From fine art to fast cars, the past decade has seen auction prices soar to jaw-dropping heights, turning rare objects into multimillion-dollar obsessions. In a world where a diamond can fetch more than a skyscraper and a baseball card rivals a Picasso, collectors with deep pockets have redefined what it means to own a piece of history. This article explores the seven most expensive items sold at auction between 2015 and 2025 - each from a different realm, each with its own story, and each representing the extreme edge of human desire, wealth, and cultural fascination.
It was an electrifying night at Christie’s in New York when Salvator Mundi—a portrait of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci—ignited a 19-minute bidding battle. Gasps filled the saleroom as bids leapt by tens of millions, eventually reaching an unprecedented $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid for any artwork at auction. This long-lost Renaissance masterpiece, one of fewer than 20 surviving da Vinci paintings, had emerged from obscurity after centuries. Once wrongly sold for only £45 in 1958, it underwent restoration and was ultimately authenticated as a true Leonardo in 2011. Its allure lay in this almost mythical rarity and the aura of the Old Master’s hand.
On that November 2017 evening, anonymous phone bidders dueled fiercely. The hammer fell to a proxy for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, making Salvator Mundi bound for the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Collectors and historians were stunned – a “savior of the world” painting achieving a holy-grail price. The sale reflected not just the painting’s art-historical significance but an almost religious fervor for owning a masterpiece of such singular importance. In the end, Salvator Mundi’s astronomical price was driven by its uniqueness, dramatic backstory, and the sheer rarity of experiencing a da Vinci on the open market.
A dazzling emblem of pop art glamour, Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn fetched a record-smashing $195 million at Christie’s in 2022. The 40-inch square canvas – one of Warhol’s famous 1964 portraits of Marilyn Monroe – became the most expensive 20th-century artwork ever sold at auction. The sale lasted under four minutes yet had all the drama of a spectacle. Bidding opened at a jaw-dropping $100 million, drawing shocked murmurs, then charged upward in multi-million leaps. In the end, legendary art dealer Larry Gagosian prevailed, bidding by phone to claim this trophy piece for himself or a client.
The painting’s vibrant turquoise background and Marilyn’s iconic face exemplify Warhol’s fusion of celebrity and artistry. Its title harks back to a 1964 incident when a visitor literally fired a pistol into a stack of Warhol’s Marilyn canvases, piercing this very image. Beyond its famous subject, the artwork’s impeccable provenance (from the collection of Swiss dealers Thomas and Doris Ammann) and philanthropic twist – proceeds benefited charity – added to its allure. Collectors saw not just a portrait of a Hollywood legend, but a cultural artifact from the apex of Pop Art. That combination of Marilyn’s enduring fame, Warhol’s legacy, and the painting’s own storied past created an aura of desirability that drove the price into the history books.
In 2022, an ultra-rare Mercedes shattered car auction records, selling for an astounding €135 million (about $142.9 million). The car in question was the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR “Uhlenhaut” Coupe – often dubbed the Mona Lisa of cars for its rarity and mystique. One of only two ever built (and never intended for public sale), this silver gull-winged coupe was a pet project of engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut and had been kept in Mercedes-Benz’s own collection for decades. Its secret auction took place at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, with a select few collectors invited. Bidding started at an eye-watering €50 million, and within minutes the hammer fell at €135 million to an unnamed private collector represented by British broker Simon Kidston. Enthusiasts were astonished – the price nearly tripled the previous record for any car.
What drove such a price? The Uhlenhaut Coupe boasts a championship racing pedigree (a sibling of Juan Manuel Fangio’s Grand Prix car) and an almost mythical status among car aficionados. It was essentially a piece of automotive history locked away in a vault – until that spring day. Mercedes stipulated the car remain available for public display on occasion, ensuring this jewel of mid-century engineering can still be admired. Part of the proceeds support environmental research, blending legacy with philanthropy. For collectors over 45, the Uhlenhaut’s sale is the ultimate homage to an era when sports cars were art, and indeed this machine achieved a price befitting a masterpiece.
Under the bright lights of a packed Hong Kong auction in April 2017, a stunning 59.6-carat pink diamond known as the “Pink Star” made history. In less than five minutes of bidding, this magnificent gem sold for $71.2 million, the highest price ever for any jewel or gemstone at auction. The Pink Star is an oval-cut Fancy Vivid Pink diamond of Internally Flawless clarity – a true freak of nature in size and color. “A vivid pink diamond this size is a total freak of nature,” marveled one GIA gemologist. Mined by De Beers in Africa in 1999 as a 132.5-carat rough, it was painstakingly cut over two years to achieve its current brilliance. The auction itself had its own drama: the gem had actually been up for sale once before (in 2013 for $83 million) but the buyer defaulted, so all eyes were on Sotheby’s when the Pink Star reappeared.
This time, the winning bid came via phone from the chairman of Chow Tai Fook, a Hong Kong jewelry empire, who promptly renamed the stone the CTF Pink Star in honor of his late father. As the final bid echoed through the room, applause broke out at the unprecedented sum. Collectors knew they were witnessing a record that might stand for years. The Pink Star’s allure came from its unparalleled rarity – the combination of vivid color, huge carat weight, and flawless quality. In the world of gems, it is the ultimate prize, which justified a price as blinding as its sparkle.
The art world experienced a seismic shift in March 2021 when a purely digital artwork – a non-fungible token (NFT) – sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s. The work, titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, is a digital collage by artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple. Composed of 5,000 tiny images that Beeple created daily over 13 years, the piece encapsulates an era of internet culture in a single JPG file. Its sale marked the first time a major auction house offered an NFT, and the result placed Beeple among the top three most-valuable living artists at auction (alongside Jeff Koons and David Hockney).
The auction opened at just $100 and rocketed upward over a two-week online bidding frenzy, fueled by cryptocurrency magnates and modern art collectors alike. In the final moments, an entrepreneur known as MetaKovan emerged as the winner, paying in cryptocurrency equivalent to nearly $69 million. For many over 45, the idea of spending that fortune on a digital image might seem baffling. Yet the sale’s rationale lies in the convergence of art and tech: Beeple’s massive online following, the scarcity enforced by NFT blockchain technology, and a speculative fever that “this is the next chapter of art history,” as Beeple himself put it. The result was a watershed moment – a neon sign of the times – demonstrating how digital collectibles have achieved a very real-world prestige and price.
Among car connoisseurs, the Ferrari 250 GTO is virtually a legend unto itself – and one finally roared across the auction block in Monterey in August 2018 to set a new benchmark. Amid an atmosphere of high-octane anticipation, RM Sotheby’s brought down the gavel at $48.4 million for this 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (chassis number 3413 GT). The price established it as the most expensive car ever sold publicly at that time, eclipsing the previous record by over $10 million. This specific red racer had an illustrious history: it won the 1962 Italian Tour de France road race and was campaigned by legendary drivers. Collectors often call the 250 GTO the holy grail of classic cars – only 36 were ever built, all by hand, and each surviving example has become automotive royalty.
At the Monterey sale, five-time Le Mans champion Derek Bell drove the car onto the stage to cheers. Gasps followed as the auctioneer opened bidding at an unheard-of $35 million, prompting three determined telephone bidders into a nearly 10-minute contest. In the end, the car sold to a private collector of considerable means (rumored to be WeatherTech founder David MacNeil). What made this 250 GTO so valuable was not just its rarity, but its perfect blend of beauty, racing pedigree, and 56-year provenance from a devoted owner. For those who grew up idolizing Ferrari’s heyday, seeing this fire-engine-red icon become the world’s priciest car was like witnessing a piece of one’s youthful dreams attain immortal status in dollars and cents.
In November 2021, one of the United States’ foundational documents ignited a frenzy at Sotheby’s. A first-edition printed copy of the U.S. Constitution (dating to 1787) sold for $43.2 million, setting a record for the most expensive historical document ever auctioned. The atmosphere was charged with an almost patriotic fervor. This rare surviving copy – one of only 13 known – represents the moment the framers’ words were first set in type. Bidding came down to an almost poetic duel: on one side, billionaire hedge fund CEO Kenneth Griffin; on the other, thousands of cryptocurrency investors who had pooled funds in a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) hoping to collectively win the artifact. After an eight-minute telephone bidding battle, Griffin triumphed, outbidding the crypto-collective and vowing to loan the Constitution to a public museum. The sale captivated the public not just for the $40+ million price tag, but for the symbolism of a private citizen securing a cornerstone of democracy.
“The U.S. Constitution is a sacred document,” Griffin said, explaining his intent to display it for all Americans. Sotheby’s revealed that the same copy had last sold in 1988 for only $165,000 – a thousand-fold increase that underscores how historical significance and modern collector competition can skyrocket value. Owning this document is akin to holding America’s birth certificate, and in this case, the convergence of history buffs, investors, and patriots drove its price into the record books.
Even tiny pieces of cardboard can command multi-million dollar prices when they carry outsized legends. Case in point: a mint-condition 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card sold in August 2022 for an astounding $12.6 million. That price pitch-slid this mint Mantle into the record books as the most expensive sports memorabilia item ever sold at auction, outpacing a $9.3 million Diego Maradona jersey and the famed Honus Wagner card (which had traded around $7 million). This particular Mantle card is considered the holy grail of baseball cards: featuring the young switch-hitting Yankees icon in his rookie season, it has mythology on its side. The Topps 1952 set was the company’s first major baseball card release, and Mantle’s card (#311) was notoriously scarce in top grade.
The specimen sold by Heritage Auctions was graded a near-flawless 9.5, untouched by time – a dazzling cardboard treasure. Its original owner had bought it in 1991 for a then-hefty $50,000 and kept it tucked away for three decades. In the booming hobby market of the pandemic era, the card’s immaculate state, Mantle’s Hall-of-Fame legacy (seven World Series rings, three MVPs), and a surge of wealthy collectors all combined to send the price into the stratosphere. As the auctioneer’s call ended, the $12.6 million result elicited cheers from sports fans and astonishment from onlookers. It’s a nostalgic artifact turned investment-grade collectible – a little piece of Americana that became as valuable as a masterpiece, thanks to nostalgia, rarity, and a grand-slam case of auction fever.
Sources:
Christie’s – Salvator Mundi sale overview:
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6115896
The Guardian – “Leonardo da Vinci painting sells for $450m at auction, smashing records”:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/15/leonardo-da-vinci-salvator-mundi-painting-sold-auction
Christie’s – Shot Sage Blue Marilyn Warhol record sale:
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6367274
CNN – “Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portrait sells for $195 million”:
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/andy-warhol-marilyn-auction/index.html
RM Sotheby’s – 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe sale:
https://rmsothebys.com/en/home/lots/mo22/1955-mercedes-benz-300-slr-uhlenhaut-coupé/1313575
BBC – “Mercedes-Benz sells ultra-rare car for record $143m”:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61428796
Sotheby’s – The Pink Star Diamond auction:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-pink-star-diamond-brings-712-million
Forbes – “The Pink Star Diamond Sells For A Record $71.2 Million At Auction”:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonydemarco/2017/04/04/the-pink-star-diamond-sells-for-a-record-71-2-million-at-auction
Christie’s – Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days sale page:
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6341776
NPR – “Beeple NFT Sells for $69 Million”:
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/11/976349333/beeple-nft-sells-for-69-million
RM Sotheby’s – 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO auction summary:
https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/mo18/monterey/lots/r0022-1962-ferrari-250-gto/702226
Bloomberg – “Ferrari 250 GTO Sells for Record $48 Million”:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-26/ferrari-250-gto-sells-for-record-48-million
Sotheby’s – Constitution of the United States auction page:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/the-constitution-and-related-documents
The New York Times – “Constitution Sells for $43 Million”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/arts/constitution-sothebys-auction.html
Heritage Auctions – 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle auction lot:
https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball/1952-topps-mickey-mantle-311-psa-near-mint-mint-95-bvg-mint-95/a/50043-59001.s
ESPN – “Mickey Mantle card sells for record $12.6 million”:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/34467153/mickey-mantle-card-sells-record-126-million
