Charity Auction Locates Missing 'A' in Barbra Streisand's Name

Last week, intrepid Tonic correspondent Wynter Mitchell reported that Barbra Streisand would be auctioning off a boatload of her stuff for charity. The goods included "ball gowns, rugs, fur coats, paintings, books, a baby grand piano and her yarmulke from Yentl."

Now the returns are in: the event raised over $600,000, according to a press release on Streisand's Web site. She sold more than 500 items in just two days at the Beverly Hills event. The proceeds will go to her Streisand Foundation, which supports a range of humanitarian causes around the world.

The pink robe she wore in The Way We Were was snatched up for the bargain price of $5,937.50. Her wig from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever sold for $3,500, and the matching nightgown went for a mere $3,750. Three ceiling fans that spun in the Focker home in the film Meet the Fockers flew out the door at the low, low price of $7,500.

Perhaps the oddest thing on the sales block, though, was a letter "a" that Babs had kept hanging in her closet for over three decades as a reminder of the letter she removed when she changed her original name "Barbara" to "Barbra." The letter pulled in $8,750 (43 times its estimated presale worth) from collector David Davis from New London, New Hampshire.

"If they paid $8,750 for one letter in her name, that means the remaining letters in her name are worth $131,250," quipped Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien’s Auctions.

Photo courtesy of Alan Light, via flickr