HBO is working with Heritage Auctions to auction off thousands of items produced by the Game of Thrones crew over the show's eight seasons on the air, including props, costumes, artwork, and more. Bidding is already open on everything, with the main event going down on October 10-12 through Heritage Auctions in Dallas. The collection will be on display in the auction house’s New York and London locations from September 17 through October 4.
There will be 900 lots in all, compiled into a 750-page catalog. Just to give you an idea of some of the stuff on offer and the bids being tossed around, here are some examples:
- Ned Stark's tunic and weapons from Game of Thrones season 1: $8,000
- Robert Baratheon's gold cuirass, the one he wanted the breastplate stretcher for: $2,000
- Dragon skull: $2,500
- Bran Stark's wheelchair: $4,000
- The "touring" Iron Throne: $5,250
And it goes on and on like that. Definitely check out what's on offer if you're interested. Pretty much everything is here, including every beautiful costume you've seen someone wear and even the bell wielded by Septa Unella during Cersei Lannister's walk of shame. That's the prize item if you ask me.
HBO exec Jay Roewe talked to the Associated Press about the auction. “Game of Thrones was a zeitgeist moment in our culture. It was a zeitgeist moment in high-end television. It was a zeitgeist moment in terms of HBO,” he said. “This is something we all grew up with. It’s impacted every single one of our lives. It’s impacted the culture, and Game of Thrones has meant something to every single person.”
"These items have been curated and taken care of since we finished filming. They are the quality that they were when we finished filming, and we’ve had people working on them for years to keep them in shape. We don’t need them anymore. It’s time to finally open it up to the world."
Meanwhile, Heritage Auctions executive vice president Joe Maddalena was agog over how comprehensive the collection was. “You don’t usually get studio-sanctioned auctions like this," he said. “Everything comes from the archive. Everything was handpicked, scene specific. You know where your piece was used. You know it was actually used on screen.”
I've likely seen some of these props in various showcases HBO has put on over the years; they've toured with this stuff before. There's even a Game of Thrones museum of sorts in Belfast called the Game of Thrones Studio Tour, where you can see this kind of stuff in context:
Hearing that HBO is auctioning off a lot of Game of Thrones stuff, I have to wonder if they have plans to end the Studio Tour? Probably not, since there are duplicates of a lot of these items and selling 900 doesn't mean that the museum will be out of things to show off. Still, it seems like a big move, and definitely a chance for some diehard fans to get their hands on one-of-a-kind collectables. Who's gonna buy the Iron Throne and put it in their living room?
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h/t TIME