The gold, ruby and diamond crown ring Tupac Shakur wore at his last public appearance — at the September 1996 Video Music Awards — has sold for more than $1 million at Sotheby’s auction house.
Shakur’s ring was part of a large sale of hip-hop artifacts, which also included letters from Shakur and a demo tape of his single “Trapped.” The sale of the ring smashed the pre-sale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.
Yassmyn Fula, Shakur’s godmother, offered the ring for auction, sharing the touching engraving on the inside — it’s inscribed with “Pac & Dada 1996,″ a reference to his engagement to Kidada Jones, daughter of music producer Quincy Jones.
“Reflecting his recent affinity for Niccolo Machiavelli’s political manifesto ‘The Prince’ (Tupac would start going by Makaveli after reading ‘The Prince’ while incarcerated), Tupac modeled his design after the crowns of the medieval kings of Europe in ‘an act of self-coronation,’ according to Fula, a celebration of survival through a tumultuous year in an oft tumultuous life,” Sotheby’s explained in the auction catalogue.
Just three days after the VMAs, Shakur was killed in Las Vegas. After more than two decades of mystery and conjecture, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department recently executed a search warrant at the home of Duane Keith Davis, who’s said to have had a connection to the homicide.
According to CBS News, police collected a desktop and laptop computer, a copy of the book “Compton Street Legends,” a copy of a Vibe magazine issue on Tupac, photographs and other documents.
