"Sue" sale results

Jeff Poling

"Sue" the T. rex sold today, October 4, 1997, at Sotheby's New York office for a whopping $8.3 million.

According to Sotheby's bid department, Mr. Richard Grey, president of the Art Dealer's Association, acted as agent for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The top bid was $7.6 million, with a total price, after factoring in the buyer's premium and taxes, of $8,362,500.

Bidding began promptly at 10:15am. Within 30 seconds, bidding had exceeded expectations with nine bidders battling for ownership of "Sue." The bidding lasted only eight minutes before the Field Museum made the top bid. John McCarter, president of the Field Museum, refused to state just how high the museum had planned to go. "[Our maximum bid] was carefully determined. But I have no comment beyond that."

The Field Museum ultimately outbid two other museums, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Dallas Museum of Natural History, and at least one private collector who planned to donate "Sue" to a museum. The private collector may have been Rapid City, South Dakota businessman and philanthropist Dr. Stanford M. Adelstein. Adlestein planned to give "Sue" to the private museum run by the non-profit organization started by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, the discoverers of "Sue" who lost the fossil in court battles over its ownership. "Sue" is named for Black Hills associate Susan Hendrickson.

The museum will pay off the purchase with a three-year interest-free installment plan offered by Sotheby's to any U.S. institution that purchased the fossil. The money will be held in trust by the U.S. government on behalf of "Sue"'s seller, Maurice Williams of South Dakota.

Backers of the purchase include McDonald's, Walt Disney World and the California State University system. Disney will receive a replica of "Sue" to exhibit in its Animal Kingdom exhibit at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. McDonald's and Ronald McDonald House supplied money for purchase of "Sue," plus money to build at the Field Museum a public, glassed-in facility, to be called McDonald's Fossil Preparatory Laboratory, where the work of cleaning and preparing "Sue" can be observed on a day-to-day basis. McDonald's will also get two replicas of "Sue" which will tour the US and the world as part of the company's millennium promotional campaign. The California State University system's financial support purchased access to "Sue" for some California-based dinosaur scientists.

The museum plans to have the completed and mounted specimen on public display in the year 2000.

1. Associated Press. 1997. Unique T. rex fossil fetches $8.4 million. The Columbus Dispatch, 5 October, sec. A, 3.
2. Bid Department, Sotheby's Inc. Telephone interview with the author. Dublin, 4 October 1997.
3. Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. Press release. (via public e-mail to the Dinosaur Mailing List, 30 September 1997, "Black Hills Institute," from George Winters)
4. D.I.G. Re: Sue sale details!! Public e-mail to the Dinosaur Mailing List, 5 October 1997.
5. Woolf, Jonathon. Re: Sue sale details!! Public e-mail to the Dinosaur Mailing List, 5 October 1997.