The estate of John Laws and his wife, Caroline, has announced a multimillion-dollar auction of the broadcaster’s personal collection, along with major cultural gifts to the Art Gallery of NSW and the Powerhouse Museum. The sale, through Bonhams Australia, comes more than six months after Laws died in November 2025, aged 90.
Laws spent seven decades on air at stations including Sydney’s 2UE and 2SM, and at the height of his career he was pulling more than two million listeners a day to his morning show. Paul Keating once called him the broadcaster of the century, a measure of just how deeply he shaped Australian radio and public life.
Bonhams Australia described Laws as an erudite and discerning collector, and said the auction will cover 600 lots made up of 1000 items. The range is broad, from watches, Cartier and Montblanc pens, Hermès and Gucci accessories and Lalique glass to antique furniture, luxury desktop objects, Chinese antiquities, Art Deco glass, Australian paintings, rare natural-history books, decorative arts and period furniture.
Merryn Schriever said the collection reflected more than spending power. “In every sense he was maximalist connoisseur,” she said, adding that Laws was “a lover of the unabashedly luxurious, deeply traditional in some areas, but also eclectic and highly personal.” She said his tastes were visible in the way he assembled his home and in the objects he chose to live with every day, from craftsmanship-heavy pens and watches to polished, tactile pieces that announced themselves.
The estate is also parting with objects that are moving into public collections rather than the auction room. The Powerhouse Museum has formally acquired Laws’ gold-plated German Sennheiser microphone, which was placed next to his coffin at his state funeral at St Andrew’s Cathedral. Earlier this year, Powerhouse curators were invited to Laws’ residence to review a collection spanning his career, and selected objects tied to his achievements, including ARIAs and Commercial Radio Awards.
Lisa Havilah said Laws was “a key figure of Australian broadcasting” and said he “shaped the style of talk back radio as we know it today.” That makes the museum gifts more than memorabilia; they are a record of how one man’s voice helped define an era of Australian broadcasting, even as the family’s wider collection now moves into market view. The auction and the museum acquisitions together settle the question of what happens next: Laws’ legacy is being divided between private buyers and public institutions, with both parts now in motion.
