Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption This real guillotine was put to auction in 2014 but failed to sell 
 
 A guillotine has fetched €8,008 (£7080) at a controversial auction in Paris. 
 
 The 150-year-old replica of a device used for executions was bought on Wednesday by a French millionaire and collector of bizarre objects. 
 
 France's auction watchdog was opposed to the sale, despite the auction house insisting that the 3m (10ft) instrument in question had never been used. 
 
 The guillotine was last used to behead a convict in 1977. France abolished the death penalty in 1981. 
 
 The replica, which has a few dents on the blade, was once on display at a museum of torture in Paris. It was part of a bankruptcy sale of a jazz club that took over the museum's premises. 
 
 "They should not be selling this guillotine," a spokesperson for the French auction regulators told the Parisien newspaper. 
 
 "Objects like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and instruments of torture are sensitive." 
 
 However, the auction watchdog was unable to block the auction, which lasted only two minutes. Industrialist Christophe Février doubled the starting price of €4,000 (£3,535). 
 
 Real guillotines have been put to auction in the past. One sold for €220,000 in Paris in 2011. Another, initially valued at €40,000, failed to sell in the western city of Nantes in 2014. 
 
 The guillotine was first used during the French Revolution, with 16,000 people beheaded between 1793 and 1794, most notably King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. ||||| Christophe Février, a businessman and father of four from the small town of Château-Gontier in northwest France, decided in 2014 that there was something he must have: a guillotine. 
 
 He had seen one offered at auction in Paris. It was 10 feet tall, with an oak frame and a few dents in the blade, and had the French words for “Armies of the Republic” etched into its metal plates. It had not actually been used to execute people during the French Revolution, but it had historical value: It was made in the mid-19th century, around the time France’s monarchy was abolished for a second time. 
 
 Image Christophe Février Credit Wojciech Konarzewski 
 
 Lady Gaga tried to buy the guillotine in 2011, said Mr. Février, 48, in an email. But she lost out to a Russian collector, who paid 223,000 euros, or about $260,000 at current exchange rates.
– It wasn't one of the guillotines actually used to behead people, but the sale of it has still stirred up some controversy in France. The mid-19th-century replica was sold last Wednesday in an auction that lasted just 2 minutes, with a French multimillionaire named Christophe Février snapping it up for $9,300. That's a relative bargain, per the New York Times, which reports that the same 10-foot-tall guillotine was purchased by an unnamed Russian in 2011. His winning €223,000 bid is about $260,000 at today's rates, and exceeded the offer made by rival bidder Lady Gaga, reports the Times of London, which notes experts at the time held that the guillotine had actually been used in executions. Subsequent tests showed that was not the case. But the Russian's purchase came with a problem: France doesn't permit the import or export of instruments of torture, so the guillotine remained in a Paris jazz club until the club's recent bankruptcy. (The BBC fills in the timeline, explaining the jazz club took over a space formerly occupied by a museum of torture.) France's auction watchdog was not pleased, with a rep saying the sale shouldn't have occurred: "Objects like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and instruments of torture are sensitive." But it was unable to stop the court-ordered auction. Février himself is sensitive about where he will display what he describes "as a historic symbol tied to the common heritage of humanity": "As a father of four, I don't want to exhibit it in a family setting," he tells the Times. (An item left on the Waterloo battlefield recently sold for $400,000.)