Russell Crowe's divorce auction: From a dead horse to diamonds and weapons, motorcycles or musical instruments

People have made a fuss about Russell Crowe’s leather jockstrap, which is coming to auction with an estimate of A$500 to A$600 ($384 to $461), but probably the most esoteric lot of the sale is a dead horse, according to Bloomberg.

To be clear, it’s a prop horse from Crowe’s 2000 movie Gladiator, but it’s life-sized, and “realistically rendered in rubberized material with a textured chestnut faux fur mane,”according to the lot notes. The horse is one of two from that movie that are coming up for sale; it carries an estimate of A$2,000 to A$4,000. It will be sold with a letter from Russell Crowe “stating his ownership.”

The auction, which made up entirely of Crowe’s belongings, is taking place at Sotheby’s Australia in Sydney on April 7. Titled “The Art of Divorce,” it pictures a smiling, tuxedo-clad Crowe brandishing a whiskey tumbler on the catalog cover and came about, he explained in an interview with a Sydney morning TV show, because he decided “to turn something that was a little bit bleak into something joyful.”

The 227 lots are a hodgepodge of movie memorabilia, fine art, antique weapons, motorcycles, musical instruments, watches, and a 2001 Mercedes S class with 101,661 kilometers, estimated to sell for A$15,000 to A$25,000. (A mildly excruciating lot note explains: “One of Russell Crowe’s personal cars, this vehicle also served as one of the wedding cars on the day of his marriage to Danielle Spencer on 7 April 2003.”)

There is also, however disconcerting, a range of women’s jewelry, which Crowe presumably kept after the divorce. There are seven rings, for instance, ranging from a relatively modest-looking white-gold, diamond-encrusted ring with a ruby at its center, to a colossal platinum and diamond ring that features a 5.13 carat fancy yellow diamond. It’s estimated to fetch A$70,000 to A$100,000 and lists its provenance as “Ms Danielle Spencer, Sydney.”

Many of the lots will interest a general audience. There are 28 watches up for auction, including a stainless steel watch from Tiffany & Co. which is selling for a relatively modest A$800 to A$1,200. (“This was the first watch I bought in the U.S. after making The Quick & the Dead (1995)” notes Crowe in the lot notes.) A much gaudier gold rolex Cosmograph Daytona carries an estimate of A$40,000 to A$50,000.

Similarly, some art, including a 17th century Flemish tapestry estimated at $25,000 to $35,000 and a 1921 landscape by the well-known Australian painter Penleigh Boyd, estimated to sell from A$60,000 to A$80,000, would appeal to a buyer who’d never heard of Crowe and his many blockbusters.