The Most Expensive Hollywood Movie Props Ever Sold at Auction
- Movie props have become increasingly expensive over the years, with iconic pieces fetching millions of dollars at auctions.
Once upon a time, collecting movie props was a specialist hobby, limited more by availability than price. That changed in 1970 when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to sell the contents of seven sound stages to Los Angeles auctioneer David Weisz for the unheard-of sum of $1.5 million (a little under $12 million today). Talk about expensive movie props!
The haul included over 300,000 costumes, stacks of furniture, vehicles of every kind — cars, trains, tanks, airplanes, and spaceships — entire sets, models, production art, scripts, stills, posters, special effects paraphernalia, and everything else associated with Hollywood's most prestigious dream factory.
Buyers at the subsequent auction placed bids on Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan loincloth, Elizabeth Tailor's wedding dress from Father of the Bride , a collection of Esther Williams' swimsuits, chariots from Ben-Hur , and the full-size three-masted sailing ship from Mutiny on the Bounty . One fan snapped up a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz for a then-breathtaking $15,000 ($122,000 in 2024). Skip ahead to see what a pair might set fans back today.
The MGM sale, a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, to some the day the golden age truly died, changed the game forever. Prices for film biz memorabilia began to spiral upwards. Collecting became less a labor of love and more an "investment opportunity," with sales increasingly handled by the big auction houses — Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams — institutions that wouldn't have soiled their hands with such vulgar trash a decade earlier.
In today's market, even obscure items from run-of-the-mill films demand prices far beyond the reach of most fans. Iconic pieces of the ruby slippers/celebrity-loincloth ilk now fall under the preserve of the superrich. Rabid-if-financially-limited fans shouldn't fret, however.
Fans can purchase a four-volume catalog for the May 1970 Weisz/MGM auction for less than two thousand dollars! These expensive movie props, however, cost a bit more.
1. Steve McQueen Suit, Helmet, and Underwear From Le Mans (1971)
Image Credit: Cinema Center Films.
$336,000
McQueen's outfit — including fireproof skivvies — from the cult motor racing flick were originally won in a competition run by German magazine Bravo by a teenage fan. Disappointed at not bagging the top prize (a Porsche 914), the winner nevertheless put the Bell helmet to good use as a motorcycle helmet.
After remaining in the family for four decades, the collection was sold at Sotheby's in 2017. All the sponsorship patches on the jacket (Gulf, Firestone, Heuer) were original. The helmet needed a repaint.
2. Aragorn's Sword From the Lord of the Rings (2001)
Image Credit: New Line Cinema.
$437,000
Aragorn's noble blade Andúril (The Flame of the West), designed by Lord of the Rings concept artist John Howe and beautifully inscribed with runic verse. Sir Christopher (yes, that Christopher Lee) and Lady Lee sold it off in 2014.
The Weta Workshop constructed the sword in New Zealand by Master Swordsmith Peter Lyon.
3. Luke Skywalker Lightsaber From Star Wars (1977)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.
$450,000
Wielded by Mark Hamill in both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back , Luke's lightsaber — minus the buzzy business end, sadly — landed at auction by Ripley's in 2017.
It now resides in the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum on Hollywood Boulevard, across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theater, where Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977.
4. Car From Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Image Credit: United Artists.
$805,000
Say what you will about the film, no one can deny the titular vehicle's appeal, a travesty of the sleek, supercharged Paragon Panther of Ian Fleming's original book, though it is.
Inspired by a race car driven by the dashing Count Vorow Zborowski in the 1920s, Chitty was designed by Ken Adam and built by the Ford Racing Team.
5. Darth Vader Helmet From the Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.
$889,000($1.1 million including buyer's premium)
Designed by Ralph McQuarrie and worn by British strongman Dave Prowse throughout Episode V – including that scene — the iconic fiberglass helmet was expected to fetch between $250,000 and $450,00 when it came up for auction in 2019.
The anonymous buyer might not have had The Force with him, but he obviously had his AmEx Black handy.
6. Audrey Hepburn Dress From Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Image Credit: Public Domain/WikiCommons.
$920,000
The little black dress to end all little black dresses sold at auction in 2006 for around ten times its estimated price. It was donated by couturier Hubert de Givenchy to raise funds for the children's charity City of Joy Aid, a nod to Hepburn's tireless work as a UNICEF ambassador.
Designed by Givenchy and made from Italian satin, Hepburn wore the dress in the movie's dreamy opening sequence — society girl Holly Golightly wandering the streets of Manhattan, coffee cup and cigarette in hand, evidently after a night on the town.
If the anonymous buyer intended to wear the dress, they may have been disappointed. Standing 5'7" when she made Breakfast at Tiffany's , Hepburn had a 20-inch waist and weighed 110lbs. Auction house Christie's had to order custom-made mannequins to display her costumes.
7. Lotus Esprit Submarine Car From the Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Image Credit: Eon Productions.
$997,000
Bought by Elon Musk at Sotheby's in 2013, the heavily modified Bond car was thought lost until it turned up in an abandoned Long Island storage unit in 1989.
The couple who purchased the unit for $100 had never heard of James Bond, let alone seen a Bond movie.
8. Dance Floor From Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Image Credit: Robert Stigwood Organization.
$1.2 million
After months of grueling rehearsals, John Travolta insisted that the dance scenes in Saturday Night Fever be shot in full-length widescreen so audiences could see it was him making the moves and not a double. This had the unintended effect of elevating the flashing red, blue and yellow dance floor to a starring role.
Installed at the 2001 Odyssey nightclub in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a real-life disco mecca, the floor was inspired by a similar one at a supper club in Birmingham, Alabama, once visited by SNF director John Badham. Originally bought for $6,000 in 2005 by ex-Odyssey bouncer Vito Bruno, it has since sold at auction in 2017 to an anonymous buyer.
9. Julie Andrews' Costumes From The Sound of Music (1965)
Image Credit: Argyle Enterprises, Inc.
$1.3 million
The haul from the beloved musical, bought at auction in 2013, included the dress Andrews wore while performing "Do-Re-Mi," the yellow skirt and blouse from Maria's honeymoon outfit, a jacket worn by Kurt (Duane Chase) in the "So Long, Farewell" sequence, seven Von Trapp kids' school uniforms, and a four-page family history signed by the real Maria Von Trapp.
Obviously, no one wanted the Axis uniforms.
10. David O. Selznick Oscar for Gone With the Wind (1939)
Image Credit: Selznick International Pictures.
$1.54 million
Strict rules govern the sale of Academy Awards these days, but they don't apply to Oscars won before a certain date. Thus, Michael Jackson bought Selznick's Best Picture award in 1999 for four times its estimated value.
When Jackson died in 2009, an inventory of his estate revealed that the Oscar had gone missing. Its whereabouts remain a mystery.
11. Ruby Slippers From the Wizard of Oz (1939)
Image Credit: Loew's, Inc.
$2 million
The Holy Grail of expensive movie props! Several pairs of ruby slippers have sold to fans over the years, and all have fetched eye-watering amounts.
The top spot, however, goes to a pair worn on-screen by Judy Garland and shown in a close-up in the heel-clicking scene. Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio pooled funds together to buy them in 2012 and donated them to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
12. R2-D2 From Star Wars (1977)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm.
$2.76 million
The sticker on this one might well have read " Caveat emptor ."
A little under three mil for a genuine Artoo might seem a bargain. But for a Frankendroid like this, cobbled together from various R2 parts from various Star Wars movies without indication of which parts came from which movie? Definitely not the droid you're looking for.
13. Cowardly Lion Costume From the Wizard of Oz (1939)
Image Credit: Loew's, Inc.
$3.07 million
The big draw here is that the costume worn by Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz was made from bits of a real lion. Only an idiot would pay three big ones for an acrylic lion outfit!
One of two worn by Lahr in the film, the full-body catsuit was discovered bundled up in an old building on the MGM lot (which raises some suspicions over where the lion pelt came from) and spent many years as an exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art.
In 2011, it sold for a paltry $800,000 (with courage extra, presumably). Three years later it more than quadrupled that figure.
14. X-Wing Fighter From Star Wars (1977)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.
$3.1 million
Putting other Star Wars memorabilia in the shade, this model X-Wing, seen in the climactic space battle in Episode IV , disappeared sometime after the movie wrapped.
Believed lost, it was later found packed in Styrofoam in a cardboard box in FX wizard Greg Jein's garage, part of a huge stash of props, scripts, costumes, and other Hollywood ephemera unearthed by Jein's friends following his death in 2022. It was sold to an unnamed bidder by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2023.
15. Sam's Piano From Casablanca (1942)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
$3.4 million
The 58-key "studio" upright on which Dooley Wilson did not play "As Time Goes By" in Casablanca (Wilson had a fine singing voice but couldn't play piano; Elliot Carpenter dubbed the keystrokes) was likely made by the Kohler & Campbell company around 1927. Originally owned by First National Pictures, who merged with Warner Bros. in the late 1920s, it plays a crucial role in the film as the place where Rick hides the all-important letter of transit (the lid was altered so Humphrey Bogart could slip the letters inside from the rear).
The Bonhams catalog from 2014 describes the piano in loving detail, right down to the one-inch notch on the center-left leg (visible on screen) and a "petrified wad of chewing gum stuck to the underside of keyboard with a faint impression of a fingerprint visible under magnification." Tantalizingly, it fails to mention who the fingerprint belongs to. So, let's go with Bogart!
16. Audrey Hepburn "Ascot" Dress From My Fair Lady (1964)
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
$3.7 million
It seems inconceivable that this overblown Cecil Beaton ensemble could go for almost four times as much as Hepburn's little black number from Breakfast at Tiffany's , a chic fashion icon next to a cloth wedding cake. But there's no accounting for taste.
The dress, owned at the time by actress Debbie Reynolds, came under the hammer in 2011, earning Reynolds a 3,7000% return on her initial investment.
17. Falcon Statuette From the Maltese Falcon (1941)
Image Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
$4.1 million(plus $585,000 buyer's premium)
What is it? The stuff that dreams are made of, to (mis)quote Bogart as private eye Sam Spade.
One of only two falcons made for the movie and the only one known to have appeared on screen, Bonhams identified the statuette by a small dent on its head. Apparently, it got dropped during production — allegedly on Bogart's foot, badly bruising two of his toes — leaving tell-tell signs of damage visible on screen.
Steve Wynn bought the prop in November 2013. To put the price in perspective, Caspar Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) offers Spade $50,000 for the Black Bird in the film, around $1.1 million in today's money. And that was for "A glorious golden falcon, encrusted from head to feet with the finest jewels," not a dinged-up movie prop.
18. Marilyn Monroe Dress From the Seven Year Itch (1955)
Image Credit: 20th Century-Fox.
$4.6 million
Another big payday for the late Debbie Reynolds. The ivory-colored cocktail dress, designed by William Travilla, was worn by Monroe in the famous scene where she stands over a subway grating, the updraught sending her skirts billowing around her, revealing her spectacular legs.
Allegedly, Monroe's then-husband, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, hated the dress and flew into a jealous rage while watching the scene being filmed. The well-heeled 2011 buyer obviously felt rather differently.
19. Robby the Robot From Forbidden Planet (1956)
Image Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
$5.375 million
Designed by the MGM team of Robert Kinoshita, Arnold Gillespie, Irving Block, Mentor Huebner, and Arthur Lonergan, the superstar droid cost around $120,000 to make, roughly a tenth of the cult sci-fi flick's entire budget.
Robby was so expensive, the studio made sure he paid his way by putting him to work in a series of later productions including Mork & Mindy , The Twilight Zone , Lost In Space , and The Love Boat . Sold to a private collector in November 2017 he now enjoys a well-earned retirement.
20. Aston Martin DB5 From Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965)
Image Credit: Eon Productions.
$6.4 million
That's a lot of scratch for a tricked-out Aston with no working machine guns or ejector seats. Especially since this car never actually appeared in a Bond movie.
Modeled on the car driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger , Aston built it as a promotional item for Thunderball . That said, it did come fully equipped with a retractable bullet-proof screen, revolving numberplates, and primitive GPS. And aside from its iconic movie status, it is a fabulously restored 1965 Aston Martin DB5, which even without the spyware, don't come cheap (around $1.3 million for one in decent nick).
Described in the Sotheby's catalog as "Quite simply the most iconic car of all time," it was sold to an anonymous buyer from Monterey, California, in 2019.
