The Judy Garland Museum in the late actress' hometown are raising money to purchase the iconic “Wizard of Oz” ruby slippers that were once stolen out of the institution in 2005, according to reports.
The Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota , where the late actress was born in 1922, is raising money and soliciting donations to bring the slippers back home to the museum, the New York Post reported.
An auction company took the slippers on an international tour before offering them up to prospective buyers in December.
“They could sell for $1 million, they could sell for $10 million. They're priceless," Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions executive vice president, told Minnesota Public Radio. "Once they're gone, all the money in the world can't buy them back.”
The funds will supplement the $100,000 set aside by Minnesota lawmakers to purchase the slippers, KOMO News reported.
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions received the slippers from Michael Shaw, the memorabilia collector who owns the iconic shoes, KOMO News reported.Shaw had loaned them in 2005 to the Judy Garland Museum before they were stolen later that same year.
The ruby slippers were recovered in a sting operation in Minneapolis in 2018. And then last year, Terry Jon Martin, 76, pleaded guilty to stealing the shoes.
Martin, a career criminal who lived just 12 miles from the museum, said it was his last big score after a life of crime. He is reportedly in his final days in hospice care. Last month, Martin was sentenced to just one year probation and ordered to pay $23,500 in restitution to the museum through $300 monthly payments.
"When we found out that someone local was the person that did it, I think that was a little jolting," Janie Heitz, the museum’s executive director, told Inside Edition Digital earlier this year . "Just kind of sad that one of our neighbors (did it)."
Including the pair stolen from the museum, there are four pairs of the ruby slippers used in "The Wizard of Oz" still in existence.
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