> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Joan Didion’s Celine Sunglasses Just Sold for $27K - URL: https://hyperallergic.com/joan-didions-celine-sunglasses-just-sold-for-27k/ - Published: 2022-11-17T22:23:15.000Z - Updated: 2025-11-24T16:04:49.000Z - Description: And her broken clock fetched $35,000 in an auction of her estate. - Author: Sarah Rose Sharp - Tags: News, Auctions, Joan Didion, New York, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 09:22 (2021, 2022, part 2) Over the summer, it was announced that the personal property of the late and beloved author Joan Didion [would head to auction](https://hyperallergic.com/the-art-that-inspired-joan-didion-goes-to-auction/) this November, offering fans and collectors a chance to own a physical token from a titan of American literature. At this point, no amount of extravagance on the part of the wealthy should surprise us, and this auction's proceeds actually went to a great cause — Parkinson’s research at Columbia University and a scholarship for women at the Sacramento Historical Society. Still, some of the prices fetched during the live online auction would lead even the most die-hard of Didion devotees to raise one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. Some of the winning bids — like the $27,000 dropped on Didion’s trademark pair of [Celine sunglasses](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/pair-of-celine-faux-tortoiseshell-sunglasses-4176197?ref=hyperallergic.com) in faux tortoiseshell, or $60,000 for a stunning mixed-wood [J. Breuner partner’s desk](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/american-oak-walnut-and-birds-eye-maple-partners-desk-j-breuner-sacramento-california-4176203?ref=hyperallergic.com) — make a kind of vague sense, in terms of their direct relationship to Didion’s image and legacy as a writer. Others, like a broken clock that sold for $35,000 or a staggering $7,000 bid for a collection of 26 or so [seashells and beach pebbles](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/group-of-shells-and-beach-pebbles-4176242?ref=hyperallergic.com), left some observers scratching their heads. For $7,000, you could take a weeklong, four-star trip for two to Hawaii, and collect all the dang seashells you want, for free. Oh, but these were *Joan Didion’s* seashells, you say? These seashells were collected by a deep thinker, probably while walking along a beach and staring at the ocean and thinking extremely deep thoughts. Probably, she had some of her most influential ideas while collecting these shells. That makes them worth roughly $250 apiece, right? Right?? Perhaps just as amusing as the hammer figures on some of these items are the responses to the sale on social media. Users are having a ball imagining the most hilarious items Didion could have owned and the prices they could have fetched — and if you look at some of the things that actually sold, it's really not so hard to believe. Other dubious high-ticket items from the actual auction included [various](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/women-poets-from-the-library-of-joan-didion-4176310?ref=hyperallergic.com) [lots](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/john-berryman-robert-lowell-and-w-s-merwin-from-the-library-of-joan-didion-4176311?ref=hyperallergic.com) of books from Didion’s collection, which fetched thousands of dollars, averaging out around $700 per book, regardless of author, edition, or condition. Small framed and sculptural works of art from her personal collection fetched [well](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/ronald-davis-b-1937-rotation-4176295?ref=hyperallergic.com) [above](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/robert-cottingham-b-1935-art-4176293?ref=hyperallergic.com) their assessed value — but the subjectivity of worth for art at auction is already a tale as classic as Didion’s iconic and emotionally lacerating essays on the human condition. The final cherry on top of this auction sundae — a flourish so narratively rich, if it was a work of fiction, no one would believe it — are two lots of blank notebooks, which sold for [$11,000](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/group-of-thirteen-blank-notebooks-4176314?ref=hyperallergic.com) [each](https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/stair-galleries/group-of-twelve-blank-notebooks-4176315?ref=hyperallergic.com). One sees the appeal, since there is nothing more writerly than a stack of empty notebooks, just waiting for genius to burst forth, but there can perhaps be no more ironic commentary on the intoxicating power of celebrity than a five-figure bidding war breaking out over all the notebooks Joan Didion *didn’t* use. This is, of course, idle speculation on the idle rich — one deeply hopes that nobody spent their life savings to try to hold some small piece of their hero. And since proceeds from the sale will benefit a cause dear to Didion — who died in 2021 at the age of 87 after a battle with Parkinson's disease — we can at least know that the fervor over Didion’s material legacy is in the service of her values.