There is an article on the MI6 (www.mi6.co.uk) website regarding the Aston Martin DB5 parts in Guernsey’s Pugliese Prop Culture Collection auction being held in Las Vegas this weekend:
Buyer Beware – Aston Martin DB5 Parts Auction
The article goes into the history of ownership of the cars used in the films or used to promote the films Goldfinger and Thunderball. What follows is an excerpt from the report:
It is this latter car (DP/2161/1) which is considered the most valuable of the four. It was originally loaned to Eon Productions and kitted out with all the onscreen gadgets and gizmos by special effects wizard John Steers. After filming on Thunderball wrapped, it was returned to Aston Martin, who inexplicably stripped out all of the original 007 equipment in 1968. Aston Martin then sold it as a regular road car to Gavin Keyzar in the UK. A year later, and having seen the other cars shoot up in value, Keyzar had replica movie equipment re-installed, later selling it on to Richard Loose in Utah in 1971.
The car would make one final big screen appearance in 1980’s “The Cannonball Run” with Roger Moore. Six years later, it was sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $275,000 to Anthony Pugliese, Boca Raton, Florida. After years of promotional tours, the car was reported stolen from a hangar at Boca Raton Airport sometime between 4pm Wednesday June 18th and 7am Thursday 19th 1997. An insurance settlement of 80% of the cars valuation of $4.2m was reached. The car has never been seen since.
The last owner of the vehicle, Anthony Pugliese, is now selling selected parts from the stolen car at auction in Las Vegas on Saturday 15th March 2008. What Guernsey’s Auctions does not make clear to potential bidders though, is that the parts for sale are the replica gadgets that Keyzar had created in the late 1960’s. Pugliese had replaced them some years before the car was reported stolen ‘complete with gadgets’.
The items for auction are not the parts used by the film production, and their value is therefore greatly reduced. The listings on the auction website intimate they were used during filming. Descriptions use words such as “original” despite the parts being replicas designed and built by Keyzer. Furthermore, some items descriptions are incredibly misleading: Lot 67 claims to be “original license for the Aston Martin DB5 used in the filming of Goldfinger”, but it is dated October 1970, at least five years after Aston Martin stripped the car following Thunderball.
More details and the full article can be read on that site.
Additional analysis and questions can be found at CinemaRetro in their article:
AUCTION OF JAMES BOND’S ASTON MARTIN DB5 GADGETS RAISES QUESTIONS
Jason De Bord