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LOS ANGELES - Sharon Osbourne and her Black Sabbath frontman husband, Ozzy, raised more than US$800,000 for charity after heavy metal enthusiasts turned out en masse for their Beverly Hills-style garage sale, auction manager Darren Julien said on Saturday.
Bidders at the auction, which benefited the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Foundation, ran the gamut from metal heads to the high-brow.
The lots included knickknacks and furniture from the Osbournes' former Beverly Hills mansion, which served as the backdrop for their family's MTV reality television series The Osbournes.
Fans snapped up Ozzy's coat for US$3,300, his skull-adorned sneakers for US$2,625 and a pair of his wire-rimmed sunglasses for US$5,250.
"The Osbourne factor more than doubled the value of some items," said Julien, president of Julien's Auctions.
The beaded wire model of the Eiffel Tower that adorned the family kitchen throughout the series fetched US$10,000 while Ozzy's Mary Rose Young coffee cup sold for US$1,625. The family's custom pool table racked up a winning bid of US$11,250.
Julien called the bidding "feverish" and said the quirky couple's fan base was "unlike anything we have ever seen by record numbers of bidder registrations."
- REUTERS
