Judy Garland’s hometown hopes a good witch will help purchase Dorothy’s ruby slippers

GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. — This weekend, Grand Rapids, Minnesota will honor its best-known former resident — Judy Garland.

And at its annual Judy Garland Festival, the city will fundraise to bring back a prized prop that the actress made famous. But, it won’t be an easy stroll down the Yellow Brick Road.

Minnesota lawmakers set aside $100,000 this year to help the Judy Garland Museum purchase the coveted ruby slippers of “The Wizard of Oz” fame. Experts expect the shoes could sell for a much higher price.

“They could sell for $1 million, they could sell for $10 million. They're priceless,” says Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions executive vice president.

The ruby slippers are one of four sets remaining.

This pair’s unique story

The shoes were on display at Garland’s namesake museum in Grand Rapids in the summer of 2005 when a burglar struck. John Kelsch, the museum director at the time, says a man broke in through the back door and snatched the slippers.

All that was left behind was a single sparkling red sequin.

“It was devastating,” Kelsch says. “Unfortunately, local people thought that the museum benefited somehow from it, that we got the insurance money, which was not the case at all.”

Investigators spent years searching for the missing slippers before they recovered them during a sting operation in Minneapolis in 2018.

Curators at the Smithsonian Museum then compared the shoes to another pair on display in Washington D.C. to ensure they were authentic.

Earlier this year, the slippers were returned to their owner Michael Shaw, who had loaned them to the Grand Rapids museum, during a private ceremony.

The slippers will go on a world tour with stops in Beverly Hills, New York, London and Tokyo before coming up for auction at