Film fans will have the chance to get their hands on the patent leather boots worn by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or Tom Cruise's Top Gun bomber jacket when about 1,000 items of movie memorabilia go on sale in an auction in December.
The artefacts in the annual Prop Store Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction have been hunted down by Prop Store boss Stephen Lane through his network of filmmakers, cast and crew members, production companies and collectors.
"I started Prop Store out of my passion for collecting and so it's all about the hunt," Lane says from his company's warehouses in Rickmansworth, near London.
"A lot of these artefacts are just thrown away at the end of production or certainly used to be. They were just disposed of or sold off. And that meant they just went to the four winds."
Some of the items on this year's list turned up unexpectedly.
Lane, a passionate Star Wars fan, was visiting a crew member who had laid out his treasure trove of props from the sci-fi series in his house. He spotted another piece of movie magic – the crystal ball that David Bowie uses in Labyrinth.
"We'd spent three hours up in one room looking at all the Star Wars and downstairs, and it was a piece he just didn't think anybody was going to be interested in, and I was like 'that's the cherry right there'.
"That's the real excitement of what I do," Lane says of the crystal ball, which is estimated to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000 ($12,942 to $19,413).
In total, more than 900 items from more than 350 films and television shows will be auctioned in the two-day online sale.
Highlights include Obi-Wan Kenobi's Hero Lightsaber from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, estimated between £80,000 and £120,000, Jack Nicholson's Joker fedora from 1989's Batman, estimated between £20,000 and £30,000, and James Bond's MI6 training suit from Skyfall, estimated at £15,000.
Also on the auction block are the red leather jacket worn by Brad Pitt in 1999's Fight Club, estimated between £20,000 and £30,000, Captain Jack Sparrow's hat from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, estimated between £10,000 and £15,000 and the helmet worn by Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, signed by the actor, his co-stars and director Steven Spielberg, estimated between £10,000 and £15,000.
Cruise's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell Top Gun bomber jacket is estimated between £12,000 and £16,000 and the Pretty Woman boots at £10,000 to £15,000.
Among the top valued lots is also the complete costume for Keanu Reeves's character Neo from the 2003 film The Matrix Reloaded, which is estimated between £40,000 and £60,000.
The snakeskin suit worn by Bill Nighy in Love Actually is estimated to sell for a more modest £400.
The client viewings and sale would normally take place in central London, but the pandemic means most of the action this year is happening online or in the Prop Store warehouses.
The pandemic has had an unexpected effect on interest in film memorabilia, Lane says.
"The amount of views on our auctions have been absolutely through the roof this year," he says. "What we put that down to is the fact that people just really aren't entertaining. They're not travelling, they're not moving around."
