11 movie props sold for eye-watering prices from Titanic to Star Wars

Movie memorabilia is clearly big business, with Citizen Kane’s Rosebud sled selling this week for an eye-watering $14.75 million (£11m).

In the 1941 movie starring Orson Welles, and regarded as one of the greatest in film history, Rosebud represented the happy times Kane had playing in the snow as a child and ultimately the idealized past that he yearned for throughout his life.

The buyer is unknown, but the seller was the director Joe Dante, who was given the item in 1984 while working on Explorers on the Paramount lot, previously home to RKO Pictures. Dante, describes the 1941 film prop as “a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”

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Rosebud isn't the valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold, though. Last year, a pair of ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz were snapped up for a cool $32.5m (£24.2m).

But why do film artefacts make a mint?

Auctioneer Addison Gelpey says: “The reason movie memorabilia is such a money spinner is twofold. One is that buyers are big fans of the films and are collectors - or they want to make money on them because the movies are watched by so many people that the value will go up over time. These are iconic films, so you have a fabulous investment. It is not only a piece of that film, you have a piece of film history.”

Here are some other film favourites to have gone under the hammer:

The Maltese Falcon statuette from The Maltese Falcon (1941) starring Humphrey Bogart sold for $4.1 million (£2.5m) in 2013.

Tom Hanks' best friend Wilson the volleyball from the 2000 desert island film Cast Away sold for $308,000 (£230k) at a 2021 Prop Store auction in London.

The 'wet shirt' costume worn by Colin Firth's Mr Darcy in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride & Prejudice fetched $25,000 (£20k) in 2024.

Darth Vader’s fibreglass mask from The Empire Strikes Back sold for $900,000 (£698k) in 2019.

Harrison Ford’s bullwhip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) fetched $525,000 (£417k) at auction in 2024. Several years earlier, the famous fedora hat worn by Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark was sold for $524,000 (£456k) in 2018 via Prop Store in London.

The white three-piece suit that John Travolta's Tony Manero wears in Saturday Night Fever (1997) sold for $260,000 (£208k) in 2023.

The mechatronic for the movie ET The Extra Terrestrial (1982) sold for $2.56 million (£2m) in 2022.

Terminator’s liquid-metal T-1000 enemy cyborg - a full-scale T-800 endoskeleton, from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) sold for $488,750 (£236k) in 2007.

The Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) sold for $997,000 (£610k) in 2013 to none other than the world's richest man Elon Musk.

The lifesaving wooden panel from Titanic (1997) which saved Kate Winslet's character Rose's life - while poor Jack ( Leonardo DiCaprio) perished, sold for a $718,750 (£571k) in 2024.