Nearly a ton of iron from the Eiffel Tower will be auctioned

On November 27 in Paris, an unusual lot will be presented to collectors. This is part of the spiral staircase that connected the second and third floors of the tower.

A fragment of the scale reaches a height of nearly 4.5 meters and weighs 900 kilograms.

The lot is estimated between 40 and 50 000 euros, said the auction house Artcurial.

The spiral staircase was built in 1889 and has been used for almost 100 years. In 1983, it was cut into 24 pieces. Four fragments were presented to French museums and the remaining 20 were auctioned. The current owner of Item No. 4, a Montreal collector from Canada, was about to sell it.

Why collectors might need 900 kilograms of historical iron, argues General Director of ArtInvestment Konstantin Babulin:

"First: it can be bought as an artifact, there are such people. In fact, they are not collectors, but are simply purchased originally as original objects. Or it can be purchased as a sculpture. In its magnitude, well, maybe not as dramatic as, for example, "Titanic", from which any object is already acquired some value of the time. Here we will observe this for the first time – size and weight are of no importance. There is no need to drag the device itself, say, into the auction room. This can be shown – and will likely be shown – on screen during the bidding process. 40 thousand euros – the price seems small. Normal French auction. The discs do not wait. Somewhere an area of ​​70,000 to 80,000 is a realistic figure that can be achieved. "

The Eiffel Tower has always attracted the attention of auction houses, said President of the Union of Russian collectors Alexander Nikishin:

"In general, as for the Eiffel Tower, constantly some interesting stories happen to him. For example, at the end of the 19th century, as soon as it was built, many hustlers imagined that it was supposed to be demolished and a call for tenders was announced to do it more quickly. So with the Eiffel Tower constantly some funny stories. Well, what to sell some its fragments, everything is the buyer. There is already almost everything you do not show in various collections. How can it be uninteresting to be to somebody Eiffel Tower? Surely she [лестницу] will buy all Japanese or all Chinese He will settle near his beautiful restaurant or its commercial complex, and everyone will come to watch: here, you see, what a brave boy, our comrade Van, managed to draw a scale from France.

By the way, auctions are regularly organized in France with unusual lots. For example, in 2014, the real guillotine went under the hammer in Nantes.

The 19th century instrument of execution sold for 60,000 euros.