It’s not unusual for an iconic movie prop to become extremely valuable. There’s probably someone, at this very moment, placing a bid on a rock Harrison Ford touched in an Indiana Jones movie.
But it works the other way around, too. Sometimes, a prop or costume piece that goes largely unnoticed turns out to be worth way more than the movie it’s in.
5 ‘The Phoenician Scheme’s Priceless Artwork
Wes Anderson’s latest joint features — you might want to sit down for this one — a wealthy eccentric, specifically a real art lover. That means his lavish mansion is decorated with real art sourced by a curator hired by Anderson, including famous works by Magritte, Renoir and Van Schooten.
As in, the actual canvases they actually touched. The collection is almost certainly worth more than the box office of Anderson’s entire career.
4 The ‘Long-Lost Masterpiece’ in ‘Stuart Little’
In 2009, Hungarian art historian Gergely Barki was enjoying some inoffensive holiday movie time with his family when he noticed something incredible: Róbert Berény’s Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, a painting believed to have been lost in the ‘20s and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, on the wall in a party scene. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Berény’s long-lost masterpiece on the wall behind Hugh Laurie,” he said.
It turned out that the set designer had found it in a Pasadena antique shop and thought “its avant garde elegance was perfect for Stuart Little’s living room.” They have a different understanding of the Little family than we do.
3 The Purse Worth More Than ‘Blue Jasmine’s Entire Costume Budget
Woody Allen isn’t exactly known for his blockbusters, so outfitting Blue Jasmine’s upper-crust swindler was tricky for costume designer Suzy Benzinger. In the end, she lent her own personal Birkin bag to the production for Cate Blanchett to wield, including in a scene that required her to “(throw) it on the sidewalk again and again.
I felt her blood pressure go up every time it hit the pavement,” Blanchett said. That’s because the bag was worth more than the film’s entire $35,000 wardrobe budget. Hollywood costuming pays a lot more than we thought.
2 Grace Kelly’s Real Engagement Ring in ‘High Society’
Kelly also provided her own accessories for her character in 1956’s High Society, but it was worth about 100 times as much as some lowly Birkin bag. It was her real engagement ring, given to her by the honest-to-God Prince of Monaco, featuring a massive 10-carat emerald-cut diamond. It cost $4 million, or $38 million in today’s money, or a sizable chunk of Monaco’s entire GDP.
1 The Imperial Crown of ‘1. April 2000’
Remember 1952’s 1. April 2000? Neither do we. It was “a futuristic political satire movie about the post-World War II Allied occupation of Austria,” and its most enduring legacy might be a single costume piece. Somehow, maybe because the film itself was commissioned by the Austrian government, they got their hands on the real-life imperial crown of Austria, worth $70 million at the time.
Don’t even try to convert that to today’s dollars, or your eyes might melt. It might be the most expensive movie prop of all time, all for a movie that features space cops dressed like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.