MGM Auction 1970 Video/Picture Montage - Video clips and Pictures I've collected all put into one video.
MGM sold the contents of seven sound stages "for a mere $1.5 million" to auctioneer David Weisz. There were over 350,000 costumes alone. Weisz hired Kent Warner to help catalog and prepare for the auction. In the course of his work, Warner found several pairs of the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (it was common practice to make multiple copies of important props). One pair became the centerpiece of the event and sold for a then-unheard-of $15,000 (Warner kept or sold an unknown number of other pairs).
Actress Debbie Reynolds spent $180,000 and "purchased thousands of items", the beginning of her large collection. Weisz "recouped eight times" what he paid "from eager nostalgia enthusiasts.
Among the items sold were:
the Cowardly Lion costume from The Wizard of Oz
the time machine from the 1960 The Time Machine
the 82 inch and 22 inch (diameter) models of the "United Planets Cruiser C-57D" from Forbidden Planet
Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan loincloth
The unsold items, "... truckloads of costume sketches, movie stills and other memorabilia were sent to the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas to be sold in the gift shop and used as hotel decorations. The auction catalogs have now themselves become sought-after collectibles.