‘Titanic’ Plank Not Even Big Enough for Two People Sells for Over $700K
The wood panel that saved Rose in the movie “Titanic” was sold at auction for $718,750. Conspicuously not among the bidders, Leonardo DiCaprio, because he already let go of it once and also, it’s 27 years old.
By Bram Teitelman · March 31, 2024
How much would you pay for a piece of balsa wood? I’m sure you’re thinking that you could run down to Home Depot after lunch, spend about five bucks and be back in no time. But what if that balsa wood floated, dated back to 1997, and was touched by two future Oscar winning actors? Of course we’re talking about the iconic door/door frame from Titanic, and one Tita-niac spent $718,750 on the door at a recent auction of Hollywood memorabilia.
If you’re spending that much on a movie prop, you’re probably not going to do what we’d do if we’d won, which is to immediately show off the most awesome pool toy ever. While it apparently only comfortably holds one, that means you can make up a fun game that’s one part Marco Polo and one part Musical Chairs - as long as the music is some variation of “My Heart Will Go On.”
While the ‘Titanic’ door sold for more than anything else at Heritage Auctions’ “Treasures From Planet Hollywood” event, there was plenty more iconic movie detritus to be had. For example, Indiana Jones’ whip—a 2005 Hyundai Sonata—was up for sale. Seriously, though, the actual whip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that he used in the film to whip people with (it’s been a while since we’ve seen it) went for a cool $525,000.
And before Venom was its own film franchise, the alien symbiote from Spider-Man took over Peter Parker/Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3. However, if you remember the 2007 movie, the evil organism (which manifested itself as a black suit) temporarily gave Peter enough confidence to turn him into an annoying hipster emo kid for a few minutes after infecting him. So someone picked up the black Venom suit for $125,000 and will definitely be the hit of their next Emo Nite.
Also sold were Bill Murray’s red rose bowling ball from Kingpin ($350k), the fake Barbasol shaving cream can that Newman, er, Wayne Knight, used to smuggle dinosaur eggs out of Jurassic Park ($250k) and perhaps the coolest prop, the “Here’s Johnny” axe used by Jack Nicholson in The Shining ($125k) That thing might be old, but it can definitely tear through some balsa wood! The whole auction brought in $15.6 million, and while the auction is over, it looks like the owner of Jack and Rose’s door might already be trying to flip it.