Somewhere, Rhett Butler is twirling his moustache gleefully.
From playing poker to running blockades, “Gone with the Wind’s” resident rogue loved a good gamble. So he’d have enjoyed learning the identity of the winning bidder for a previously unpublished packet of personal Margaret Mitchell letters.
Uh, identity? What identity?
"The letters were bought by an alternative investment group who have asked to remain anonymous," a spokesperson for RR Auction executive vice president Bobby Livingston wrote in an email Monday.
The online auction, which ran from June 19-26, included six letters Mitchell wrote to a Philadelphia-area fan between 1936 and 1938. All were handsigned by the famed, yet publicity-shy Atlanta author — two with her married name “Margaret Mitchell Marsh” — and contained such juicy details as which “GWTW” character was hardest for her to write (answer: Ashley Wilkes) and who was currently monopolizing her time to an annoying extent (“a group of moving picture people who are here in Atlanta”).
The winning bid was $14,087 for a package that included the fan’s “meticulously kept” Mitchell-centric scrapbook. An alternative investment group approaches the memorabilia business almost like the stock market, essentially gambling that its “buy” will continue to go up in value.
If it doesn't, well, best quote another "GWTW" character, Scarlett O'Hara:
“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!”
About the Author
