KFC founder Colonel Sanders’ personal items, former home and restaurant up for auction

SHELBYVILLE, Ky. (AP) — KFC founder Colonel Sanders' pressure cooker, black bow tie and dozens of other personal items are up for public auction Tuesday night, along with his former home and a dinner house Sanders opened after selling his iconic restaurant chain.

Harland Sanders, still known as the face of the worldwide chain originally known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, established the Shelbyville property as the first headquarters of his restaurant business in the late 1950s.

He sold the property, which included his home and the Claudia Sanders Dinner House, to Tommy and Cherry Settle in 1974, who have run the restaurant since then.

“Colonel Sanders was the original celebrity chef,” said Bill Menish, whose firm, The Menish Group, is conducting the auction.

“The feedback has been worldwide, so we needed to have an auction that would cater to that worldwide audience.”

Online pre-bidding concludes with a live, in-person auction for the Sanders memorabilia on Tuesday evening.

Sealed bids for the restaurant and Sanders’ former 5,000-square-foot (465-square-metre) home, which he named Blackwood Hall, will be taken until Friday.

Sanders’ personal watches, an original cash register, his cutlery set, a bust sculpted by his daughter and a commercial gas range from the colonel’s former residence are among the items up for bidding.

The bust had a bid of US$4,400 on Tuesday morning, and the cash register was bidding at US$5,000.

Sanders sold KFC in 1964 to a group of investors, but continued as a brand ambassador for the company.

Menish called Sanders a “marketing genius” for creating the character of the colonel.

“He didn’t dress like that before he was starting to build Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Menish said.

“He adopted the colonel: the clothes, the bow tie, the glasses, the goatee.”

One of the most intriguing pieces could be a personal 1964 planner with a handwritten herbs and spices recipe that was later the subject of an early 2000s lawsuit filed by the KFC Corp. to keep the contents private.

KFC later dropped the legal action, saying after reviewing the planner the ingredients didn’t match Sanders’ secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and was likely for a stuffing recipe.

“What a keepsake,” Menish said.

The current high bid Tuesday was for a 1955 certificate naming Sanders as an honourary Kentucky Colonel that is fetching US$7,500 so far.

One of Sanders’ signature black bow ties is also up for auction. The highest online bid for the tie was more than US$4,000 on Tuesday.

Auctioneer Jonathan Klunk said there’s a little-known secret behind the bow tie.

“Not a lot of people know; he did wear clip-ons,” Klunk said.

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