The first ever copy of Playboy magazine is to go under the hammer - 62 years after it was printed.
The issue features Marilyn Monroe as centrefold and the first "Playboy Bunny", decked out in a smoking jacket with a pipe in his mouth.
It boasts that it is the first "full color" magazine but only features black, white, grey and a touch of red.
In an introduction to Volume 1, Number 1, it clearly states that Playboy is not "a family magazine".
And in a throwback to more chauvinistic times the introduction, printed in December, 1953, continues: "If you're somebody's sister, wife or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your Ladies Home Companion."
The landmark magazine is set expected to fetch just over £1800 when it is auctioned on Thursday.
Laura Yntema, the auctions manager at Nate D. Sanders in Los Angeles, USA, is handling the sale.
She said: "Only about 54,000 copies of the first issue of Playboy were printed because Hugh Hefner didn't know if it would be successful and if there would be another issue.
"But it sold out almost immediately.
"This was mostly because of Marilyn, but also because the market didn't have anything like it at the time.
"So these first issue copies are quite rare, because so few of them were printed and also, no one expected how popular Playboy would become."
Unsurprisingly for a magazine almost 62 years old, there is some surface abrasion but the rest is in an overall in very good condition.
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