Black Heritage Auction recently announced the sale of several items owned by Tupac Shakur, including a worn nose stud, handwritten lyrics and his New York prisoner identification card. But the estate of his late mother, Afeni Shakur, who died of a heart attack May 2, 2016, has filed a lawsuit to stop the auctioning of Tupac’s items.
According to TMZ, Shakur’s estate attorney Howard King stated that the items being auctioned were obtained through a third-party source that did not have ownership rights, therefore making the auction illegal.
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based auction house said that it didn’t reach out to Shakur’s estate because it didn’t think it had to, since it assumed it had received the items legally. There are a total of 39 items being auctioned, which could net the company millions.
Tupac will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Snoop Dogg next month.