Auctions of celebrity memorabilia are inevitably filled with a trace of the macabre. Certain trinkets show all too clearly the depressingly normal affairs of an icon. Two expired California driver’s licenses on the block at Christie’s sale of property from Marlon Brando’s estate next Thursday show an old man with wispy white hair. There are yellowed charge cards for Bullocks, Montgomery Ward, Sam’s Club, and DVDs of “Blazing Saddles” and “Citizen Kane.”

Other items hint at heartbreaking stories. In 1957, Jack Kerouac wrote Marlon Brando a letter, gently begging him to buy the movie rights for “On the Road” and to star. “All I want out of this,” he wrote, “is to be able to establish myself and my mother a trust fund for life, so I can really go roaming about the world writing.” The letter is estimated to sell for $5,000 to $7,000. But Brando may have never replied; a postcard by Kerouac, sold among his letters at Christie’s in 1998, reads: “I wrote a long letter to Brando about my ideas and no answer.”

Artifacts from Brando’s reclusive late life, spent among his Japanese prints and African statuettes, pad the beginning of the sale, which has a total estimate of around $1 million. These include walking sticks and dressing robes, doodles and books, bongo drums, and even two used Lexus sedans. Brando died last July at the age of 80.

The sale’s highlights are on paper: letters and scripts with handwritten notes in the margins. Two working scripts for 1963’s “Mutiny on the Bounty,” estimated at $6,000 to $8,000, include extensive comments by Brando on his character’s motivations, while Brando’s annotated working script for “The Godfather” is estimated to sell for between $10,000 and $15,000. A letter from Francis Ford Coppola to the actor, estimated to sell for between $8,000 and $12,000, apologizes for the director’s distraction while working on the “nightmare” movie.

Enthusiasm for remnants of an extraordinary life can run high. A 1999 sale of property from Marilyn Monroe’s estate at Christie’s had a presale estimate of $2 million and went on to make $13.4 million. Buyers tend to be fans and collectors who go after certain areas such as scripts or costumes, said the Christie’s specialist in charge of the sale, Helen Bailey. “In fact, it’s usually not people in the business,” she said.

If acquiring a piece of Marilyn is like being able to possess sex itself, Brando’s belongings give buyers a small share of theatrical and cinematic history. In 1951, the 27-year-old stage actor changed cinema, electrifying audiences as the volcanic Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “People were seeing an entirely different kind of acting,” said film critic Amy Taubin. Brando brought realism to the screen. He was also, Ms. Taubin pointed out, “a new kind of masculine sex icon in the postwar era.”

Ms. Bailey went to the actor’s house on Mulholland Drive not long after Brando died, at the request of his estate. The film memorabilia was all in a garage-sized locker on the property. “I spent three days going through the lockup and discovered about half the sale,” said Ms. Bailey. “Not many people knew he’d kept all this stuff. He had insisted in interviews that his film career meant nothing to him.”

In addition to an Oscar nomination for 1954’s “On the Waterfront,” estimated to sell for between $7,000 and $9,000, Brando kept scripts at various stages for most films, from 1958’s “The Young Lions” to 2001’s “The Score”; handwritten letters from Mario Puzo and Elizabeth Taylor; and his dinner jacket for 1990’s “Godfather” parody, “The Freshman,” estimated at $6,000 to $8,000. Estimates for scripts from key films – especially working scripts that are annotated – tend to be a few thousand dollars higher than those from, say, 1964’s “Bedtime Story” or 1997’s “The Brave.”

The prices represent a kind of popular critical assessment of Brando’s work. “It’s as if there was a blanket decision to say he phoned it in at the end,” said film scholar Kent Jones, who will be moderating a discussion on Brando at Christie’s on Tuesday evening.” But there were some late films he was good in, some where he wasn’t. I think he’s hilarious in ‘The Freshman.’ He commits.”

“The Personal Property of Marlon Brando” at Christie’s June 30 at 12 p.m. (20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-492-5485). Exhibition: June 25-29.