A pair of leather short shorts (and boy are they short) worn on stage by Queen frontman Freddie Mercury has sold at auction for £18,000, or about $22,455.
Mercury wore the miniature garment during several performances, “most notably on stage during the encore for Queen’s second sold-out night at the Birmingham Exhibition Centre” on December 6th, 1980, when the band was at the height of its popularity. Queen’s fan club secretary Jacky Gunn referred to the shorts in a 1992 biography, writing that they “didn’t leave much to the imagination, but no one complained.”
“[Mercury] decided to try to shock the audience with his stage outfit for the encore: the shortest, tightest pair of black leather shorts he could find,” Gunn and co-author Jim Jenkins wrote. A fan later purchased them at a Queen Fan Club auction in Southport in 1993.
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Omega Auctions had originally estimated the value of the Freddie Mercury shorts at just £8,000 (about $9,979) and called the sale price “incredible.” The auction also included a poster for the first-ever Sex Pistols concert in 1975, which sold for £34,700, or about $43,285.
The sale came just one day ahead of an announcement that Mary Austin, one of Mercury’s oldest friends, will auction off a collection of 1,500 items belonging to the late musician, including his handwritten working lyrics to “We Are The Champions”, a red velvet and rhinestone crown he wore on stage, and the telephone he kept beside his bed.
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