9 famous collectible aeroplanes you should have bid on at auction
Each of these iconic aircraft went on the auction block, and some sold for what we now know is a bargain price.
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Whether it’s a car, home, jewellery, or piece of art, if an item going to auction has some kind of celebrity cachet, chances are good that it will garner additional attention—and perhaps draw higher bids. Consider, for example, the 1962 Lockheed JetStar that Elvis Presley owned briefly in the mid-1970s. After the King sold the aircraft in 1977, it sat on a runway in New Mexico for more than 35 years, collecting dust and rust. Nevertheless, when the plane went to auction in 2017, it sold for US$430,000.
Even though the price was well below the US$2 million presale estimate, it was still a lot to pay for an aircraft that couldn’t fly and needed a complete interior and exterior restoration. And, in fact, it was too much to pay. It seems the new owner experienced buyer’s remorse, because the JetStar went back on the block this past summer. There’s no word from the auction company, IronPlanet, on whether the seller made back his money.
The JetStar is not the only Elvis plane to go to auction, and it’s not the only one with a celebrity or pop-culture connection that helped it fetch plenty of notice, though not necessarily the owner’s asking price. The following aircraft became famous because of a role they played in a movie, on TV, or in real life, and at one time or another, each was available to the highest bidder.
Elvis Presley’s Lisa Marie plane at Graceland
Photo: DreamArt123/Shutterstock
Lisa Marie and Hound Dog II
– On the block in 2015
– Sold together for a reported US$15 million
Elvis fans breathed a sigh of relief in 2015 following the sale of his two jets—Hound Dog II and the Convair 880 that Presley named Lisa Marie after his daughter—because the new owner reached a “permanent” agreement to keep the aircraft at Graceland in Memphis, where they have been loved tender since 1984.
Elvis purchased the plane that would eventually bear the name Lisa Marie—a Convair 880 narrow-body airliner—from Delta Airlines in 1975 for US$250,000. He spent another US$350,000 refurbishing it. The custom interior includes a queen-sized bed, a bathroom with gold faucets and a gold washbasin, a videotape system linked to four televisions, a stereo system with 50 speakers, and a conference room. The tail section of the plane is emblazoned with the initials TCB—taking care of business. The plane last carried passengers in 1977, when it flew Priscilla Presley and George Hamilton, a good friend of Elvis, from California to his funeral at Graceland.
Like the plane in New Mexico that once belonged to Elvis, Hound Dog II is a Lockheed JetStar. Elvis bought it for about US$900,000 in 1975 while waiting for the refurbishment of Lisa Marie to be completed.
WWII British Spitfire
Photo: John M. Dibbs
World War II British Spitfire
– On the block in 2014
– Sold for an undisclosed price
The unrestored Mark IX Spitfire was one of eight World War II fighter planes that appeared in the 1969 film Battle of Britain. They belonged to Wilson Connell “Connie” Edwards, a pilot who later made his fortune in the oil, ranching, and stone businesses. Not a man afraid of old-fashioned bartering, he coordinated the movie’s flying stunts and took the aeroplanes as payment. Before selling them, Edwards kept the aircraft in a hangar on his private airfield in Texas for more than 40 years. The Spitfire in question, which an unidentified British collector acquired for an undisclosed price, is particularly notable because it flew in the actual Battle of Britain.
Edwards had intended to give the aircraft to his son, but the younger man was killed in a traffic accident. The total asking price for the eight aircraft was a firm US$15 million, and according to Platinum Fighters, the company that handled the sale, Edwards received more than that sum.
In 2015, one year after that sale, a restored World War II Spitfire that had been shot down over northern France in 1940 and discovered in the sands of Calais 40 years later sold at a Christie’s auction in London for US$4.8 million—the most ever for an aircraft at auction. The presale estimate was only US$3 million. The proceeds from the sale were donated to the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund and the wildlife charity Panthera.
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade biplane
Photo: Prop Store
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Biplane
– On the block in 2017
– Unsold
This third installment of the Indiana Jones franchise was apparently more popular with moviegoers than the film’s Stampe et Vertongen SV.4 biplane was with collectors. The 1989 film became the first to sell US$10 million worth of tickets in a single day; the auction company that conducted the sale of the plane last year, Prop Store Entertainment Memorabilia, expected to draw bids of US$27,000 to US$40,000, but the aircraft went unsold, indicating that the bottom end of the estimate range wasn’t reached.
The biplane was offered while sporting Royal Air Force markings rather than the Luftwaffe livery it displayed in the Last Crusade. This is because it was wearing makeup from its last film role (in what was also perhaps Brendan Fraser’s last good film), 1999’s The Mummy. Perhaps the mummy’s curse afflicted the biplane as well as Fraser’s film prospects.
In the Last Crusade sequence featuring the biplane, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery are aboard, trying to elude their Luftwaffe pursuers. Connery, as Indiana’s father, Henry Jones Sr., inadvertently shoots bullets from a machine gun through the aeroplane’s tail section and then tells Indiana, “Son, I’m sorry. They got us.” The prop for the bullet-ridden tail section was offered as a separate lot.
Out of Africa biplane
Photo: Courtesy of Bonhams
Out of Africa Biplane
– On the block 2013
– Sold for 201,250 euro (about US$280,000 at the time)
The airworthy 1929 De Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane flown by Robert Redford’s character in the seven-time Oscar winner from 1985 was expected to sell for only about 103,000 euro. Instead, the price rose to nearly double that mark before the hammer dropped at the 2013 Bonhams auction. The price, the equivalent of about US$280,000 at the time, was the most ever paid for a Gipsy Moth. The winning bid came from a buyer in Kenya, where the movie was set.
The plane is featured in a four-minute-long romantic scene in which Redford is the pilot and his passenger is Meryl Streep, who, of course, was nominated for a best-actress Oscar. They fly over the Kenyan savannah, holding hands. Alas, later in the film, Redford’s character is killed when (spoiler alert) he crashes the plane en route to be with Streep’s character.
The plane, painted bright yellow, was in superb condition when it was sold and came with a permit to fly.
Fantasy Island plane
Photo: Branson Auction
Fantasy Island Plane
– On the block in 2016
– Sold for US$275,000
The 1967 Grumman Widgeon, whose arrival at the start of each episode of Fantasy Island was heralded by Tattoo shouting, “De Plane! De Plane!” fell on hard times after (spoiler alert) the show concluded its eight-year run in 1984. According to various reports, the aircraft passed through the hands of a series of owners after Fantasy Island went off the air. It crashed in a swamp on at least one occasion and was involved in a gear-collapse accident. At least twice it was confiscated by drug-enforcement authorities (it was, after all, the ’80s) and sold at auction. However, it was refurbished in the late 1990s and presented on the air-show circuit throughout the Midwest.
The aircraft is not an authentic Grumman Widgeon. It’s a Société Construction Aéro-Navale Type 30, a license-built copy of a Grumman Widgeon. It was built in Rochelle, France, in 1951, eventually disassembled, and stored until 1967, when it was imported to the United States and reassembled with new engines.
Nearly all of the footage of the plane used throughout the series was shot in a single day. When the guests arrived at the island at the start of each episode, they climbed out of a plywood mock-up of the back of the plane.
Roger Moore in Octopussy
Photo: Danjaq/EON/UA/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Octopussy Microjet
– On the block in 2014
– Sold for US$275,000
Before the Bede BD-5J starred in the opening sequence of the 1983 James Bond movie Octopussy, in which Agent 007 uses it to evade the bad guys and a heat-seeking missile, the aircraft had already made a claim to fame. At only 163kg, it was listed by Guinness World Records as the world’s lightest single-engine jet.
A propeller version of the aircraft was developed in the late 1960s by the Bede Aircraft Corporation and sold in the early 1970s as a kit plane before the company went bankrupt in the mid-1970s. The jet-powered version, the BD-5J, which was also known as the Acrostar, could achieve 480km/h. Two examples of the aircraft were flown in air shows throughout the 1980s by Coors Light—which called the planes, naturally, Silver Bullets—and another appeared in Bud Light commercials. The aircraft have been involved in several fatal crashes, including one in 2013 involving a BD-5J that was part of Red Bull’s Flying Bulls racing team.
In addition to its role in Octopussy, the BD-5J made a cameo in the later Bond film Die Another Day, in which it is seen hanging on the wall of Q’s workshop.
“The Miracle on the Hudson”
Photo: Justin Lane/EPA/REX/Shutterstock
Miracle on the Hudson Airbus A320
– On the block in 2010
– Sold for an undisclosed price
The Airbus A320 that Tom Hanks (or, should we say, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger) successfully ditched into the Hudson River in 2009 went to auction in 2010 with the expectation that it would be sold for scrap metal. A similarly scrapped Airbus 310 had recently sold for US$2.6 million and reportedly earned its new owners US$4 million when they broke it up and sold it for parts.
The engines on U.S. Airways flight 1549 lost power following a bird strike, and by landing the plane on the river, Sully managed to save all 155 passengers and the crew. The airliner eventually was hoisted out of the river and onto a barge. Its wings and tail were cut off so that the fuselage could be hauled on a flatbed truck to a warehouse in New Jersey, where National Transportation Safety Board inspectors spent nearly two years trying to figure out what went wrong and whether Sully did the right thing by landing in the Hudson.
At the auction, instead of a salvage company placing the winning bid, the plane was acquired by the Carolinas Aviation Museum for what is reported to have been a bargain price. The museum had the plane transported to its home in Charlotte, North Carolina, the destination of Flight 1549 on the day of its splash landing. It reattached the wings and tail, restored the interior, and now has the aircraft on permanent display. According to the museum, the number of daily visitors more than doubled in the autumn of 2016, after Sully, the film re-creating the splash landing, was released.
President Dwight Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower exit “Air Force One” in 1953
Photo: US Air Force
The First Air Force One
– On the block in 1970
– Sold for US$35,000 with four other Lockhead VC-121 aircraft
The Lockheed VC-121 that was known as Columbine II, Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential plane and the first to be designated Air Force One, has now been completely restored, but at one time it was on the verge of becoming a crop duster or scrap metal.
The Air Force One call sign was established in 1953 following an incident in which an Eastern Airlines commercial airliner accidentally entered the same air space as Columbine II. The airliner was flight 8610, and the president’s plane was flying under the call sign Air Force 8610.
The aircraft, serial number 48-610, was retired in 1968 and sent to storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Two years later, it was part of a US$35,000 five-aircraft auction sale to Mel Christler, a Wyoming businessman who bought the VC-121A planes from the Air Force with the intention of converting them into crop dusters. He didn’t know that one of those planes was the original Air Force One.
Christler converted the other four VC-121 aircraft, but not Columbine II. Its landing gear was faulty because it had been replaced with parts from a different plane model. The owner therefore decided to instead use the plane to supply the other four with spare parts. In 1980, he was on the verge of cutting up the aircraft and selling it as scrap when the Smithsonian Institution—like the deus ex machina in a schlocky movie—contacted him in time and informed him of serial number 48-610’s true identity.
The plane’s current owner acquired it in 2015 and began a full restoration in 2016.
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The most cumbersome part of the marque’s most powerful sedan to date is perhaps the infotainment system.
“Remember, it’s 25 years in jail for damaging a cactus,” warns Wayne Bruce, communications czar for Bentley Motors Limited, as he tosses us the keys to the marque’s newest and most powerful four-door ever, the fourth-generation Bentley Flying Spur Speed. Sufficiently admonished, we’re set loose from the veranda of the Four Seasons Scottsdale and into the foothills of the Sonoran Desert. We have no plans to damage local flora, but beneath the sophisticated lines and refined amenities of the vehicle lurks a beast begging to be unleashed on this cacti-flanked thoroughfare.
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My driving companion, Kristin, and I depart the hotel in Bentley mode, the automaker’s eponymous default setting, and—first things first—begin scrolling through the manifold touch screen controls to customise the individual climate and postural settings for our quilted, hand-stitched leather seats.
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At least the functionality should eliminate any fighting over climate control. But we are equally intrigued by Bentley’s twist on seating comfort: a postural adjustment feature that the automaker claims “soothingly and seamlessly varies the pressure on the occupants’ muscles throughout their journey” to minimise fatigue. This sounds promising. As our route to Sedona and back is a circuitous mix of surface streets, highways, and twisty canyon roads, the prospect of traveling the 482 miles without a nap seems unlikely.
“Sitting consistently the whole time—that’s what gives you a numb bum,” says Bentley spokesman Mike Sayer, explaining more about the seating system. “It’s about blood flow. If that seat is very slowly changing shape underneath you, that [numbing] never happens.”
A look at the V-8 engine inside Bentley’s hybrid Flying Spur Speed.
The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V-8 pairs with an electric motor for a combined output of 574 kilowatts James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
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James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
That, though, is the point of the Flying Spur Speed. Like its two-door Bentley Continental GT Speed sibling, it benefits from the automaker’s most advanced chassis ever. On exhibition is Bentley’s suite of performance enhancements that includes the aforementioned four-wheel steering as well as active all-wheel drive, torque vectoring, an electronic limited-slip differential, and twin-chamber air springs.
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James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
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How to Make a Gimlet, the Gin and Lime Cordial Cocktail That’s Perfect for Summer
It will also keep scurvy at bay, which is nice.
“Why on earth this stroke of genius stands unheralded and unsung in this fair and allegedly free land of ours shall, to us, always be a mystery…” –Charles Baker Jr., The Gentleman’s Companion: An Exotic Drinking Book
The above was published in 1939, when the author, an American food writer travelling through Asia, first discovered the Gimlet. This is honestly a fairly common reaction to a well-made Gimlet, and the only major thing that’s changed in the last 80 years is that while we didn’t know why it wasn’t more popular then, we know exactly why the Gimlet is not more popular now. The answer is a saccharine, highlighter-yellow liquid that can be found entombed in plastic on the bottom shelf of every liquor store in this country called Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice.
Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice, a.k.a. Rose’s Lime Cordial, wasn’t always this way. It started as medicine and was literally lifesaving technology when a Scot named Lauchlin Rose invented it in the mid 1800s. Before then—basically, from the beginning of human sea-travel until about 150 years ago—the biggest threat to a mariner wasn’t pirates or sharks or sea-madness but scurvy, which claimed some 2 million sailors between the 16th and 18th centuries. We now know scurvy is caused by about three months without any vitamin C, but it took millennia to figure that out. Once we did, there was still the problem of preservation, because some other forms of preservation (things like boiling it or storing it in copper) are, as it turns out, incredibly efficient ways to destroy the vitamin C. It was ultimately Rose who figured out a way to preserve lime juice with sugar in 1867, the same year the Merchant Shipping Act decreed that all British sailors must have an ounce of lime juice in their rations every day. Rose’s new “lime cordial” fortified the entire British Royal Navy against scurvy, all at the mere cost of suffering the nickname “limeys” for the rest of time.
The Gimlet fits into this like so: The sailors drank rum, but the officers drank gin. A shot of lime juice is some fairly unpleasant business, but alcohol seems to help the medicine go down, so one story is that it was Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Gimlette who first took his Rose’s Lime Cordial with a spot of gin. Another story is that the Gimlet was named for the metal tool used for opening the barrels to get the alcohol out. In either case, we meet the Gimlet officially in 1923, in Harry MacElhone’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails as equal parts Plymouth Gin and Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial. Fifteen years later Mr. Baker (above) calls it a “stroke of genius.”
So why aren’t Gimlets more popular now? Because Rose’s has become a zombified version of itself, embalmed with high-fructose corn syrup and sodium metabisulfate, and is now one of 125+ brands owned by the gargantuan Keurig Dr. Pepper group. This is a problem, because while you need a lime cordial to make a proper Gimlet, Rose’s is explicitly the type of mass market, highly processed bullshit that the whole “mixology” thing was resurrected to combat. It helped get us to where we are—Lord knows I made my share of Mojitos with Rose’s in those dark and early days—but fortunately for all of us, we now have a better way, because fresh cordials are quick, easy, and savagely delicious.
If a Gimlet with Rose’s is the speaker on your phone, a Gimlet with a fresh cordial is a concert hall. It’s like tasting in technicolor, what was a chemical note of lime now a chord of acidity, piquant and resonant. A good Gimlet is bright and full, sharp and piercing, with a clarity that sings no matter what gin you choose. To try a good one is to really get what Baker was talking about, or to see why Chandler and Hemingway wrote the Gimlet into their fiction, or to understand the type of joy that comes from knowing you won’t die from scurvy, after all.
Gimlet
- 60 ml. gin
- 40 ml. lime cordial
Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain off the ice either up into a cocktail glass or else onto fresh ice in a rocks glass, and garnish with a lime wheel or peel.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS
Gin: As mentioned, use whatever gin you like. Some gin cocktails have ingredients which strongly prefer one brand over another—the raspberries in a Clover Club, for example, uniquely complement the rose petals in something like Hendrick’s—but here we’re just dealing with gin and lime, and all gins will go well with lime. My perennial favorite for shaken gin drinks is Beefeater, which indeed works great. You could also take a note from both the original recipe and from Naval history and make it with Plymouth Gin, which works fantastically well in both its standard (41.2 percent) bottling and its Navy Strength (57 percent).
Lime Cordial: There’s lots of ways to make a lime cordial, and as your faithful servants we’ve made / bought every single one we could find and tried them in side-by-side to determine the best. Our surprise and breakaway favorite was a cordial developed by Portland bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, which has the perfect balance of full lime flavor and sharp zesty edge. It requires getting some citric acid, which sounds intimidating but is natural and abundant and about $10 next day on Amazon (recipe below). If you absolutely insist on not making your own cordial, a good option was to just make the Gimlet using fresh ingredients (2 oz. gin, 1 oz. lime juice, 30 ml. simple syrup) and throw a lime peel into the shaker to shake with the ice. It lacks the cordial’s intensity, but the extra zestiness helps.
What’s great about the cordial is that not only is this spectacular with gin, it’s delicious with literally any clear spirit: tequila, vodka, rum, you name it. The sweet and sour of it is already balanced, so you can just add soda for a quick and easy limeade, or use it as a starting point for your own creativity (i.e. a Raspberry Pisco Gimlet is what happens when you add three raspberries to the shaker tin and use pisco instead of gin). The cordial will last in the fridge for at least a month and in the video above, I show you my favorite way to make, but here’s the complete recipe below.
Lime Cordial Recipe
Recipe from jeffreymorgenthaler.com
- 220 grams. white sugar
- 240 ml of warm or hot water
- 40 ml. fresh lime juice
- Zest of 2 medium or 1 large lime
- 30 grams citric acid
Zest the lime and put the lime zest into a blender. Juice the zested lime(s) into the blender, then add the sugar, water, and citric acid. After blending on medium speed for 30 seconds, strain with a fine strainer. Bottle and refrigerate or mix a cocktail immediately, if you so choose.
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Upcycle Your Vacation
For merging serious riding with high-end hospitality, Le Blanq isn’t the only game in town. Here are a few others to consider.
When it comes to merging serious riding with high-end hospitality, LeBlanq isn’t the only game in town. if you are up for unapologetically indulgent weekends of eating, drinking and riding we have collected a few other travel operators to consider for your next cycling holiday abroad.
The Slow Cyclist
The reassuringly named company was founded by British author Oli Broom, who spent 412 days riding—via 23 countries—from London to Brisbane to watch a few games of cricket (and raise money for charity). The company is part of the “slow travel” movement, which aims to minimise your impact on local communities while maximising your engagement with them—and what better way to do so than arriving by bike. The Slow Cyclist will put you on two wheels in locations you might never have considered, from the mountains of Transylvania to the volcanoes, lakes and gorilla-filled wilds of Rwanda.
Cycling for Softies
As its name suggests, Cycling for Softies focuses unabashedly on the luxury hotels and Michelin-starred dining that punctuate its easy trips (e-bike optional)—“a gâteau in every château”, in the words of author and client Kathy Lette. The company operates in five European countries, with itineraries traversing the regions with the best comestibles, whether Provence or Portugal’s Douro Valley. Your bags are transported between hotels each day, and you ride at your own pace, following an app that even details the best cake stops en route.
Sportive Breaks
If you want to go harder than even LeBlanq can offer, Sportive Breaks will fast-track you into the most sought-after events of the year. From L’Étape du Tour, in which “civilians” take on a hard mountain stage of the Tour de France, to the roughly 314-km-long Mallorca 312 and other spectacular closed-road, mass-participation events (known as sportive rides), this specialist eases the logistical pain, if not the physical. Our pick? The slightly gentler annual Strade Bianche, whose 87 and 142 km routes over the white-gravel roads of Tuscany are bucket-list stuff for many.
Butterfield & Robinson
Established nearly 60 years ago, Butterfield & Robinson is the OG of the luxury cycling world. A coterie of loyal and well-heeled clients has followed the Canadian company into new fields, from safaris to superyacht charters, but bike trips remain its beating heart. Don’t bother packing energy gels or even your wheels: the aim here is seamless, stress-free travel, with itineraries curated by a firm with more experienced hands and likely a broader range of destinations— covering Europe, Asia, South America and Africa—than anyone else.
Trek Travel
The travel wing of the behemoth Wisconsin-based bike maker is your go-to for North American trips, with itineraries in 18 US states, Canada, Australia, Chile and Japan, and can organise custom private vacations for as few as one rider. As an official affiliate of the Tour de France and a team sponsor, Trek also offers excursions that follow the greatest race at a gentler pace: for around $17,000, you get six nights in top hotels in Nice and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, with VIP access to the final stage of this year’s event.
