If Jenna Jameson's house (still on the market at $2.7 million) is out of your price range, you could pick up her couch this week on eBay. Jameson, who is expecting twins with fighter Tito Ortiz, has listed her beige silk Casa Armani couch with a minimum bid of $9,500. The listing says that the original purchase price was at least double what it is being auctioned for and they promise free shipping to those in the Los Angeles area. The auction ends November 30.

[via ONTD]

RxArt held its big bash/silent auction at the Milk Gallery in Chelsea earlier this week, drawing a crowd that took its time bidding but ended up supporting the non-profit group to the tune of $350,000. RxArt installs art exhibits in children's hospitals to relieve stress and create inspiring environments.

Founded in 2000 by well-known gallerist Diane Brown (at right with board member Cynthia Rowley), the non-profit tries to de-institutionalize hospital spaces with original art, usually colorful exhibits by artists like William Wegman and Frank Stella that stretch across every wall and ceiling possible.

The group produces coloring books for patients drawn from every installation, so kids can focus on emotional healing while docs aim to do the rest.

Last week we wrote about Christie's Nov. 19 photo auction starring a slew of naked supermodels including Albert Watson's 1993 nude of Kate Moss in Marrakech, which was estimated at $23,000 - $31,000. On Nov. 26 in London the auction house is staging another photo sale, with another equally appealing (in our opinion) photo of Kate in her birthday suit. The photo (above), taken by one-named lensman Tesh in 2005, may not have the pedigree of Watson's pic, but at only $1,500 - $2,000, it's a real steal. There are some other good deals to be had in the London sale, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, James Dean, Andy Warhol and more.

On Nov. 24, Sotheby's in London is offering an amazing array of objects by famed Russian jeweler Carl Fabergé in its impressive Imperial & Royal Presents sale. Fabergé is best known for his incredible jeweled eggs, though he produced many other iitems as presents for the Russian Tsars and their family.

It is these latter items, including picture frames, sniff boxes, vesta cases, paper knives, compacts and pill boxes, that are featured in the auction. The top-priced lot is a Fabergé silver-gilt pearl and enamel heart shaped photograph frame enclosing a miniature of Empress Maria Fedorovna, circa 1890, est. $90,000 - $120,000.

One of our favorite items is this Fabergé enamel and silver frame (above) with a photograph of George, Duke of York, later George V, a present from Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, est. $30,000 - $45,000.

The election of Barack Obama has given the newspaper industry a bit of a boost. Papers in major cities sold briskly on November 5. One of the papers in Obama's home town, The Chicago Sun-Times is particularly proud of their cover from that day. Not only did it sell 700,000 copies making it the paper's best -selling issue in their 60-year history but Oprah held up a copy of the Sun-Times on her show and said it was the best cover worldwide. Now The Sun-Times is offering 44 limited edition prints of the cover on eBay as a limited edition high-gloss giclee print. The high-gloss print is hand-made by Printmakers Chicago and signed for authenticity. The pieces will be parceled out from now until December 9 with numbers 2-15 available now. Bidding starts at $350.

Shrewd eBay sellers are also selling a variety of papers from that day and from various other moments on the campaign trial for exorbitant mark-ups.

Another luxury home is up for auction. This one on Navarre Beach in Florida. The five-bedroom home has views of the views of the Gulf to the south and the Intracoastal Waterway to the north. There are three levels with an elevator. The home includes a gourmet kitchen, an office, deck, and a master suite that includes walk-in closets and a master bath with a Kohler Air Jet Tub and a walk-in tile shower with rain-head showerheads.

Dr. Steve and Ann Hering are auctioning off the five-bedroom home on the gulf, as well as 30 home sites in Navarre Beach on December 6 with Albert Burney Auction Company managing the sale. Steve Hering, a retired college professor says that he and his wife have bought and sold a lot of real estate over the years but are now looking to slow down and they've moved to nearby Gulf Breeze. The home will sell to the highest bidder at or above a minimum bid of $2.5 million, which is said to be less than half of a recent appraisal.

Another day, another day of art auction misery, the third in a long week for art sellers. At the Phillips de Pury & Co.'s New York auction the sales were far below event the low estimate of $23 million, coming in at $9.6 million with two-fifths of the lots not selling. Even usual hot sellers like Damien Hirst whose `Beautiful Artemis Thor Neptune Odin Delusional Sapphic Inspirational Hypnosis Painting,'' was part of a series that appeared in September 2007 during a runway show of his collection for Levi Strauss & Co. at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea couldn't find a buyer at $1.8 million.

So what artists are still alluring? The star of the Phillips de Pury auction was Donald Judd's 1977 vertical progression of 10 blue, stainless steel stacks, shown at right, which sold for $3.2 million, lower than presale estimate range of $4 million to $6 million but still a good showing in this market (and a Judd sculpture also sold earlier this week to Eli Broad). While the works may have been of a lower tier than comparable Christie's and Sotheby's auctions, the risk was also smaller. Bloomberg reports that Phillips de Pury guaranteed just one work in the auction, a glowing neon text by Kendell Geers, which had a low estimate of $60,000 and sold for $56,250.

On December 1, Bonhams in London will auction off the famous white 1976 Lotus Esprit driven by Roger Moore as James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me (one of two made). Next to the classic Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger, the Lotus, which was amphibious in the movie, stands out as the iconic Bond vehicle. Estimated at about $160,000 to $190,000, it does not unfortunately come equipped with the gadgetry deployed by Moore in the film during his eventful ride with the beautiful Barbara Bach, including a cement sprayer, sea-to-air missiles, front-mounted torpedoes, ink-cloud dispenser and mine launcher. However it does afford the purchaser a chance to join the Ian Fleming Foundation, which my colleague Deidre Woollard wrote about the other day.

[via Men.Style]

This week's dismal art auction returns continued with the sale at Christie's New York on Wednesday night in which close to one third of the 75 lots found no buyers. The savvy shoppers were out in hordes though, Bloomberg reports that tennis star and collector John McEnroe, Salma Hayek and the ever art-hungry Eli Broad were in the room checking out the lots. The sale brought in $113.6 million which was around half its presale low estimate. Francis Bacon has been quite the hot seller of late, fueled to some extent by the buying habits of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. But last night a self-portrait by Francis Bacon that Christie's had estimated would sell for about $40 million couldn't find a new home.

And that collection of 16 drawings sold by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard S. Fuld Jr. and his wife, Kathy, brought in $13.5 million a bit below the low estimate of $15 million for the collection. More than half, a full 52 percent of the lots sold below the low estimate and Christie's guaranteed the sale of 39 lots, 12 of which didn't sell, which had a combined low estimate of $48 million. This means Christie's is on the hook for those works.

But every evening has its bright spots, Gerhard Richter's 1989 eight-foot-tall ``Abstraktes Bild (710),'' painted with a squeegee sold for $14.9 million. And you can't keep a good Basquiat down, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich sold a 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting ``Untitled (Boxer)'' for $13.5 million, above the $12 million estimate.

In Geneva on Monday, Christie's is staging a stunning sale of Important Watches. Top of the timepiece heap is a fine, large and rare stainless steel chronograph by Patek Philippe made in 1941, one of Patek's rarest chronograph models, which could fetch up to $1 million. There are several extremely precious Patek Philippes in the sale, including an 18K gold dual crown world time wristwatch made for Tiffany & Co. in 1963, est. $500,000 - $760,000; and a large and rare 18K pink gold chronograph with a pink dial from 1941, est. $425,000 - $850,000.

Also included are several superlative Rolexes, including a very fine and rare stainless steel automatic triple calendar wristwatch with moon phases from 1953, est. $127,000 - $212,000; a stainless steel chronograph with pulsometre scale and a black dial from 1941 (above), est. $127,000 - $212,000; and an atimagnetic stainless steel triple calendar chronograph from 1960, est. $100,000 - $150,000. See the gallery for pix.

On Nov. 19, Christie's in London will auction off a stunning collection of photographs including some provocative shots of the world's most beautiful women. From a purely aesthetic standpoint the highlight of these is this 2000 portrait of Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen by Mark Seliger, estimated at $9,000 to $12,000 - a relative bargain compared to Martin Schoeller's 2003 Angelina Jolie with Blood, est. at $23,000 - $39,000.

Also included in the sale: Albert Watson's 1993 nude Kate Moss, Marrakech, est. at $23,000 - $31,000; David LaChapelle's 1999 Britney Spears, Baby, est. $23,000 - $31,000; Michel Comte's 1996 James King, New York City, est. $6,000 - $9,000; and Gavin Bond's 2007 snap of Victoria's Secret stunner Adriana Lima, est. $5,000 - $8,000.

An extremely rare and ornate pair of exhibition-grade gold-inlaid J. Purdey & Sons 12-bore shotguns stars in Christie's Exceptional and Fine Sporting Guns and Rifles sale in London today. Estimated at $320,000 - $400,000, the British-made shotguns contain an astounding amount of gold, accounting for the extremely high estimate. As Christie's notes, with the exception of weapons built for the Maharajahs of India, modern sporting guns were "only traditionally given gold inlay as a mild form of embellishment."

This extraordinary pair was actually inspired by gunsmith Ken Hunt's studies of arms and armor in the Tower of London, the Wallace Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum. They are presented in a beautifully-crafted oak and leather case. Purdey, founded in 1814, holds numerous warrants of appointment as gun and rifle makers to the British and other European royal families. Queen Victoria purchased a pair of Purdey guns in 1838.

Another sign of the jittery art market this week (you know it's bad when I don't even realize I've used the word gloomy as a descriptor twice in a row) was the pulling of a major piece of Asian art before its auction at Sotheby's. For weeks, Sotheby's had been promoting its November 5th Asian Art auction in London and in specific a large and very rare gilt bronze figure of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara which dates back to the Xuande Period and is dated 1435. The piece was expected to bring in at least £2.5 million. The statue was withdrawn on the morning of the sale by the Scottish family that owns it. After the withdrawal, the sale that was expected to bring in at least £6 million only brought in 3.3 million pounds with fees, with about two thirds of the lots selling. Bloomberg quotes Robert Bradlow, head of Sotheby's Chinese department in London as saying that the sellers felt it had to be withdrawn because of the state of the market.

The Sotheby's sale was part of the 11th annual Asian Art in London,which continues through Nov. 12. Reports from the sales overall reveal that buyers are currently cautious and not willing to pay a lot for pieces, fearing that in six months or a year the prices could slide even further. But some pieces are still selling well. At Christie's, a Chinese yellow jade belt hook sold for £825,250 pounds setting a record for any archaic jade carving and soaring above the estimate of £100,000 to £150,000. Both auctioneers and dealers are finding it hard to sell more routine items, buyers either want something special and rare or nothing at all.

Along with millions of other children I loved Winnie the Pooh as a kid (my favorites were Piglet and Eyeore) and now a collection of the most loved iconic illustrations are going up for auction. Sotheby's will be exhibiting highlights of the auction in New York from December 3-6 and then in London from December 12th until the auction on the 17th. The drawing shown here, called 'Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders', goes with the first Winnie-the-Pooh chapter (when Pooh makes his first appearance) and is valued at £60,000-£80,000.

As we head into fall auction season in New York, the first results aren't too promising. The Sotheby's auction of Impressionist and modern art on Monday delivered some disappointing results. The official estimate before the sale was $338 million to $475 million but the total was just $224 million and over half of that came from just three paintings, Kazimir Malevich's "Suprematist Composition," which sold for $60 million, Degas' "Danseuse au repos" that brought in $37 million and Edvard Munch's "Vampire" (shown above) which we mentioned earlier this month. It was expected to bring in $35 million but sold for $38.16 million.

These were bright spots in a mostly grim evening in which a full one-third of the lots went unsold. Sotheby's has said they were satisfied with the result since they had been expecting a correction due to the economy. Sellers have been advised to lower their reserve prices and not to expect high prices. In a sale in which pieces from van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Monet and Modigliani went unsold it's hard to predict just what the market will want.