Once upon a time, The Notorious B.I.G. declared himself the “King Of New York” in a now iconic photoshoot, the results of which have graced magazines, canvases, mixtape covers, and even the villain’s lair in Netflix’s Luke Cage series. Now, you can own a piece of hip-hop history — but only if you have a spare $200,000 laying around.
Sotheby’s auction house announced a new auction today to take place September 15 in New York, where Biggie’s plastic crown from the King Of New York photoshoot — his last photoshoot before being killed in 1997 — is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $300,000. Of course, it wouldn’t be right to auction off Biggie paraphernalia without also putting some Tupac up for sale as well.
An archive of Tupac’s handwritten high school love letters is also available, estimated between $60,000 and $80,000 in value. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Queens Public Library‘s hip-hop programs, as well as Building Beats, a music-based non-profit focused on DJing and production.
Earlier this year, Biggie garnered headlines as a new, unreleased verse surfaced on a new project by Statik Selektah. More recently, Snoop Dogg recalled his last conversation with Biggie in an interview with Fatman Scoop, revealing Big’s thoughts on Tupac’s then-recent murder.