The Secret Market

Some buyers have gone public. David Copperfield bought Michael Curtis's best director Oscar for Casablanca at auction for $232,000 in 2003. In what could be his greatest magic trick of all? Copperfield resold the statuette for more than $2 million in 2012. Another highly unanonymous collector paid a record $1.5 million for the Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind in 1999,. Michael Jackson. There are always rumours, says Ashley. It's pretty hard to do it out in the open, unless it is something that's pre-1951, she says.