\u201cimpeccable documentary provenance\u201d<\/a> and authenticated by experts was expected to fetch as much as $3 million.<\/p>\nAlmost immediately, however, the blaster came under fire. Fervid collectors slavishly examined photos of the modified Mauser, sharing their findings of discrepancies between the prop for sale and the blaster seen on film across online forums.<\/p>\n
Then a sleuth traced the gun\u2019s serial number and discovered the Mauser had been sold online years earlier and it appeared to have been later modified to resemble the prop.<\/p>\n
Almost as quickly as this unique opportunity was announced, the blaster was quietly withdrawn from the sale that was to be held in June, with all mentions of it scrubbed from the auction houses\u2019 websites and social media.<\/p>\n
From Dorothy\u2019s ruby slippers in \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d to Harry Potter wands, props from iconic films are earning big dollars at both auction and private sales \u2014 in some cases on par with rare wine, Swiss watches and fine art. But as prices for these objects have surged, so have questions about their authenticity.<\/p>\n
Many props today are outsourced to shops that have industrialized the craft with 3D printing technology that has made it much easier to produce knockoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second the money got real, so did the fakes,\u201d said David Mandel, a major prop collector and the former showrunner of \u201cVeep\u201d and a writer and producer on such shows as \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm.\u201d Mandel, who co-hosts a podcast about Hollywood memorabilia called \u201cThe Stuff That Dreams are Made Of,\u201d recently devoted an entire episode to bogus props.<\/p>\n
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Dorothy\u2019s ruby slippers once worn by Judy Garland in \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d are one of the most iconic movie props of all time. This pair, recovered in an FBI sting operation, was later sold at auction for more than $30 million. <\/p>\n
(Jeff Baenen \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
From movie set scraps to valuable artifacts<\/p>\n
In cinema\u2019s early days, props were seen as the byproduct of filmmaking without any intrinsic value that often ended up in dumpsters. The painted backdrop of the Emerald City used in the beloved 1939 classic \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d was discovered decades later by a salvage crew hired to remove trash stored on a studio backlot.<\/p>\n
For years, crew members and production staffers often fished such objects out of the trash or storage as keepsakes.<\/p>\n
Humphrey Bogart\u2019s trench coat from \u201cCasablanca\u201d and countless other important film artifacts were said to be preserved because makeup artists and electricians took them home as souvenirs.<\/p>\n
Props went from the scrap heap of history to history, literally, in 1970 when MGM\u2019s then-president, James Aubrey Jr., known as the \u201cSmiling Cobra,\u201d held a fire sale, auctioning off hundreds of thousands of costumes and props \u2014 nearly the entire archive \u2014 to generate revenue for the struggling studio. On the block went everything from the wedding gown Elizabeth Taylor wore in 1950\u2019s \u201cFather of the Bride,\u201d to the time machine from the 1960 film of the same name.<\/p>\n
Although the auction only brought in $1.5 million for MGM, it sparked the public\u2019s fascination for film memorabilia while creating a new collectibles market.<\/p>\n
Among the most celebrated collectors was actor Debbie Reynolds, who assembled 4,000 items spanning the history of Hollywood that included Charlie Chaplin\u2019s bowler hat. But with her dream of opening a museum dashed, in 2011 she began auctioning off her prized collection, eventually netting more than $30 million.<\/p>\n
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Debbie Reynolds had once hoped to open a museum to house her collection of more than 4,000 props and costumes.<\/p>\n
(Kirk McKoy \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Most collectors are hardcore movie fans, many of whom began buying action figures of the movies they loved as children. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something so Hollywood about collecting props,\u201d said Jason Henry, a television producer and the chief operating officer of Cinema Relics, which produces an online series on movie memorabilia. \u201cIt\u2019s all make-believe and it\u2019s all magic. And what you\u2019re ultimately buying in so many ways is a story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandel is a prolific collector of movie props, largely from the original \u201cStar Wars\u201d trilogy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pure nostalgia,\u201d Mandel says. \u201cWe\u2019re collecting the memories, and the best way we can do it is to own the pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years ago, Mandel purchased a miniature X-wing, one of four \u201chero\u201d models from the 1977 \u201cStar Wars\u201d movie used during close-ups, at an auction for $3.1 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at this X-wing, I see so many things. Going to see \u2018Star Wars\u2019 for the first time in New York City, down in Times Square with my father. We sat through it twice,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In recent years, demand for Hollywood collectibles has soared, fueled by the growth of EBay and other online marketplaces.<\/p>\n
Major auction houses like Sotheby\u2019s and Christie\u2019s have added movie props to their sales portfolio, while specialty auction houses such as Propstore sell only film and TV artifacts.<\/p>\n
Along with the surging interest, prices for prized pieces have skyrocketed.<\/p>\n
Darth Vader\u2019s lightsaber used during the famous fight scene with Luke Skywalker in \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back\u201d recently sold at auction for $3.6 million.<\/p>\n
In July, one of the three known surviving \u201cRosebud\u201d sleds from Orson Welles\u2019 1941 masterpiece \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d was sold for $14.75 million by Heritage Auctions. Seven months earlier, the auction house sold a pair of Dorothy\u2019s ruby slippers for more than $30 million.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Darth Vader\u2019s \u201chero\u201d light saber from \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back\u201d fetched $3.6 million at auction.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The stratospheric prices for movie props, however, have allowed fakes and dubious objects to propagate the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the prices go up, the supply is going up as well, which doesn\u2019t seem like that\u2019s how it should be,\u201d said Henry. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not because there\u2019s actually more of the original pieces, there\u2019s actually just more fakes or questionable pieces as we like to call it, that are flying into the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
A gray market<\/p>\n
Unlike the art world, the prop market has never been formally sanctioned and lacks standardized rules to determine the authenticity of an item.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was always a hobby that flew a little on the kind of gray market side, because none of these things are officially out there,\u201d said collector Ryan Condal, the showrunner of HBO\u2019s \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d who alongside Mandel co-hosts \u201cThe Stuff Dreams are Made Of.\u201d \u201cThe trading of this stuff has always felt a little bit cheeky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Lanigan has been collecting memorabilia for the last 25 years and has amassed over 6,000 items, including Will Ferrell\u2019s \u201cElf\u201d costume and the beating heart from \u201cIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Chicago-based TV producer, Lanigan hosted the former Disney+ show \u201cProp Culture\u201d devoted to discussing the minutiae of the studio\u2019s iconic movie artifacts. This year he launched \u201cCinema Relics: Investigations,\u201d an online series that examines movie props.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe purpose of what I do with my show is to bring attention to misleading stuff in this industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lanigan speaks from his own experience.<\/p>\n
In 2019, about a year after the Marvel movie \u201cAvenger\u2019s: Infinity War\u201d was released, Lanigan said that he was offered the character\u2019s Stormbreaker weapon for $45,000 from a dealer that he had bought legitimate props from in the past.<\/p>\n
Lanigan agreed, despite red flags. One was that he was not given photographs of the prop to examine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took a chance; I normally don\u2019t do that,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to believe it was real.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the enchanted ax hammer was delivered, \u201cit felt clean, like it hadn\u2019t been handled,\u201d Lanigan said. \u201cThe details were off at first glance.\u201d Lanigan had his archivist do a screen match, a method for comparing props frame-by-frame to the film, looking for identical details like scratches. They also analyzed a photograph of original Stormbreakers taken by Russell Bobbitt, who designed the props for the film. They found several inconsistencies.<\/p>\n
Lanigan\u2019s team said the prop appeared to have been made with rapid prototyping. Their suspicions were confirmed when they found replica 3D printing blueprints sold online. The blueprint model matched many of the characteristics on the prop Lanigan received. \u201cThat was the smoking gun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The dealer said he refunded the purchase after Lanigan questioned the prop\u2019s authenticity. Lanigan said that he only received a partial refund. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this whole jungle of misinformation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe question is, how do you stop this from happening?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760354168_970_\")
<\/p>\n
One of the original red sleds, known as Rosebud, made for the 1941 Orson Welles classic \u201cCitizen Kane,\u201d sold for $14.75 million at auction in July. <\/p>\n
(Heritage Auctions)<\/p>\n
Brad Teplitsky, the founder of Toronto-based Studio Auctions, said he spent six weeks vetting the Han Solo blaster and retained five experts after a consignor approached him with the prop last year, only to later acknowledge that \u201cthe item was not authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Teplitsky, the consignor said he received the blaster from his father who he claimed had obtained it from William Immerman, an executive at 20th Century Fox, the studio that produced \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Immerman died in 2023. The blaster came with several pages of documentation that purported to detail its provenance and explained its history.<\/p>\n
Among the experts Teplitsky sought out was Academy Award-winning set designer Roger Christian, who created the gun. Christian, 81, said that when he held it in his hand he thought, \u201cIt could be the original blaster\u201d and signed a letter to the auction house suggesting it was authentic. <\/p>\n
Christian cited the prop\u2019s paperwork, which detailed how the blaster turned up in Los Angeles during the movie\u2019s publicity tour. \u201cThere\u2019s never been any single prop that had such defined documents with all of the relevant people, and it was from 1976,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Teplitsky said that after Goldin Auctions acquired his company in June, he has since exited the auction business. <\/p>\n
The \u2018mold room special\u2019<\/p>\n
Before digital effects and 3D printing, props were largely handmade, improvised affairs fashioned from a pastiche of model kits and any available parts.<\/p>\n
The alien mother ship used during the filming of \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind,\u201d now exhibited at the Smithsonian, was crafted from model train parts, miniature toys, a collage of other bits and rotating colored lights. <\/p>\n
The challenge in authenticating modern props is that the techniques used to produce them make it infinitely easier to create knockoffs.<\/p>\n
This has led to a growing phenomena many call \u201cthe mold room special,\u201d whereby those with access to the shops licensed to manufacture the props use the original casting and molds to make additional objects and at times sell them as \u201cscreen-used.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people won\u2019t know the difference,\u201d said Martin Meunier, a prop master who has worked on movies such as \u201cCoraline\u201d and frequently works with collectors to authenticate artifacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty great for fakes or forgeries because it allows you a lot of leeway. And for somebody that\u2019s really smart they will know what people are going to be looking for, they research the materials and screen match it, and they will try to find out a provenance so they can say, \u2018I found this, this way.\u2019 They\u2019ll leave breadcrumbs.\u201d <\/p>\n
When veteran collector Ryan Hood saw a Mattel hoverboard offered for sale at Julien\u2019s Auctions in December 2023, it aroused his suspicions. <\/p>\n
The prop first appeared in \u201cBack to the Future 2\u201d when Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, nabbed a little girl\u2019s pink hoverboard to escape from Griff Tannen and his gang.<\/p>\n
A favorite among collectors, an estimated 20 to 30 of the \u201clevitating\u201d boards were made during production, some constructed of Styrofoam and others of wood. At auction, they have sold for as much as $500,000.<\/p>\n
The Mattel hoverboard (the franchise used several models) was a specialty for Hood, a tech investor based in Germany who runs an online resource, yourprops.com,<\/a> that has 10,000 registered collectors. A fastidious stickler for details, he has spent years researching hoverboards (he owns two), even having a lab analyze the chemical structure of the materials used. <\/p>\nHe found it unusual that this was the third time this particular prop had come up for auction in less than a year. When it was first sold at Heritage in December 2022 for $87,500, Hood examined it. It had some \u201cuncommon details\u201d that were interesting, including a cut-in slot in the back, he said, but he concluded it was authentic.<\/p>\n
Initially, he thought it might be the same board sold eight months earlier because it had many of the same characteristics. Then Hood decided to compare high-resolution images of the board up for sale a third time with the original and found several \u201cabnormalities.\u201d \u201cIt appeared to be a copy of the board that was sold two times previously,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hood believed that the one now being sold was a replica, made using a digital scan of the original board. The decals and design features \u201chad been digitally printed, using technology that didn\u2019t exist in the 1980s when the film was made,\u201d he said. Further, he said it appeared some of the scratches seen in the original had been Photoshopped. \u201cThey edited the images; this was like a fingerprint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hood shared his findings publicly on a Facebook collectors forum, which The Times reviewed. He also said that he went to Julien\u2019s with his concerns.<\/p>\n
The auction house enlisted the aid of a hoverboard expert in Los Angeles. He compared an authentic board he owned with the one up for sale and came to the same conclusion as Hood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we put my board under a microscope, you can see that the colors were solid all the way down to the top,\u201d said the expert, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity over the topic. \u201cBut when you looked at the \u2018fake\u2019 one, it was made using a dot matrix printer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no freaking way it came from that century.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the auction house pulled the hoverboard from the sale. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do our due diligence and if there is any doubt, we address any questions immediately and bring in consulting experts, such as we did for the Back to the Future Hovercraft, to ensure authenticity, \u201c said Catherine Williamson, managing director of entertainment for Julien\u2019s Auctions, in a statement.<\/p>\n
Most auctions deploy varying levels of vetting and often rely on the consignor to provide the information to ascertain authenticity, chain of title and an object\u2019s history. In many cases, questionable props and outright fakes slip onto the market. <\/p>\n
The problem, said Lanigan, is \u201cit\u2019s a lot easier just to replicate something and sell a fake as an original, than to try and find an original.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cStar Wars\u201d fans thought they\u2019d been shot into hyperspace. Goldin and Studios memorabilia auction houses announced in March…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1926,1930,1922,1921,1927,1923,1924,418,1743,831,48,52,51,47,50,49,1929,1920,1925,1928,72],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-auction-house","tag-authenticity","tag-blaster","tag-dan-lanigan","tag-david-mandel","tag-fake-movie-prop","tag-film","tag-history","tag-hollywood","tag-item","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-price","tag-prop","tag-star-wars","tag-studio-backlot","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}