If you didn’t succeed the first time in your bid to spend eternity in a crypt above Marilyn Monroe, try again.

That’s what the auction team handling the sale of the crypt is saying, after a previous eBay sale for $4.6 million fell through in August.

Eric Gazin, president of AuctionCause.com, told Reuters he believes there may have been some qualified bidders in the first eBay auction, but that there was no system in place to determine who really had the cash for the crypt, which is located at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

This time around, the sale will also be on eBay, but bidders will have to be ready to make a deposit of 1 to 5 percent of the cost of the crypt, and they will have to prove that they have sufficient funds to buy it.

The crypt is expected to sell for millions of dollars.

And the auctioneer has more details on Richard Poncher, the man who bought the space above Marilyn Monroe’s crypt from Monroe’s ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, after meeting the baseball slugger at a Beverly Hills restaurant. Poncher had a yearning for the crypt because he wanted to have in death what he never had in life, the chance to be face down on top of Marilyn Monroe, which is how his family placed him when he died in 1986.

It turns out buying the crypt was not the only bright idea that Poncher had in a long life as an entrepreneur. Gazin said that in the 1920s, Poncher was living in Chicago and learned that an armored car company was going out of business. Sensing an opportunity, he approached Al Capone and obtained a loan from the gangster to build armored cars for him.

“He literally became a friend of Al Capone’s in the ’20s,” Gazin said.

After World War II, Poncher was one of the first business men to import Japanese electronics, and in the 1970s he owned a company for making and selling wigs, Gazin said.

The auction will happen starting on Monday on eBay, and will run through Oct. 29. More information on the auction and on Richard Poncher is available at this website set up by the sellers. Elsie Poncher, the widow of Richard Poncher, reportedly planned to use sales from the crypt to pay off the mortgage of her home and provide for her adult children. Richard Poncher paid less than $10,000 for the crypt when he bought it in the late 1960s, Gazin said.

“I’m convinced that he would love the attention that this is bringing, and he would be thrilled that a business investment he made over 40 years ago now would be cashed in and provide for his family, that would bring him an immense amount of happiness,” Gazin said.

What would Marilyn Monroe herself think?

It’s been more than 15 years since grunge-rock pioneer Kurt Cobain took his own life, but the late Nirvana frontman’s legacy appears to be alive and well.

A Sears-model bass guitar owned by Cobain as a teenager sold for $43,750 at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday.

According to the auction house, Cobain used the instrument on two early demo recordings he made at his aunt Mari Earl’s house near Seattle during his pre-Nirvana days.

The demos, one recorded under the moniker Organized Confusion in 1982 and another in 1985 under the name Fecal Matter, are rare to all but the most die-hard Cobain fans.

But one song entitled “Spank Thru” from the 1985 recordings went on to become a staple of Nirvana’s live set and was featured on several of the band’s releases. The tune also became Nirvana’s first official song, according to former Cobain bandmate Krist Novoselic.

The auctioned-off bass is accompanied by a picture of a young Cobain playing the instrument and a letter of authenticity from Mari Earl.

Cobain was catapulted into international stardom after Nirvana’s major-label debut Nevermind became a huge success on mainstream music charts. The department-store bass stands as a humble contrast to the stable of Fender-brand guitars Cobain came to swear by as the frontman for Nirvana.

(Photo: REUTERS/Lee Celano)

Remember the “Seinfeld” episode where Kramer retrieved the set of “The Merv Griffin Show” from the trash and miraculously installed it in his apartment? 
    
Fans of the late television impresario will also be able to salvage some of Griffin’s belongings when a California auction house puts them up for sale on Sunday. Griffin’s son Tony is unloading antiquities, fine furnishings and contemporary art from his father’s three homes in California.

From humble origins as a nightclub singer and bandleader, Merv Griffin built an entertainment empire around his game shows “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” He also hosted his own TV talk show and invested heavily in real estate. He died of prostate cancer in 2007, aged 82.
    

Oakland, Calif.-based Clars Auction Gallery estimates the total value of the 200 lots at a minimum of $282,000. The priciest item, estimated at between $30,000 and $50,000, is a 1926 oil painting of a California harbor by landscape artist Paul Starrett Sample. A chainsaw-carved plywood and acrylic diptych by contemporary abstract artist Charles Arnoldi is estimated to fetch between $10,000 and $20,000. 
    
For lesser-heeled fans, Clars has cleaned out Griffin’s closet. Dozens of tuxedos, suits, shirts, sweaters, pants and t-shirts are on the block, starting at $100 per lot. Griffin’s numerous Emmys are not included in the sale, but a Perspex statuette dubbed the Celanese Meridian Award did make the cut, priced at a mere $100-$200. Other tchotchkes include movie posters, a photo of one of Griffin’s horses, and a life-size chimpanzee prop.
    
Clars president Redge Martin said Griffin had “exquisite” taste, and that the auction was drawing interest from Griffin’s high-powered Hollywood friends.
    
Martin said the recession seems to have had little impact on auction sales of high-end furniture, jewelry and art. “There’s still a lot of money out there,” he said.

OK, there are some artists out there who are considered to be pretty special. Michelangelo could carve a mean nude and Picasso was quite good at painting in blue. But visiting a new exhibition this week made me wonder whether the most important factor in an artist’s success or otherwise is none other than Lady Luck?

Mat Collishaw was part of the “Young British Artists” brat pack in the 1990s, and had a relationship with one of its leading lights Tracey Emin. Like his contemporaries, his art had the power to shock and disturb. His ideas, it seems to me, were no less interesting than his peers’, and his technical ability on a par. And yet, while Hirst, and to a lesser extent, Emin rose to superstardom and considerable wealth, others like Collishaw did not.

Hirst, in some ways, is the Warhol of his time, with a keen eye on what the media and collectors like Charles Saatchi can do for his profile. He is also seen by some as a genius who developed a new way of making art. Perhaps he deserves more credit than he tends to get for amassing a personal fortune estimated at over $250 million.

But at the same time the question lingers – is Hirst really any better than Collishaw, or, for that matter, any other of his contemporaries who have receded into relative obscurity? If not, then did he just get lucky?