Melania Trump’s ‘Head of State’ auction items fail to reach bid threshold

Melania Trump, the former first lady of the United States, recently
put up three of her possessions for auction, only to fail at reaching the target
price of a $250,000 opening bid.

Melania, the wife of former President Donald Trump, had announced the
auction of her custom wide-brimmed hat earlier this month. She had worn the
hat during her meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. With a painting of herself wearing the hat and
its NFT (non-fungible token) also up for sale, the auction ended with merely
five bids on all the items, according to CNN.

A statement released by the Office of Melania Trump read,
“The auction winner will receive a personalized
letter from Mrs Trump, accompanying the hat and watercolor on paper and
certifying authenticity. The NFT will be minted on the Solana Blockchain.” 

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The auction
failed to reach its monetary threshold after Melania chose cryptocurrency as
the only way for interested bidders to pay at the bids. Each bid had a minimum
sum of 1,800 Solana tokens. According to Trump’s website, part of the auction
money raised would be given to a charity for foster children.

The
failure could be attributed to a shaky dive into the cryptocurrency market. According
to Daily Mail, Solana had been at a price of around $170 per token earlier this
month. Melania’s auction closed on Wednesday, with each token worth of $95.
This resulted in the collection being sold for nearly $170,000, which is
$80,000 short of the asking price.

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According to AFP, the white hat at the auction was
the work of Herve Pierre, a French American designer. Melania had worn it in
2018 when French president Emmanuel Macron and first lady Brigitte Macron visited
Washington.

The collection, named Head of State,
also included digital and real paintings of Melania wearing the brimmed hat.
The paintings were made by Marc-Antoine Coulon, a French artist based in Paris.