Auctions have become the stuff of drama. Prospective bidders perspire and competitively raise their bids, items glitter under the spotlight, and mysterious billionaires call in with their headache-inducing offers. By becoming the playground for the rich, auctions have fuelled the antiques industry, in the process transforming a number of items into the stuff of legend.

Take Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, for instance. When it came up for auction on May 4, 2010, at Christie’s, it attracted a winning bid of €76m, in the process becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. And it took just over eight minutes to sell.

But record bids don’t stop at paintings. In 1999, the curve-hugging dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang a sultry Happy Birthday Mr President to President John F Kennedy, fetched almost a million euros – the winning bid was made by a Manhattan-based collectible company called Gotta Have It. Apt enough name.

Roman-era antiquities always fetch high prices at auction. Yet no one could have predicted that a 2,000-year-old bronze sculpture unearthed in Rome in the 1920s would fetch almost €20m.

The statue of Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt, was sold at Sotheby’s and is, to date, the most expensive antiquity ever sold at auction.

What about furniture? In 2004, an 18th-century Florentine ebony chest inlaid with amethyst quartz, lapis lazuli and other precious stones was sold for €26m at a Christie’s auction.

This cabinet is certainly record-breaking – this bid broke a previous record for most expensive antique furniture item, which it had set in 1990 when it was bought by billionaire Barbara Piasecka Johnson for €12.5m.

While such antiques are worth investing in, sometimes the meaning of antiques gets stretched a bit too far. In 2002, a strand from Elvis Presley’s hair was sold at an online auction for €85,000. Talk of an expensive haircut.