Harper Lee letter trashing Trump casino sells for $3,926
A letter written by Harper Lee that saw the acclaimed novelist criticize one of Donald Trump's casinos in the 1990s, has sold for almost $4,000.
Admirers of the author bid fiercely, with one paying $3,926 and 25 cents, to secure a letter that saw Lee express her disdain for the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.
Lee said to close friend Doris Leapard that it would be the "worst punishment" for God to "make her spirit reside eternally" at the casino, owned at the time by billionaire Donald Trump.
The letter was written in August 1990, just a few months after the New Jersey-based casino had opened. The Trump Taj Mahal went through some financial trouble in the following year, and is now owned by business tycoon, Carl Icahn.
A total of 29 letters written and signed by the "To Kill a Mockingbird" author were put up for auction at the Los Angeles-based Nate D. Sanders auction house this week, with many receiving bids of over $1,000.
The author's letter that mentions Trump's casino wasn't the biggest seller of the night though.
Another letter written to Ms. Doris Leapard on the civil rights movement sold for $4,752 and 50 cents; with a total of 16 bids. In this correspondence, Lee thanked Leapard for sending her an autograph of Vivian Malone, who was one of the first black students to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963.
Other popular letters sold for more than $2,000 a piece, including a short note by Lee that revealed she had just had a stroke, and a letter to longtime fan Don Salter which discussed her cataract surgery and included the words "please don't put this on the internet or anything – I'd dread for it to bring more mail".
Twenty-four of Lee's letters to her close friends have sold for more than $33,000 put together. Despite the auction ending on Thursday night, a handful of the letters are still up for purchase on the auction's website.
Check out the full catalog from Nate D. Sanders Auction.
—By CNBC's Alexandra Gibbs, follow her @AlexGibbsy and @CNBCi