Auction of Marilyn Monroe pinups causes concerns among dealers

Marilyn Monroe died almost 40 years ago - but the passage of time has not diminished her place as a sexual icon for generations of Americans. The blonde is up for bids. In an auction set for next month, eBay Inc. and the San Francisco auction house it owns, Butterfields, will offer the famously nude “Red Velvet” photo series of Marilyn Monroe. THE FIVE SHOTS are outtakes from a 1949 photo shoot that a few years later produced Playboy magazine’s first centerfold. Butterfields is auctioning the five pictures as a set that it hopes will bring $700,000 to $1 million at a live and online auction March 22. Whatever the final sum, Butterfields says, the winning bidder will get a bonus: The seller, Tom Kelley Studios of Ventura, Calif., is including both the negatives and the model’s release form signed by Monroe when she was just an ambitious unknown. That will enable the winning bidder to slap any of the five nude Monroe images on everything from beer cans to brassieres to billboards. The highest price previously paid at auction for a Marilyn Monroe photograph was $222,500, but it’s the rights that are key to the much higher estimate for the Kelley outtakes. The Monroe estate will be paying close attention to the sale, Mr. Roesler says, but won’t bid. He explains: “We would never pay that price.”