MAGICIANS IN MILLION-$ BATTLE TO WIN HOUDINI’S MEMORIES
Expect to see a slew of our magical headliners in a bidding battle over a treasure trove of Houdini’s sensational memorabilia coming to auction this coming weekend. Mindfreak magician Criss Angel, incredible illusionist David Copperfield, magic collectors Penn & Teller, Siegfried & Roy, The Amazing Jonathan, Steve Wyrick and new Flamingo headliner Nathan Burton all have received advance notice about the staggering collection.
Houdini is generally regarded as one of the greatest magicians and escape artists who ever lived. He was known as the King of Handcuffs, able to escape from sealed milk cans, jail cells, strait-jackets and an upside-down water torture cell that several magicians around the world still duplicate to this day. He became even more famous during stunning manacled jumps from city bridges and even the dangers of Niagara Falls.
Next Sunday the prestigious Guernsey’s auction house from New York will put many of Houdini’s most sensational devices under the hammer. Luxe Life has been told the collection includes Houdini’s traveling show trunk, shackles, handcuffs, his strait jacket and escape crates and many of his writings. Both Criss Angel and David Copperfield are avid collectors of Houdini’s memorabilia, which they keep here in Vegas.
The auction will take place also on Saturday at the Palms casino resort and is being hailed as one of the finest pop culture collections to ever be offered to the public. Some 850 of the world’s most extraordinary objects from movies, music, magic, television and politics will be on display for sale. They have been collected and kept in a Florida vault for several decades by Anthony Pugliese, and also include the gun that killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra head-dress, a Gone With the Wind parasol, Christopher Reeve’s Superman suit, cigar humidors that belonged to President John F. Kennedy, Madonna’s wedding dress from “Like A Virgin” and memorabilia from Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and even the world-famous Charlie Chaplin cane.
The auctioneers say that if the material in the Pugliese Collection was limited just to film memorabilia it would be the best motion picture auction held to date, but the movie material is only a portion of the incredible collection.
“The collection may well be the finest ever privately assembled,” said a spokesman. Experts predict the unique auction will run into the millions with the Strip’s star magicians battling over the prized Houdini artifacts. Luxe Life will be at auction-central to check on the live and worldwide internet and telephone bidding—and who wins exactly what! Pugliese is sharing his collection as he shifts his interests towards the creation of Destiny, the nation’s largest eco-sustainable community currently underway in central Florida.