John Travolta's iconic white suit from Saturday Night Fever could fetch up to £300,000 when Propstore puts more than 1,400 pieces of film and TV history on the block next month.
The auction house's Summer Entertainment Memorabilia Auction will run four days and feature props, costumes, and collectibles spanning decades of Hollywood production. Among the headline lots: the fake axe Jack Nicholson swung through a bathroom door in The Shining, a hoverboard Michael J. Fox rode in Back to the Future Part II, and a golden snitch from the Harry Potter franchise, The Sun reported.
The single priciest item on the docket is not a costume or a weapon. It is a 15-inch stop-motion animation puppet from the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, estimated to sell for up to £1.5 million. That figure alone signals how seriously collectors now treat original Hollywood artifacts, not as novelty purchases, but as tangible pieces of cultural history worth more than many houses.
Travolta's white three-piece suit became one of the most recognizable costumes in movie history after the 1977 disco drama turned him into a global star. Propstore expects the suit to draw bids as high as £300,000, a number that reflects both the film's lasting place in pop culture and the shrinking supply of authenticated screen-worn wardrobe from that era.
The Shining's axe prop carries its own weight. Nicholson's "Here's Johnny" scene is one of the most quoted moments in horror film history, and the rubber axe built for that sequence is the kind of item that rarely surfaces on the open market. Propstore has not disclosed a specific estimate for the axe, the hoverboard, or the golden snitch, but all four items sit at the top of the auction's marquee lots.
Hollywood memorabilia has become a serious asset class in recent years. Stars like Brad Pitt still dominate entertainment headlines for their personal lives, but behind the scenes, the physical artifacts of their industry are quietly commanding six- and seven-figure sums at auction.
The Mighty Joe Young puppet stands out as the auction's most valuable single lot. The 1949 adventure film used stop-motion techniques that were state-of-the-art at the time, and the surviving puppet represents a craft that Hollywood abandoned decades ago in favor of digital effects. At up to £1.5 million, it would rank among the most expensive pieces of movie memorabilia ever sold if it reaches its high estimate.
Propstore has built its reputation on exactly this kind of sale, curating large-scale auctions where verified screen-used items move from private collections into new hands. With more than 1,400 lots spread across four days, the Summer Entertainment Memorabilia Auction is one of the company's biggest events.
Specific dates and the auction venue have not yet been announced publicly. Whether the sale will run in person, online, or both remains unclear. But the catalog already tells a clear story: the market for authentic Hollywood history is not cooling off.
In an era when studios churn through digital sets and CGI characters, the physical objects that actually appeared on screen carry a scarcity that only grows with time. Collectors willing to pay six figures for a disco suit or seven figures for a puppet built three-quarters of a century ago understand something simple, they are not buying props, they are buying proof that the real thing still matters.
