It Turns Out No One Wants a $500K T-Rex Leather Bag

A handbag made of T. rex skin just learned that the fashion market can be cold-blooded. The lab-grown "leather" purse, made using collagen from a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex femur found in Montana, was expected to fetch up to about $500,000 at Paris auction house Drouot—but bidding stalled around $150,000 and the item went unsold, reports the AFP.

The piece, unveiled this spring in Amsterdam, was billed by auctioneers Giquello as a one-off created through biotechnology that coaxes cell cultures into producing what one paleontology expert called "genuine T. rex skin" in the lab. Unlike most so-called vegan leather, noted Iacopo Briano, "it's derived from a cell culture, so it's 100 percent skin. And at the same time, it comes from an animal that went extinct 67 million years ago!" With no prior comparable sales, the high estimate was essentially a guess.