Freddie Mercury’s younger sister reportedly spent millions in secret to buy back a number of her late brother’s treasured possessions at auction.
Kashmira Bulsara is said to have spent around £3m on lots at the high-profile Sotheby’s sale in 2023, which saw more than 1,400 of the Queen frontman’s belongings listed.
The auction was arranged by Mercury’s longtime friend and former fiance Mary Austin, who inherited the bulk of his estate following his death in 1991.
She donated part of the proceeds to the Elton John Aids Foundation and to the Mercury Phoenix Trust, an Aids charity set up by Mercury’s Queen bandmates and their manager Jim Beach.
According to The Sun, Bulsara was “upset” to see many of her brother’s possessions available to be bid on by strangers.
She apparently viewed the collection in private ahead of the auction before sending her personal assistant to Sotheby’s to bid on items in person, while she issued instructions over the phone.
Titled Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own, the auction far exceeded its original estimated total of £11.3m, ultimately closing with sales of £40m having attracted more than 140,000 visitors and buyers from more than 50 countries.
Sotheby’s recreated rooms from Mercury’s Kensington home, Garden Lodge, for the event held at their Bond Street headquarters.
Items for sale included handwritten lyrics and some of his famously flamboyant stage costumes, as well as his moustache comb, champagne bottles from his cellar, and paintings that once adorned his home including works by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.
Bulsara, 73, is said to have been the buyer of significant lots including Mercury’s Wurlitzer Model 850 jukebox, which sold for £406,400, and a hand-painted waistcoat featuring portraits of his beloved cats, which sold for £139,700.
Other successful bids included £457,000 on a military-style jacket designed for Mercury’s 39th birthday, and a set of draft lyrics to Queen’s 1974 classic “Killer Queen”, sold for £279,400.
“They had set aside a huge budget so were actually very happy with the final figure laid out, despite paying well over the estimated price for each one,” a source told the publication.
“Of course, Kashmira appreciates how adored Freddie was across the world, but she was saddened to think of some of his sentimental belongings not being with his loved ones.”
The Independent has contacted Bulsara’s representative for comment.
Speaking to the BBC when the auction was announced, Austin said: “The collection takes you deeper within the individual and the man I knew.”
She added: “You see the spectrum of his taste. It's a very intelligent, sophisticated collection.”
Bulsara would not be the first family member to buy a relative’s possessions at auction.
Julian Lennon, the son of Beatles star John Lennon and his first wife Cynthia Lennon, once claimed in a 1999 interview that he had to buy back his father’s letters and postcards – as well as ones he had sent to him – after the musician’s second wife Yoko Ono reportedly refused to give them to him.
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