An offer he couldn’t refuse: Sopranos diner booth sells for $82,600
More than 15 years after the cliffhanger final scene of The Sopranos screened in 2007, the classic American diner booth where it was filmed was sold at auction for a price that eventually cranked up to $82,600.
The TV mob drama, which the Guardian once described as “the most masterful show ever”, memorably saw the patriarch character Tony Soprano and his family sit in that booth in a New Jersey diner in the final scene of the series.
Soprano drops a quarter in the table-top jukebox and orders onion rings as he silently dreads a denouement. Then the show abruptly cuts to black.
On Monday night, that very booth, with deep red benches and a yellow Formica table in the real-life ice-cream parlor Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey, was sold, the New York Times reported.
A jukebox at Holsten’s, at a recreation of the famous booth. Photograph: Wayne Parry/AP
Co-owner Chris Carley had asked for opening bids on the online auction site eBay above $3,000 and reportedly aimed to get a price of $10,000 for the booth. He had hoped to put the earnings towards a renovation he was planning for the eatery. He was selling other furniture and memorabilia from his establishment, as it needed a makeover after more than 60 years in business, the Times reported.
Over 24 hours, bids crept up, and eventually the booth sold – without the jukebox – for $82,600, which will more than cover the cost of the renovation. The sale included the furniture and the booth divider that sports a plaque reserving it for the Soprano family.
Locals and tourists have always come in to Holsten’s asking to sit at the Soprano booth but it became an informal shrine after the actor James Gandolfini, AKA Tony Soprano, died suddenly at 51 in 2013.