Ring of US rapper Tupac sold for more than a million dollars

A crown-shaped ring, designed and worn by California rap legend Tupac Shakur shortly before his assassination in 1996, fetched more than $1 million at a hip-hop auction.

The gold jewel, adorned with rubies and diamonds, is now the most expensive object related to hip-hop ever acquired at auction, according to Sotheby’s, which organized the sale on the internet.

“It’s a ring designed by Tupac. He had just come out of a period of incarceration in 1996 (for sexual assault, editor’s note), during which he read ‘The Prince’, by Machiavelli, a book that fascinated him,” Cassandra Hatton, head of science and popular culture at Sotheby’s, told AFP.

The jewel sold for exactly 1,016,000 dollars, including fees and commission, much more expensive than its initial estimate, between 200,000 and 300,000 dollars.

New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, celebrates this summer the 50th anniversary of the birth of this movement, which was born in the ghettos of the Bronx and has become a ubiquitous culture and brewing billions of dollars.