Brookline: A deck chair from the Titanic, taken as a souvenir before the ship's fateful journey, is up for auction this weekend.
The worn beech wood recliner with the fold-out footrest was reportedly snatched off the ocean liner by a newspaper photographer as a souvenir in Ireland on April 11, 1912, before the ship set off for the North Atlantic, where it sank. More than 1,500 people drowned.
The chair is estimated to sell for $ 75,000 to $ 100,000.
"It's a $ 100 chair if it were not for the provenance, not for the history," said Jon Baddeley, an auctioneer for British-based Bonhams & Butterfields who will lead the bidding today.
Bonhams & Butterfields says it is one of only six left in the world. White Star made thousands of the pieces with its trademark five-point star carved in the headboard.
While many passengers may have clung to the deck chairs as they bobbed in the icy water that night, most sank or disappeared.
The deck chair is one of more than 2,500 lots on the block this weekend at a collectables auction, from classic cars, to French paintings, to an engraved whale's tooth salvaged from an English trash heap worth $ 60,000 to $ 100,000.
While the 19th Century brass telescopes and limited addition Ferraris are attracting attention, it is the lots with Titanic ties that really cause a stir, even if the connection is a stretch.
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