Supersonic price at Concorde sale

Concorde's famous nose was the star lot

A nose cone from one of the Concorde airliners has been sold for more than $500,000 at auction in Paris.

It had been expected to fetch just over $11,000 in the sale of more than 200 items of memorabilia.

Air France, which with British Airways was the only airline to operate the aircraft, organised the charity sale.

But the rarity value of parts of newly decommissioned Concordes saw some pieces reach more than 100 times their initial estimates.

It is only a few weeks since Concorde stopped flying after 27 years of commercial service.

There may be little practical use in a two-metre sheet of white metal fuselage, a piece of tinted windscreen or a complete set of maintenance records.

Items up for sale Olympus 593 engines 3.5 metre nose-cone Machmeter Crew seats Designer porcelain Maintenance records Bespoke tool-kits Photographs Scale models

But most of the items are, however, were seen as eminently collectable.

A speedometer valued at just 300 euros ($350) sold for 11,000 euros.

A pilot's seat estimated at 1,000 euros sold for 42,300 euros; an Olympus 593 engine went for 151,250 euros; and a machometer bearing a read-out of Concorde's cruising speed of Mach 2.02 went for 94,000 euros.

'Unique plane'

Most of the lots has been valued at less than $100.

But bargain-hunters hoping for a cheap piece of aviation history began to leave in droves as soon as it became clear the experts had drastically underestimated the prices.

"I'm giving up. I must have been too naive," said Netherlands businesswoman Marleen Gottendieck who had been hoping to buy a 12-piece crockery set for her collection of in-flight kitchenware.

"With these prices I don't stand a hope."

A second auction of items from the BA fleet go on sale in London on 1 December.

Paris crash

BA is donating the first £500,000 profits from the auction to the children's charity Get Kids Going!

The very last Concorde flight will be from Heathrow, via the Bay of Biscay, to Filton, Bristol, on 26 November.

It was from Filton, in April 1969, that Concorde first flew in the UK, and it was there that the plane was manufactured.

Several Concordes have gone to their final resting places to be preserved for posterity, including one to Manchester Airport and two others to museums in America - in New York and Seattle.

Two have not flown since the devastating Air France Concorde crash of July 2000, which claimed 113 lives.

One of these will go on show at Heathrow, and the other will be taken to the Scotland Museum of Flight in Edinburgh.