No roaring success: Lab-grown T-Rex leather bag goes unsold at Paris auction

PARIS, June 12 — A leather bag made from Tyrannosaurus rex cells failed to sell yesterday, the Paris auction house Drouot said, commenting that bids were well below expected.

Auctioneers Giquello had touted the “one-of-a-kind” piece to sell for more than US$500,000 (RM2 million) but bids barely broke the US$150,000 mark, said the Drouot house where the sale took place.

Unveiled in the spring in Amsterdam, the bag was created from traces of collagen from the femur of a T‑Rex found in the US state of Montana 25 years ago.

“In recent years, we’ve developed techniques — biotechnologies that allow us to instruct a cell culture to produce, so to speak, genuine T‑Rex skin in the laboratory,” Iacopo Briano, a palaeontology expert associated with the sale, recently told AFP.

He noted the material differs from vegan leather, which is mostly made from plastic.

“In this case, it’s derived from a cell culture, so it’s 100 percent skin. And at the same time, it comes from an animal that went extinct 67 million years ago!” he said.

With no precedent to go on, Alexandre Giquello, whose auction house is organising the sale, explained they had to “come up with a price” that would reflect both the amount of investment required to create the bag and its rarity.

Giquello estimated the value at between €300,000 and €500,000. — AFP