The Notorious B.I.G.’s Crown Sells for Nearly $600,000 at Auction

The Notorious B.I.G.'s gem-adorned crown has sold for big money—pun intended—at Sotheby's Auction House.

On Tuesday (Sept. 15), the largest broker of fine and decorative art, jewelry, real estate and collectibles announced that the crown worn by Biggie Smalls in the famous "King of New York" photo shoot sold for nearly three times its originally estimated value. The gold plastic crown, which features multicolor stones that Smalls once wore, went for nearly $600,000 at the first-ever auction dedicated to hip-hop.

The crown sold for $594,750. A person who attended the auction also shared video footage of the bidding on her cell phone via Twitter.

The headpiece, which was signed by both Biggie and Barron Claiborne, the shoot's photographer in 1997, was the highest-priced item in the auction hosted by Sotheby's. Besides being worn by the "Juicy" rhymer, it's also the same piece of memorabilia he donned before being killed three days later in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997.

A week before the auction, Sotheby's senior specialist Cassandra Hatton told Reuters, "I think that crown is one of the most recognizable symbols of hip hop, 20th-century culture. Everybody around the world recognizes this crown. You see it on T-shirts. You see it on coffee cups and prayer candles. It’s huge."

Back in late August, when the auction's announcement was first made, the crown was projected to sell for $200,000 to $300,000. Nonetheless, according to The Washington Post, other hip-hop-related artifacts, including handwritten letters by Tupac Shakur, were also sold at last night's auction. The unpublished letters from ’Pac to a high school sweetheart sold for $60,000.