Auctions can be wildly unpredictable. Even the most coveted historical items sometimes sit untouched under the hammer, while lesser‑known pieces spark fierce bidding wars.
Why Some Historical Items Fail at Auction
10 Rare Darwin Letter
Charles Darwin’s correspondence is a hot commodity among collectors. A four‑page note to his niece fetched $59,142, and a later letter where he questioned the Bible fetched a whopping $197,000.
In 2016, Nate D. Sanders Auctions put another Darwin missive up for sale, hoping to repeat the success. The letter, dated December 12, 1860, was handwritten, signed, and addressed to British naturalist George Wallich, who had sent Darwin a book on deep‑sea life.
Darwin’s reply goes beyond a polite thank‑you. He interrogates Wallich about starfish, basaltic pebbles, and foraminifera, and even mentions plans to publish a corrected edition of On the Origin of Species, which had appeared a year earlier. The letter showcases Darwin at his most inquisitive, reveling in the minutiae of nature.
Despite its rarity and a reserve price of $69,500, no bidder stepped forward, and the letter remained unsold.
9 The Dueling Dinosaurs
The Chicago Field Museum’s famous T. rex, Sue, sold for $8.36 million in 1997 after a surprisingly low starting bid. A few years later, the Montana badlands yielded a pair of intertwined skeletons—a ceratopsian herbivore locked in combat with a tyrannosaur‑like predator.
These remains, known as the “dueling dinosaurs,” appear frozen in a battle that ended when a landslide buried them together. Their completeness is extraordinary; they are among the most complete Late Cretaceous specimens in North America, with bits of skin still attached.
Bonhams brought the fossils to a New York auction in 2013, opening the bidding at $3 million and nudging it up to $5.5 million. However, the reserve—estimated between $7 million and $9 million—was never met, and the auction closed without a buyer.
8 The Cook Waistcoat
Captain James Cook’s legacy includes a 250‑year‑old waistcoat that survived his voyages. After passing through his family, the garment was sold to an antiques dealer in 1912, then gifted to Australian pianist Ruby Rich, who altered it to fit a woman’s frame.
In 1981 a private collector bought the waistcoat from Rich’s family, and in 2017 the piece resurfaced at a Sydney auction. Experts valued it between A$800,000 and A$1.1 million, citing its rarity as one of Cook’s most significant personal items.
During the auction, bids climbed to A$575,000—a respectable sum but still short of the reserve. The sale fell through, leaving the historic garment unsold.
7 First Edition Hamlet
Viscountess Mary Eccles spent six decades building an extraordinary library in New Jersey. After her death in 2003, Christie’s auctioned the collection in 2004, which included a 1611 first‑edition copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet—the oldest known privately owned edition.
While most of the Eccles books sold briskly, the Hamlet proved a stubborn outlier. Christie’s had hoped for bids up to $2 million, banking on the recent 17th‑century Hamlet that fetched £3.4 million three years earlier.
In the end, the auction house admitted it may have been overly optimistic; the manuscript failed to attract a buyer, remaining one of the few unsold gems from the collection.
6 The Missing Van Dyck
Father Jamie MacLeod stumbled upon a Van Dyck portrait in a Cheshire shop in 1992, paying a modest £400. The painting hung in his hallway until Antiques Roadshow identified it as a rare work by the Flemish master.
The piece, titled Head Study of a Man in a Ruff, is one of three portraits that once adorned the Brussels Town Hall before the building was razed in 1695. The rediscovered work now completes the trio housed at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
Christie’s estimated the oil portrait could command up to £500,000, but when it went under the hammer in 2014, no bidder met the reserve, and the painting stayed with its owner.
5 World’s First Microchip
In 1958, a young Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments assembled a modest brick of germanium, gold wiring, and glass—what we now recognize as the world’s first microchip. The unassuming device later earned Kilby a Nobel Prize in Physics (2000).
Christie’s packaged the historic chip with a later, more stable prototype and a 1964 letter from Kilby explaining the technology. The lot attracted scholarly interest, and the highest bid reached $850,000.
However, the reserve was set between $1 million and $2 million. Falling short, the auction was halted without a sale.
4 Earliest Relativity Manuscript
Seven years after publishing his special theory of relativity, Albert Einstein drafted a 72‑page manuscript in 1912—the earliest and most extensive paper he wrote on the subject. The document remained hidden until 1987, when it entered public view.
After passing through Professor Erich Marx’s estate, the manuscript sold at Sotheby’s for $1.2 million. Though some argued the paper offered little new insight, its true value lay in revealing Einstein’s thought process leading to the later general‑relativity theory.Notably, Einstein penned “EL=mc²” before crossing out the “L,” a glimpse into the evolution of his iconic equation. When Sotheby’s attempted a second auction in 1996, the owner rejected the top offer of $3.3 million, and the reserve—estimated at $4 million—blocked the sale.
3 JFK Assassination Photos
On November 22, 1963, Dallas housewife Mary Ann Moorman positioned herself to catch a glimpse of Jackie Kennedy and snapped two Polaroids as the presidential motorcade passed. The second shot captured the moments immediately after President Kennedy was first struck.
The image, known as the “grassy knoll” photo, is the only picture that shows both the knoll area and the presidential car. Moorman kept the original Polaroids for decades before approaching Sotheby’s, which declined to sell after the Kennedy family voiced disapproval.
In 2013, Moorman partnered with Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati. The prints were valued between $50,000 and $75,000 and offered a week before the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death. No reserve was met, but several interested parties entered post‑auction negotiations.
2 The MacDonald Stradivarius
Stradivarius violas are the holy grail of stringed instruments—only ten of the roughly 600 surviving Strads are violas. The MacDonald Stradivarius, crafted two years before the record‑breaking “Lady Blunt” violin, was slated for a Sotheby’s auction in 2014.
Given its rarity, the viola carried a pre‑sale estimate of around $45 million, eclipsing the $15.9 million price fetched by the “Lady Blunt.” Yet, history repeated itself: the MacDonald failed to attract a buyer, echoing a recent Christie’s viola that also went unsold.
1 The Disputed Beethoven
In 2016, Sotheby’s put up for sale a single page of music purportedly composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in November 1817. The house expected bids around £200,000.
However, a public dispute erupted when Beethoven scholar Professor Barry Cooper argued on radio that the piece was the work of a clumsy copyist, not the composer himself. Cooper noted that the signature—“composed and written by Beethoven himself November 29 1817 at Vienna”—was actually added by an English vicar, not Beethoven.
Sotheby’s claimed its experts had authenticated the manuscript, but Cooper refused to view the original, relying only on a photocopy. He highlighted errors Beethoven would never have made, and other scholars, including Jonathan Del Mar, shared his skepticism.
The controversy proved costly: the lot failed to meet its reserve, and the auction ended in disappointment.