Sting's upmarket car boot sale to fetch £1.4 million

Sting and Trudie Styler are selling some of the contents of their St James' Park mansion, ahead of their move into Battersea Power Station. Star lots include - a Steinway piano that could fetch £30,000 - and artworks by the likes of Picasso and Matisse.

The couple has already sold their £19 million mansion, and are downsizing their belongings in order to move into an apartment in Battersea Power Station. Making room when you're a multi-millionaire, sometimes means parting with incredibly valuable pieces.

The art

The auction on 24 February is packed with more than 150 fine artworks and pieces. The most expensive is expected to be a contemporary artwork by Ben Nicholson called March 55 (amethyst), which is expected to fetch anything up to £500,000.

Other treasures include Pablo Picasso's lithograph, Le Corsage a Carreaux (worth up to £50,000); Henri Matisse's Jazz portfolio (worth up to £350,000), a Keith Haring which could fetch up to £100,000, a sketch by Gustav Klimt valued at up to £40,000, Mapplethorpe photographs including one of lilies valued at up to £50,000, a drawing by Rene Magritte valued at up to £15,000, and an Andy Warhol fish-themed work valued at up to £12,000.

Sting and Trudie Styler are also selling iconic furniture including lamps, mirrors and chairs. They are classics of their period, and priced as such. A George Jouve lamp, for example, is expected to sell for as much as £12,000.

The fortune

Of course, these are just estimates, and there's no telling how much some fans will pay for a piece of pop memorabilia. The piano, for example, may be valued at £30,000, but given that the Steinway that John Lennon wrote Imagine on was sold in 2009 for a reported £1.3 million, there's a reasonable chance it will fetch far more.

Christie's, the auction house, is working hard to cash in on the celebrity link. The couple used these artworks like every-day pieces of furniture and decoration. The estate agent photos from the sale of their mansion, for example, show that a couple of Yves Klein tables valued at up to £30,000 each were used side-by-side as coffee tables by the fire in the lounge.

The catalogue therefore shows the pieces dotted around their former home, while the art is displayed in mocked up rooms - hung in the same position as when they were in the property.

It's easy to see how Christie's can easily ramp up attention on this auction, and push the total expected sale profits from around £1.4 million to anything up to ten times this amount.

Why?

For anyone worried about why the famous couple is downsizing, the auction house has written in its literature that Trudie and Sting just want a fresh start in a new place, and the opportunity to collect new works.

It's safe to say that the move, and the sale, won't constitute any kind of hardship for the couple, who can stand to live without one of their many mansions.

They also own a 16th century Lake House in Wiltshire, where they spend the majority of their time when in the UK - so the London mansion was arguably a bit big for their needs anyway.

In addition they have a $27 million penthouse in New York overlooking Central Park and a 16th century estate in Tuscany (which is also rented as a wedding venue). So they are unlikely to be short of a wall or two to hang their art on in the immediate future.

But what do you think? Will you be popping along for a look? And would you fancy owning a slice of this celebrity couple's art collection? Let us know in the comments.