Collectors splash out cash for Bruce Lee memorabilia

Aug 7, 2011, 6:32 GMT

Hong Kong - Collectors paid 1.8 million Hong Kong dollars (228,200 dollars) at an auction of letters, clothes and other possessions of late kung fu legend Bruce Lee, a report said Sunday.

Even one of the tiniest lots - one of Lee's business cards - sold for 30,000 Hong Kong dollars, the Sunday Morning Post said.

The card, from Lee's time teaching kung fu in the United States, was one of 13 lots at the largest auction of Lee memorabilia in Hong Kong. The price was around double the initial estimate.

'The auctioneer and bidders were quite astounded that I paid about 30,000 Hong Kong dollars for a namecard,' Albert Wong Kam-hong said. 'But it shows his efforts in promoting kung fu, a culture non-existent overseas at that time.'

The most expensive item sold was a fur-lined jacket made for Lee around 1973 for the film Game of Death that went for 600,000 Hong Kong dollars, four times the original estimate.

A handwritten letter from Lee to friend and student Taky Kimura in 1966, in which Lee mentions his work on the television series The Green Hornet, was sold to a Spanish buyer for 400,000 Hong Kong dollars.

The auction, the largest sale of Lee's possessions since 1993, was organised by US-based Kelleher Auctions and Hong Kong's Phila China.