's Golden Age, Oscars have appreciated beyond that. That regularly happens in the art and collecting market, where the very best items appreciate the fastest," Sanders said.

Oscar statuettes rarely come up for auction following a 1950 agreement between winners and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that banned them from selling their Oscars to anyone but the Academy for the nominal sum of $1.

But several pre-1950s Oscars have gone under the hammer in recent years. Last December, Nate D. Sanders sold Orson Welles' Oscar for his screenplay of "Citizen Kane" for $861,000, and in 1999 the best picture Oscar for "Gone With the Wind" was bought by singer Michael Jackson for a record $1.54 million.

Sanders said Oscars for such classic movies "command prices at the top of the market, with now being a high point for Hollywood Golden Age memorabilia."

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Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images

Joan Miro's "Peinture (Etolie Bleue), 1927" sold at Sotheby's for $36,946,396.

Sotheby's set a new auction record for Spanish artist Joan Miro on Tuesday when his 1927 painting "Peinture (Etoile Bleue)" fetched $36.9 million, but elsewhere the sale failed to meet expectations.

Overall, the auctioneer raised $117.7 million at its impressionist and modern art evening sale in London, just beating the low estimate of $114.9 million but falling short when buyer's premium is taken into account.

The auction was the first in a busy season of sales of fine art in London which, if the highest expectations are met, could raise up to $1 billion.

But it painted an uncertain picture, with the New York Times describing proceedings on the night as "lackluster" and "bumpy."

Confidence in the art market has been sky high in 2012 despite broader economic concerns, with emerging collectors from Russia, China and the Middle East helping push values to record highs as they seek to snap up the most coveted works.

On offer at Sotheby's was one of Miro's most important paintings, and the previous auction record for the artist of $26.4 million was comfortably eclipsed.

"His works from this period are supremely modern, timeless and of great universal appeal, making this precisely the type of painting that today's international collectors are prepared to lock horns over, as they did this evening," said Helena Newman, head of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art in Europe.

The next highest price went to Pablo Picasso's "Homme Assis" which sold for $9.8 million, again just above the low estimate but falling short after the buyer's premium is subtracted.

A Henry Moore sculpture, "Mother and Child With Apple", was one of the few star performers on a night when 15 of the 48 lots on offer went unsold. It raised $5.8 million, well above pre-sale expectations of $2.8 million - $4.4 million.

The London summer sales continue on Wednesday with the equivalent sale at Sotheby's rival Christie's. There, the 71 lots on offer are expected to raise between $136.1 million and $199.3 million.

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