A box of papers and photographs from the 1950s, bought by the owner of a shop in the seaside town of Scheveningen, has turned out to contain a unique collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday.

The box, kept under a desk in the office of Bennies Fifties shop for 20 years, contains the archive of the Blue Book Model Agency, the agency at which Monroe began her modelling career.
Agency founder Emmeline Snively took the young Norma Jean Dougherty under her wing in 1945. ‘Correspondence in the box shows that years after Marilyn’s death, she had tried to sell her archive to writers, journalists and film makers but without success,’ Astrid Franse, who bought the box, told the paper.
Franse has now contacted auction houses in the US about selling the items and one is coming to see the collection. ‘But I don’t want to split it up and sell off the rarities – the photos that have never been published, the negatives and the signatures,’ she said.