Collection of old Oscars to be auctioned

A Los Angeles auction house says it will sell a record 15 vintage Academy Awards statues to the highest bidder next week. The Oscars will be auctioned off Tuesday, just two days after Sunday's Academy Awards gala, and include tributes to winners for such classics as "Citizen Kane," "Wuthering Heights" and "How Green Was My Valley." Auctioneer Nate Sanders told the Los Angeles Times the sale was expected to bring in as much as $4 million in bids. The statues belong to an anonymous seller described only as a Los Angeles-area businessman. The Times said the Oscars were all for films released prior to 1950. It was after that year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began requiring winners to sign an agreement giving the academy the right to buy the statues for $1 before they were put up for sale. An Academy spokeswoman told the newspaper it opposed the sale on the grounds "Oscars should be won, not purchased," but added there were no legal grounds to halt the sale since the restrictions on sales were not implemented until 1950.