The iconic sled from Orson Welles’s 1941 classic Citizen Kane has sold for $14.75m (£11m) at auction.
The item therefore becomes the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold, following last December’s sale of a pair of ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz for $32.5m (£24.2m).
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.
“One of the crew who knew I was a fan of vintage films came to me with a wood prop and said, ‘They’re throwing out all of this stuff. You might want this,’” said Dante. “I’m not sure he knew what the sled was, but he must have had some inkling, or why else would he have asked me?
“I was astonished. Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be glad to take it.’”
The prop is primarily pine hardwood, with the original paint but signs of both wear and tear on the lot and with a few missing rails, likely donated to the wartime drive for scrap metal.
“I’ve had the honour of protecting this piece of cinematic history for decades,” Dante said in a statement released by action house Heritage. “To see Rosebud find a new home – and make history in the process – is both surreal and deeply gratifying. It’s a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”
Dante featured the sled in Explorers, as well as 1989’s The Burbs, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and an episode of the early 90s series Eerie, Indiana.
The exact number of sleds produced for the film is unknown – the auction house says a “few” were made; one sold to Steven Spielberg in 1982 for $60,500 (£45,150) in 1982 and another to an anonymous buyer for $233,000 (£174,000) in 1996.
Other sales in the auction include a filming miniature X-wing from The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones’ bullwhip originally given to HRH Prince Charles by Harrison Ford at the royal premiere of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Austin Powers’s green velvet suit.
A nude photo of Marilyn Monroe is also available, armour from Ben-Hur and a Ralph Lauren blazer owned by Audrey Hepburn.
“This is one of the most important events in entertainment auction history,” said Heritage Auctions executive vice president Joe Maddalena. “These aren’t just props. They’re mythic objects. They tell the story of Hollywood’s greatest moments, one piece at a time, each tied to a memory, a performance, a legend.”