Music memorabilia, treasured instruments, and revered film props are among the objects that will be available for auction in Christie’s new pop culture division.
The blue-chip auction house announced the division on <a href="https://comicvibe.com/dragon-adventures-codes-september-2026/” title=”Dragon Adventures Codes (September 2026)”>September 23 and appointed Josh Benesh, the former Chief Strategy Officer at Heritage Auctions, as the team’s inaugural director, as first a Christie’s spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the department will host multiple annual auctions spanning categories including on-screen entertainment, music, sports, science, history, and fashion
The creation of the division comes months after Christie’s lucrative sale of the collection of billionaire Jim Irsay, who died last May. The estate sale included a pair of tickets from Ford’s Theatre on the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the first drum set Ringo Starr used with the Beatles, a Golden Ticket prop from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), and one of boxer Muhammad Ali’s fight robes.
Raking in over $105 million across five iterations, the Jim Irsay sale became the highest-earning memorabilia auction in Christie’s history, according to a press release, and underscored a strong market demand for pop culture memorabilia.
