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In Las Vegas, closed Sahara sells off doorknobs, camel lamps

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If you wanted to own a piece of the shuttered Sahara casino, you’re too late. Owners of the Rat Pack-era resort where the Beatles once stayed have announced that their months-long, everything-must-go sale of more than 600,000 items has ended.

The liquidation sale is over, Vegas Inc. reports.

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Since June, buyers have taken home everything from the casino’s S-shaped, mosaic-glass doorknobs to its 700 desktop camel lamps, priced at $150 each. Even the bidets were for sale. A Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter watched as one woman paid for a giant picture of the Beatles -– and then learned that she would have to peel it off the wall of the House of Lords restaurant herself.

The sale marked a stunning fall for the onetime Strip jewel, which opened in the 1950s and had a cameo in the original “Ocean’s Eleven” movie. The onion-domed property aged poorly, in recent years offering little more to visitors than a roller coaster, $1 blackjack and a NASCAR Cafe known for its 6-pound burrito.

In 2007, SBE Entertainment, run by Los Angeles nightclub impresario Sam Nazarian, bought the property and vowed to restore its earlier sheen. Instead, the resort shut its doors in May, the victim of an economic freefall that has ravaged the Las Vegas Strip.

In an earlier interview with the Times, Nazarian said he was committed to reopening the resort in 2014 as an SLS hotel -– short for “style, luxury and service” -– though some observers are skeptical because of the Strip’s wobbly recovery.

The day the resort closed, Nazarian affixed a small handwritten sign to the casino’s main entrance:

‘Be Back Soon! Thank You For 59 Years.’

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--Ashley Powers in Las Vegas
Twitter.com/ashleypowers

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