Concorde's supersonic sale of the century
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Your support makes all the difference.For sale: two supersonic lavatory seats. Never used. Unrepeatable bargain at €600 (£300) a piece. Also for sale: a Concorde oxygen mask. A snip at €300 (oxygen not included).
Lovers of the Concorde, and collectors of expensive oddities, are expected to flock to Toulouse this weekend for the biggest ever auction of bits and pieces from the defunct supersonic airliner. More than 1,000 Concorde spare parts, from the warehouse of the planemaker Eads (once Aerospatiale) will be on offer from Friday.
If you want a real talking piece for your front room, you might consider a landing-gear set from Concorde, weighing one tonne (right-hand side, wheels not included) at €3,000. Or, if you want something more practical, you could go for a silver and porcelain Concorde breakfast place-setting at €300.
The Anglo-French aircraft never recovered commercially from the crash of one of the Air France Concordes near Paris in 2000. But the plane remains very popular. All of the 13 aircraft which retired in 2003 have been offered homes at museums or airports.
This weekend's sale, at the old grain hall in the centre of Toulouse, consists of parts which were left over when the Concorde era ended. Many of the 835 lots, including the lavatory seats, are said to be "in original wrappings". The auctioneer, Marc Labarbe, said: "Most of these objects have aesthetic qualities in their own right."
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