WASHINGTON - What price would you put on artifacts from that famous night, as Hollywood might put it, that we've always remembered?
How about $200 million or more? Indeed, 100 years after the Titanic met its fate, a big auction house in New York is selling off some 5,000 Titanic artifacts from the deep to commemorate the ship's sinking. And the world has taken notice.
CTV was given a sneak peek at some of the objects and though all of them stirred the imagination it's those with a personal feel that really stand out.
We saw a baker's hat, for example. You can't help but think about the person who wore it and wonder what was his fate? It was a man called Hines, we learned. You can see his name still printed on it, just barely.
There's also a pair of evening gloves worn by a male passenger from First Class. Again, you can't help yourself - who was he? What was it like for him that night?
And then there's a postcard written aboard the ship by a young man travelling from Argentina. Even after all these years at the bottom of the sea the handwriting of this doomed man is still legible. He wrote that he was upset, that he'd wanted to stay in Europe a while longer but that his parents insisted he set sail upon this amazing new ship, The Titanic. Talk about a fateful trip.
He even writes that he "wished the boat would sink to the bottom." Talk about a tragic premonition.
Auctioneer Arlan Ettinger calls this the most "significant" auction he has ever handled. And he's done a few. Over the years, the Guernsey auction house has sold everything from Princess Diana's jewellery to oil paintings by one-time fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe.
We were shown nearly two dozen Titanic artifacts including some tiny glass vials of perfume, a Gimbal lamp and a mug with the White Star flag emblazoned across it, meant for Third Class passengers or perhaps crew.
Ettinger's favourite is what he calls "the big piece" -- a chunk of the Titanic's 17-tonne hull, which has been on display in Las Vegas.
To be sure, this isn't the first auction of Titanic memorabilia. But it is the first time objects taken from the site of the wreckage have been put on the block.
Ettinger acknowledges some have called to say it's akin to grave-robbing but he insists the objects came from the debris field and not from the remnants of the ship itself, which is viewed today as a sacred place. He argues because of erosion, decay in the salt water that "someday there will be no ship left" and "what will remain is what we have here, to keep the story alive."
But before you start opening your wallets be aware this is no ordinary auction. There is no catalogue. And under court order the lot cannot be broken up because the items are collectively considered "an international treasure."
Which begs the question - who has the estimated $200 million or more it'll take to buy this collection from the deep? Most likely, says Ettinger, it'll be a museum, a college or perhaps even a city. He's had inquiries from around the world, including Canada.
But there's one inquiry that has stood out for Ettinger, from a man who offered $100,000 for a simple gold bracelet - one of more than a hundred pieces of jewellery that will be auctioned. Sadly, Ettinger had to turn him down because of the rule forbidding individual sales. It's all or nothing.
The man believed this particular piece belonged to his great-grandmother, Amy, who was one of two passengers with that name aboard the Titanic the night it went down. The tiny bracelet up for auction still sparkles after all this time. And it bears her three-letter name, A M Y -- spelled out in diamonds.
