From Diane Keaton’s bowler hats and polka dot scarfs, to Gene Hackman’s used paint brushes, to Terence Stamp’s love letters from Jean Shrimpton and even Matthew Perry’s black leather wallet (his credit cards and AAA membership card still inside), fans are being offered – at a price – increasingly personal items from the estates of dead celebrities.

The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity.

The first of no fewer than four auctions of Keaton’s professional and personal items went on sale at Bonhams in New York earlier this week with her original Annie Hall script selling for $394,000, way more than its $2,000 estimate.

Several of her trademark hats sold for thousands of dollars, including a black felt Neogranadine (modern day Colombia) cup hat that she wore in an Instagram video teaching fans how hats can be used to enhance their best features. It sold for $5,888, including buyer’s premium, many multiples of its $200-300 estimate. A box of six of her trademark brown polka dot scarfs – that was also estimated to sell for $200-300 – sold for $6,144. A “curated box” of safety pins and nail clippers went for $960. The first Keaton auction raised $1.2m, with 47 of the 50 lots selling for more than their estimate.

In total, Bonhams, in collaboration with celebrity specialist The Fine Art Group, will sell 787 of Keaton’s items. They range from original collages by Keaton and a Gucci sequin suit and beret worn to the Lacma charity gala in 2021, to personal and prosaic items including a “job lot” of her trademark black turtlenecks, a collection of kitchen chopping boards and dog food bowls.

Shane David Hall, director of Fine Art Group’s high-profile client division, says fans are increasingly keen to own celebrities’ personal items and not just items related to their professional lives like film scripts or art collections.

“Over the past 20 years the personal legacy market has really exploded,” he says. “People really feel a personal connection to celebrities and how they have influenced their own lives, and there is a real desire to own something of theirs to keep and deepen that connection.”

Hall says it is celebrities with cult followings, such as Keaton and Perry, that attract the most interest and where the interest is perhaps more focused on personal objects than professional items.

“There is a new generation of collectors with disposal income, and they are more aligned to celebrities and athletes than their parents,” Hall says. “With people like Diane Keaton, they really mean something to their fans, these are people that grew up with her films and her iconic wardrobe. Items of Diane’s are sentimental to them, there are pieces that fit in the trajectory of their own lives and remind them of significant moments in their own story. And of course they make great conversation topics, one could argue more so than an artwork by a famous artist.”

Hall says knowing that so many of Keaton’s items would resonate with fans led to such a large collection going up for sale. “We like to have some value points that are accessible so there is the opportunity for everyone no matter their budget.”

At the more affordable end was lot no 2216 of the second auction “Tailored & Timeless” – four pairs of her thick-rimmed prescription reading glasses which had an estimate of $200-300 (it sold for $2,176).

Bonhams, which also handled the auctions of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barbara Walters, Lauren Bacall and Hackman, says estate sales are an increasingly large part of its business with sales in that division up 185% last year, and up by an average of 28.5% every year since 2022.

“We sold Gene Hackman’s collection in 2025 and achieved more than $3m. Apart from Hackman’s fine art collection, we found that his three Golden Globes were among the most sought after lots, exceeding their presale expectations by up to 17-times and bringing in a collective total of more than $125,000,” says Anna Hicks, Bonhams’ head of private and iconic collections.

“Fans often place significant value on items associated with a public figure they care about, and as a result, those pieces frequently command a premium well beyond what similar items might achieve without the celebrity association.”

For example, Hicks says, every lot in the Library of Ruth Bader Ginsburg sold for above its estimate. Her heavily annotated copy of the 1957–58 Harvard Law Review – the year she became a member – sold for $100,312.

With so much potential profit at stake, securing the rights to celebrity estates has also become big business in itself. Specialist advisers, such as the Fine Art Group, and celebrity-focused auction houses, such as LA’s Julien’s Auctions and New York’s Heritage Auctions, are investing time and money getting to know celebrities and their families so that when the inevitable time comes their heirs are more likely to call on them.

“We’ve spent decades building up relationships with high profile families,” says Hall. “I would say we are the only firm that looks at the unique challenges of celebrities in this way. Other firms make the mistake of treating celebrities the same as any rich private client, but they’re not, they require significant hand-holding and a lot of personal connection.”

Martin Nolan, co-founder and executive director of Julien’s Auctions, says he first became aware of the potential profit in celebrity estates when his former boss at investment bank Merrill Lynch Martin Zweig bought Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr President” dress for a world record $1.27m in 1999.

“I thought he was crazy, and it made me think twice about his stock-picking,” Nolan says. “But when he died his widow entrusted us to sell his collection, and she told me she just wanted him to be proved right that the dress was worth that much. We sold it in 2016 for $4.81m to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum.”

Nolan says securing the rights to celebrities’ estates is “extremely competitive” and he spends years building relationships. “We’re the only auction house that specialises only in celebrities, while Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams dip in and out, we do this every day,” he says. “And celebrities talk to each other, and we have a good reputation in terms of preserving and celebrating their estates.”

Typically, he says, auction houses take 20% of the proceeds from the sale, “but it can get very competitive on price” he says, with some auction houses treating celebrity estates as “loss leaders” in return for the glamour that comes from association.

Nolan agrees that buyers of celebrity items are getting younger and younger, but says they cover all sorts of demographics and are from across the world. The most interesting thing he says about buyers is that “they are often celebrities themselves”.

“Celebrities are just like you or I, they have people that they look up to and admire and when they sadly pass they also want to have something to remember them by.”