Sotheby's achieved a white-glove auction of Bing Crosby's personal collection in New York, selling all 100% of lots for $6.7 million against an estimate of $3.9–$6.3 million. Highlights included musical arrangements from Crosby's 1954 film *White Christmas* ($19,050), a Tiffany & Co cigarette box gifted by John F. Kennedy ($15,240), a Sheraton-style grand piano from *High Society* ($95,250), and a Fabergé sapphire mouse ($355,600). Top prices were led by paintings by Sir Alfred James Munnings ($1.2 million) and Charles Marion Russell.
The sale underscores the strength of single-owner auctions at Sotheby's new Breuer building headquarters, which generated $1.2 billion in November alone from major collections including the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, the Pritzker Collection, and the Exquisite Corpus Collection. Across Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips, single-owner private collection sales in New York last month reached $962 million, up 132% year-on-year and representing 43% of total revenue, highlighting the market's growing reliance on celebrity and estate collections.