ONE LINERS: Lion Inflation, Gift Card De-flation

One-line notes on the news & newsworthy

The Hollywood Memorabilia auction presented by the folks at Profiles in History found a bidder with a lot of courage, who paid $700,000 for the Cowardly Lion costume worn by Burt Lahr in "The Wizard of Oz"...If this wasn't enough to sate your appetite for Hollywoodiana, two more Tinseltown memorabilia auctions are on for this weekend in L.A. with collectibles from stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Charleton Heston, and the Cowardly Lion's favorite gal pal, Judy Garland, up for grabs...Speaking of Hollywood legends (and this is gonna take two lines), the Oscar that Karl Malden won for his performance as Mitch, the lonely man who falls for Blanche Dubois in Elia Kazan's cinematic version of "A Streetcar Named Desire," is a fake. The genuine article was replaced with a phony when the actor took the statue to its Chicago maker for re-plating back in 1985, with the whole mess coming to light when the real trophy was put up for auction in eBay this fall by a father and son now involved in a lawsuit over its rightful ownership (more)...Warren Hill, who was on the wrong end of a bogus bid of $155,406 for his one-of-a-kind acetate of the album The Velvet Undergound & Nico, has the item back up on eBay... Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas auctioned off a two-of-a-kind $1000 bill to an art collector who paid about $2.3 million for the U.S. bill printed in 1890...Avid toy collectors, especially of 1:18 diecast cars (Ertl, Corgi, Signature) will likely make good reading of Dave Caldwell's piece in Sunday's New York Times called "12 Worth Collecting"...In a move designed to lure talented workers by giving them a new way to cash in stock options, Google said this week that it will let employees sell their stock options in online auctions...In Paris on Friday, Christie's completed an unprecedented sale of a thousand lots of erotic literature belonging to a Swiss collector, to the tune of $7.5...Call it gift card deflation, but a Loyola Marymount University professor says to expect deep discounts on holiday gift cards by recipients looking to liquidate their presents via online auctions. 'Tis the season, alas.