Sometimes when I look through the auction reports, I come across some extraordinary things that make their way to the auction block. I was surprised to see that a two and three quarter inch cigar butt, a remnant of just one of the ten cigars Winston Churchill supposedly smoked a day, made its way to an auction house in England.
A Scotland Yard police officer who escorted Churchill (sometime in the 1940s) picked up the half-smoked cigar butt and preserved it in brown paper, adding a note to record its provenance. The officer passed it onto his grandson, the consignor. The butt smoked the estimate of £800 and sold for £3,500 (£4,370 w/p – $5,654). I am still amazed at what people will buy!