Treasures From Planet Hollywood Bring More Than $15.6 Million!

DALLAS, Texas (March 25, 2024) — Blockbuster season started early at Heritage Auctions. The $15.68 million Treasures From Planet Hollywood auction began Wednesday morning and wrapped Sunday night, and the list of highlight results from the almost 1,600-lot event is seemingly endless. From start to finish, most of the lots shattered expectations thanks to the more than 5,500 bidders who participated worldwide, from as far away as Tokyo to the auction room in Heritage’s world headquarters.

In the end, Treasures From Planet Hollywood will go down as one of the most successful auctions of props and costumes from some of cinema’s most beloved and influential films, toppling Heritage’s previous record of $13.6 million set by the auction of model-making legend Greg Jein’s collection in October. Treasures of Planet Hollywood is now second only to the $22.8 million Debbie Reynolds auction held in 2011 by Joe Maddalena.

“There were countless bidding wars during the Treasures of Planet Hollywood auction — so many we lost track,” says Maddalena, Executive Vice President at Heritage and the man responsible for those three blockbuster events. “The extraordinary success of this auction proves what I’ve known all along: The interest in and appetite for modern-movie props and costumes — all of which were once displayed in Planet Hollywoods worldwide or part of their legendary archives — is profound, deep and insatiable.”

The headlines write themselves:

The whip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sold for $525,000 to become the most valuable prop or costume from the beloved franchise — and, yes, it belongs in a museum.

Bill Murray’s red-rose bowling ball from Kingpin rolled $350,000 to become the most valuable bowling ball in the world.

Shaquille O’Neal’s Los Angeles Lakers uniform photo-matched to Kobe Bryant’s 1996 rookie debut scored $262,500 to set a record for anything of Shaq’s offered at auction.

And, of course, the wood panel from Titanic that saved Rose — but, controversially, not Jack — was the king of the auction, realizing $718,750 to float to the top of the five-day event.

On and on it goes, one remarkable, record-setting result after another from an auction that was as thrilling and entertaining as any summer blockbuster. By the auction’s end, 16 items had soared into the six figures. It took just 104 lots for the auction to cross the million-dollar mark — thanks to the Dorothy Jeakins-designed pink ombré halter dress Marilyn Monroe wore while being serenaded by Frankie Vaughan in 1960’s highest-grossing musical, George Cukor’s Let’s Make Love. This was the film in which Monroe was advertised as “the girl who put the M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m! Into Movies!” That gown realized $137,500.

Another first-day smash was the Bapty& Co.-made ax Jack Nicholson used to heeeeeere’s-Johnny his way through the bathroom door in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Among the first props Planet Hollywood secured before its grand opening in New York City in 1991, that ax sold for $125,000. When that sold Wednesday after a fierce bidding war, the auction room erupted in applause — for the first time, but not the last.

Over the five-day event, the hits kept coming: The Barbasol can Wayne Knight uses to smuggle dinosaur embryos out of 1993’s Jurassic Park realized $250,000. The blaster Princess Leia carried across the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi sold for $150,000, while an original Stormtrooper blaster from Star Wars, which Bapty & Co. forged from a British Sterling submachine gun, sold for $112,500.

Tobey Maguire’s black symbiote suit from 2007’s Spider-Man 3 swung out the door for $125,000, just a web ahead of one of his signature Spidey suits from the same film, which realized $106,250. A “good guy” Chucky doll from 1988’s Child’s Play scared up a winning bid of $106,250.

Five of the auction’s top lots hailed from Titanic, including that wood panel that generated a generation’s worth of debate and its ornate prototype, which sold for $125,000; the ship’s helm wheel, which steered into a final price of $200,000; and one of the most famous costumes in modern cinema history, Rose’s chiffon dress soaked by the rising waters, which realized $118,750. Not far behind was the large brass engine order telegraph, which called up a final price of $81,250.

There wasn’t a dull moment during the five-day event because it became clear very early that collectors were eager to own pieces of their favorite films that had long been part of the legendary Planet Hollywood archives. Collectors never knew which moment from which film — which iconic prop or famous costume — would spark a bidding war.

Some were easy to predict, like the Indiana Jones films: The whip from Temple of Doom remains the only one from the franchise matched to its use in a film, and when it sold Thursday for $525,000, it toppled the previous Indiana Jones record of $500,000 set in 2021 for a fedora from Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

A set of three Sankara stones from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom realized $100,000, while “the cup of the carpenter” — the Holy Grail itself — sold for $87,500.

But one of the auction’s first bidding wars was over a display figure wearing Gary Oldman’s Vlad the Impaler reproduced armor from 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which Planet Hollywood obtained from technical advisor Christopher Gilman and sold on Wednesday for $87,500. And on the auction’s final day, a bidding war broke out over a prop from one of Martin Scorsese’s most underappreciated masterpieces, his 2011 adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s book Hugo, from which the original Mechanical Man automaton realized $81,250.

Three other costumes hit that same milestone: the knit snow cap Macaulay Culkin wore when he was Home Alone in 1990; a Durham Bulls uniform Kevin Costner wore as Crash Davis in 1988’s baseball masterpiece Bull Durham; and, from another movie set on the diamond, Robert Redford’s New York Knights uniform (and a signed jacket) he wore as The Natural Roy Hobbs in 1984.

As Maddalena said before the auction kicked off, Treasures From Planet Hollywood brimmed “with so many touchstone moments from cinema history.” Planet Hollywood’s co-founder Robert Earl, who helped assemble this collection, said this auction represented a labor of love he was eager to share “with film lovers everywhere who will delight in bringing home a piece of Hollywood history.” The auction’s final prices proved them right and then some.

Click here for complete results from Treasures From Planet Hollywood.

Source/Images: Heritage Auctions