The safe from which Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson’s famous 1996 sex tape was stolen went over the counter at Julien’s Auctions. Lee signed it in advance.
It is the best-selling sex tape in history: recorded on a Hi8 cassette, intimate recordings from the vacation of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and top model Pamela Anderson. They recorded this in the summer of 1995. In early 1996, the film was stolen from a safe and leaked on the Internet. This safe has now been sold at auction.
Cheap price for scandal safe
The safe, which dealt a major blow to Pamela Anderson’s career, was sold at Julien’s Auctions’ Played, Worn & Torn auction for a total of just $2,560. It was once located in a hole in the ground beneath Tommy Lee’s home studio in the couple’s Malibu home. Lee himself signed the safe in advance with the words “This is the unsafe that ruined my life”.
The theft and its consequences
The scandal surrounding the leaked sex tape became known worldwide. In early 1996, Lee and Anderson discovered the tape had been stolen. The suspect was the electrician Rand Gauthier, who was staying at the couple’s house to do handicraft work and, as a former porn actor, had good contacts in the adult industry. The tape was distributed globally in a very short space of time, primarily through its publication on the still new medium of the Internet by the company “Internet Entertainment Group”. Lee and Anderson sued for the equivalent of ten million euros and lost in court. The justification was based on the fact that the two were public figures and public figures and therefore distribution of such a film was not illegal.
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Guitar legends under the hammer
Music from other big names in the industry was also sold at the auction. Keith Richards’ 1960 Gibson Les Paul guitar sold for $192,000 and Adam Clayton’s basses sold for $50,000 each. Several guitars belonging to Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett also sold for between $75,000 and $160,000, including the instrument he played at the “Back to the Beginning” concert in July 2025.