Next on the block, a working guillotine with a few dents on the blade

A 150-year-old guillotine with “a few dents on the blade” will go under the hammer in Paris on Wednesday.

The three-metre tall instrument of execution is in working order. Guillotines were used to dispatch criminals in France until 1977.

But the Drouot auction house insisted that the model was built as a replica and has never been used to behead anyone.

The sale of guillotines has been highly controversial in France where the death penalty was only abolished in 1981, with the French auction watchdog already objecting to the auction.

“They should not be selling this guillotine,” a spokesman told the Parisien newspaper. “Objects like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and instruments of torture are sensitive.”

That did not, however, stop another going for €220,000 (US $234,000) in the same saleroom in 2011 when US pop star Lady Gaga was reportedly among the bidders.