Auctions

Marilyn Monroe, one of America's most beloved pop cultural icons, and New Coke, one of its most despised, commanded the biggest bids in the first in a series of online Christie's auctions of Andy Warhol artworks that ended Tuesday. The winning bids totaled $1.84 million for 124 auction lots. It was the second round of all-Warhol sales in a multi-year effort by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to liquidate its holdings to boost its grantmaking endowment. Winning bidders also must pay a 25% buyer's premium.

The venerable auction house Sotheby's , which has been entrusted with the task of auctioning off elBulli's fabulous wine cellar, has just sweetened the auction  with a few new lots. The sale, which will take place in Hong Kong on April 3 and in New York on April 26, will now include a range of memorabilia and equipment that was once used in the renowned elBulli kitchen.  Maybe even one of the gizmos used to make chef Ferran Adria's famous foam? Opening bid on a signed example of his siphon is $50. But there is special crockery for spherical olives or petit fours, glass serving dishes, mesh trays and more.

Andy Warhol famously said that in the future, everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. But that didn't stop him from focusing his camera lenses and other image-making implements on folks whose ride on the wagon of celebrity figured to last somewhat longer. If you want to have some fun celebrity-watching through Warhol's eyes from now through Tuesday at 7 a.m., you might want to hang out for a while at the website of Christie's auction house, where the first in a series of all-Warhol online auctions is in progress . It's actually the second sale in a multi-year effort in which the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has enlisted Christie's to liquidate thousands of the artist's works.

Tiny cars, big money. An auction over the weekend saw a world-record auction price paid for a microcar. RM Auctions sold the car, a 1958 F.M.R. Tg 500 Tiger, for $322,000, including commission. In all, more than $9.1 million worth of tiny automobiles and related memorabilia were sold over the two-day event. As indicated by the name, microcars are the smallest autos on the road, and were more popular in post-war Europe than they were in the U.S. The cars usually seat only one or two people, ride on three or four wheels, and are powered by engines as small as one cylinder.

Bidding is underway for a bloody sock that Curt Schilling wore while pitching the Boston Red Sox to a victory against the  St. Louis Cardinals during Game 2 of the 2004 World Series. Schilling decided to sell the sock, which was bloodied as he was played on an injured ankle, after his video game company went bankrupt. Bidding opened at $25,000 and was up to $32,500 by Monday, according to Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions. Live bidding will happen in New York on Saturday.

A leather bomber jacket worn by President John F. Kennedy fetched well more than 10 times the asking price at auction, an indication of the fascination the nation still has for the president who ushered in the upbeat era of Camelot after the political doldrums of the 1950s. The jacket, complete with a patch of the presidential seal, was worn by the president and others on Air Force One. It flew out the door Sunday at a price of $570,000 plus the buyer's premium, officials at John McInnis Auctioneers told reporters.

The international auction house Christie's opens bidding for the first of their spring online-only wine auctions. Interested collectors have until Feb. 26 at noon Eastern time to place their bids for Signature Cellars IV. You, too, can bid on a  mix of  "blue-chip wines from the old world and the new, along with approachably priced selections suitable for holding or enjoying now. " Better get cracking. There are almost 650 lots (some consist of single bottles), including Burgundies from the vintages 1985, 1999 and 2002.

Former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner's six-bedroom home will go on the auction block on Feb. 27 after the Super Bowl champion got tired of waiting for it to sell. He moved into a bigger house in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2011 and has been trying to sell his former home ever since. The house is expected to be sold for about $5 million. The 11,000-square-foot home boasts six bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms, as well as a home theater, billiard room, massage room, table tennis room, in-ground trampoline and a 62-foot pool with an overhead waterfall.

Martyn Donaldson leans hard against the hulking 1948 Tucker 48 and rolls it out of his small restoration shop in Pacoima. Although the color on its build sheet is listed as maroon, the midafternoon sun reveals a metallic luster in the showroom quality paint job. Electric raspberry, Donaldson calls it. This Tucker 48, just the third in a total run of 51, has spent the better part of three years at Donaldson's shop. The Tucker expert thoroughly restored the car's engine and electrical system, and installed a new transmission and interior.

How much are a punk rock hero's personal items worth? Joey Ramone's vinyl record collection, two electric guitars, a leather jacket, his passport, Rolodex, T-shirts and other items will be auctioned off by the late singer's estate.  A minimum bid of $500 is attached to the collection of nearly 100 LPs, including albums by Led Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, the Who, Bob Dylan, Donovan, the Beach Boys, and Jimi Hendrix, that were owned and presumably played by Ramone, who died at 49 in 2001 of lymphoma . The guitars, the jacket and the passport each have a minimum bid of $300, while bidding on his stash of 140 T-shirts begins at $500.