Streisand Items Don’t Go for a Song : Auction: Fans pay hundreds of dollars for some of the singer’s household goods in a kind of high-class garage sale.

Mary Griffin, a very serious Streisand fan, was a few minutes too late.

Had she gotten to the auction house just a hair earlier Sunday morning, had she registered a few minutes sooner, she would have been able to bid on Barbra Streisand’s Art Deco decanter.

That was the item she had really wanted, but it was first on the list and was sold before she could take her seat.

Not that she went away empty-handed from this auction of trinkets from Streisand’s Malibu homes. She paid $225 for a Streisand clock and $350 for a small red Streisand tray.

“I’m nuts,” said Griffin, who flew down from the San Francisco Bay Area just for this auction. “The trip was definitely worth it.”

Griffin has been doing a lot of traveling--and spending--these days in the name of Streisand. She has been to two of Streisand’s long-awaited concerts and will be flying to New York for a third and to Anaheim for a fourth.

“I’m a real fan,” she said in a bit of understatement. “For women, she just signifies that you can have it all. She got where she is with guts and raw talent.”

Such were the people who showed up Sunday morning at A. N. Abell’s Auction Co. in Commerce to have a look at what Streisand was selling off. It was a kind of high-class garage sale, odds and ends from the four Malibu houses the famed singer and actress has donated to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

There was, for instance, the green mink vest and stork bookends and an electric hot fudge container and a toaster. There were vases and pitchers and even five tobacco pipes, more than 100 items in all that Streisand is selling. (An old Philco radio had been on sale as well, but Streisand called before the auction began to say she didn’t want to sell it after all.)

“We’ve got to sell her things quick, before she changes her mind,” said auctioneer Bob Abell.

And so Abell got right to work, starting with 11 Streisand items before moving on to other, pricier things that were also being sold from other estates. Then he would return to more items marked “Streisand” in the catalogue.

It was clear that having the Streisand name attached to them made people outrageously inflate their bids. Take, for instance, the pipes that went for $175, or the chrome toaster that sold for $90.

“You know, I’ve been in this business for almost 50 years, and I can tell you that I have never sold a toaster for $90,” said Abell.

Gary Fabrizi, a non-fan, was standing outside smoking a cigarette soon after the toaster sold.

“You can come here any other time and find the exact same thing, but at a fraction of the price,” he said.

But that did not matter to the people inside who were there for their own little piece of Streisand. Tom Colwell, who works in the data processing department at Warner Bros., paid $100 for a chrome-and-wood coffee set and $35 for a waffle iron.

“I figured, now when I make breakfast, I will think of her,” said Colwell. “The waffle iron was a really good deal. I thought it would go for much more than that.”

Colwell said he was also interested in item 417, an amber glass vase, and item 597, an acrylic box with the initials BJS . He said he didn’t have a limit on how much he would allow himself to spend.

“If I really want it, I’ll get it,” he said.

Then there was Veronica Loos, wearing a black hat emblazoned with “Barbra, The Concert.” She paid $150 for a broken porcelain lamp and cared not a whit that she may have overpaid by about $140.

“I’m a big fan,” said Loos, “and I wanted to have a piece of her collection.”