The end is near—not just for The Late Show itself, but also the “Everything Must Go!” charity auction host Stephen Colbert has been running since December.
On Monday night’s show, ahead of the anticipated Strike Force Five reunion that occupied much of the hour, Colbert announced the “last batch” of Late Show memorabilia to be added to the auction block.
Among the final items now available to be bid upon are the confessional used in Colbert’s “Midnight Confessions” segments, the custom-made commemorative penny press he rolled out in March (and has made available to audience members since); and a mosaic installed by the anonymous French artist Invader (or at least a replica thereof; more on that in a moment).
The penny press, commissioned from The Penny-Press Machine Co. in Little Canada, Minnesota, was introduced in part in response to the U.S. Mint ceasing production of one-cent pieces. The machine offers four different imprints: the very meta design of a penny face with its own “1793-2025” birth/death date; Colbert’s face, a group shot of Late Show house band Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine, and an exterior of The Ed Sullivan Theater, where The Late Show (first with David Letterman as host) has taped since August 1993.
Colbert previously quipped that once The Late Show ends, the custom-made penny press would be “shoved off the Triborough Bridge” and into the East River. Thankfully, it instead will find a loving home.
As for the mosaic up for auction, it’s from the artist’s “Space Invaders” project, which “is first of all about liberating Art from its usual alienators that museums or institutions can be,” Invader’s website explains. “But it is also about freeing the Space Invaders from their video games TV screens and to bring them in our physical world.”
Thing is, Colbert noted, “Invader doesn’t condone his work being removed from where he installs them to be sold.” Instead, the artist believes the original piece should be destroyed along with the rest of the set after The Late Show fades to black.
Invader however agreed to create a replica aka “alias” of the piece he installed inside the Ed Sullivan Theater. As his team explained in a note to The Late Show, “Invader is sad for both the show and the mosaic disappearing but considers that they are linked and that the mosaic shouldn’t survive the place he has installed it. It will, just like the show, survive through its alias and all the memories it conveys.”
Colbert remarked that that final sentence “proves, beyond a doubt, he is a French artist.”
Proceeds from the Late Show auction benefit chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen. For those who “don’t want in on the auction but want in on the action,” a commemorative “The Last Show with Stephen Colbert” T-shirt can be purchased for a flat $40. Between the thousands of tees sold, and most recently a $102,100 bid on the 12-foot Late Show sign that hangs above the stage, the grand total raised has now surpassed $1 million.
Watch a clip of Invader installing the mosaic years ago, and Colbert’s reading of the anonymous artist’s note about the alias:
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) May 12, 2026
