While several pairs of shoes were worn by Garland during filming, only four are known to have survived.

One of the pairs is on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But this pair up for auction has its own unique history.

Collector Michael Shaw had loaned the slippers out to the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were stolen in 2005.

Professional thief Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass case and snatch the slippers, believing that their insured value of $1m must be because they were covered in actual gemstones.

But when he took them to a “fence” – and intermediary who sells stolen goods to discreet buyers – he discovered they were just glass.

So he gave the shoes to someone else. It wasn’t until 2018 that the FBI recovered the shoes in a sting operation. What happened to them in those 13 years is still not known.

In 2023, Martin – who was in his 70s and used a wheelchair – pleaded guilty to stealing them, and was sentenced to time served.

“There’s some closure, and we do know definitely that Terry Jon Martin did break into our museum, but I’d like to know what happened to them after he let them go,” John Kelsch, curator of the Judy Garland Museum, told CBS News Minnesota in 2023, external. “Just to do it because he thought they were real rubies and to turn them over to a jewelry fence. I mean, the value is not rubies. The value is an American treasure, a national treasure. To steal them without knowing that seems ludicrous.”