Titanic chair bidding

Brookline, May 7 (AP): A deck chair from the Titanic, taken as a souvenir before the ship’s fateful journey, is up for auction this weekend.

The worn beech wood recliner with the foldout footrest was reportedly snatched off the ocean liner by a newspaper photographer as a souvenir in Ireland on April 11, 1912, before the ship set off for the North Atlantic, where it sank. More than 1,500 people drowned.

The chair is estimated to sell for anything between $75,000 and $100,000. “It’s a $100 chair if it were not for the provenance, not for the history,” said Jon Baddeley, an auctioneer for the UK-based Bonhams & Butterfields, which will lead the bidding.