Some of Margaret Mitchell’s belongings, ‘Gone with the Wind’ memorabilia being auctioned off

BUFORD, Ga. — The chair Margaret Mitchell sat in to write “Gone with the Wind” will go to the highest bidder.

The author of the masterpiece left behind a few personal items, and Steve Slotin and Slotin Folk Art Auction in Buford has been hired to sell some of them.

Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen spoke with Slotin who says his life’s work has been in the auction business.

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“We sell what is disappearing in America, what is being lost over time,” Slotin said.

In this case, that’s “Gone with the Wind.”

“I think ‘Gone with the Wind’ is always going to be an American masterpiece,” he said.

Mitchell wrote the Pulitzer Prize winner during the late 1920s and early 1930s in a tiny three-room flat along Peachtree Street in midtown Atlanta. For years, the apartment building as a whole has been known as the Margaret Mitchell House.

“People wanted to see the place where the novel was written. It’s pretty amazing because it’s a very big book written in a very small space,” local historian Howard Pousner said.

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The family that purchased the items back in 2006 has decided to let them go. Slotin says metro Atlanta museums have not expressed much interest, so the general public will have a chance to bid on Mitchell’s personal chair, footstool, china, photo with movie star Clark Gable, ticket stubs from the film’s 1939 premiere, and much more.

“Her first aid kit, an orange juice squeezer, and her heater, and many typical knick-knacks. Margaret Mitchell did not sit on a golden throne to write this book. This is very simple, very commonplace furniture. But it was what she lived with,” Slotin said.

The online auction is this weekend. To see the items up for bid, click here.

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