I love this movie. Long but worth an annual viewing.
The sled, named "Rosebud" was only in the film for a moment, but played an important role in the story.
It just sold at auction. $14,750,000. Yes, almost $15 MILLION dollars for a sled made out of painted pine.
Full story at the link below:
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Orson Welles in Citizen Kane(1941). Photo: Getty Images.
The sled, named "Rosebud" was only in the film for a moment, but played an important role in the story.
It just sold at auction. $14,750,000. Yes, almost $15 MILLION dollars for a sled made out of painted pine.
Full story at the link below:
Famed Rosebud Sled From 'Citizen Kane' Is Up for Grabs
One of the last surviving Rosebud sleds from the 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane is hitting the auction block.
news.artnet.com
Last Known Rosebud Sled From ‘Citizen Kane’ Just Made Auction History
The prop is now the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia.
by Min ChenJuly 17, 2025
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Share This ArticleAs Citizen Kane (1941) opens, we’re drawn into the grand estate of Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles, who co-wrote and directed the film). The elderly media tycoon is dying. Lying on his deathbed, he clutches a snow globe, which falls from his hand as he breathes his last word: “Rosebud.” That final whisper will serve as our way into Kane’s world, setting in motion a narrative that traces his rise and fall, with the mysterious Rosebud at the center.
Rosebud is a dramatic device, but spoiler: it’s really a wooden sled that Kane once cherished as a young boy, a symbol of innocence lost. In Welles’s words, it’s “a little toy from the dead past of a great man.” At the film’s close, we watch as Kane’s staff, following his death, casually discard the sled into a furnace as if it were garbage, which it is to anyone not named Kane.
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The Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane (1941). Photo: Heritage Auctions.
Turns out, Rosebud is no one’s trash. It would endure as a powerful symbol in cinema, particularly as Citizen Kane, which earned an Academy Award for its screenplay, remains highly esteemed as a masterpiece. The actual sleds created for the film, too, would become treasure—one of the last surviving Rosebuds has now made auction history.
On July 16, Heritage Auctions sold the pine hardwood specimen, with a red seat stenciled with the word “ROSEBUD,” for an eye-watering $14.75 million. The final bid makes the sled the most expensive version of Rosebud to be sold at auction and the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia over sold (after the $32 million ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz).
The prop emerges from the collection of Gremlins director Joe Dante, who was given the old sled in 1984 by a crew member who was clearing out an old RKO Pictures lot. Dante had the sled analyzed and radiocarbon-dated to verify its authenticity; these scientific reports are included in the lot.
“I’ve had the honor of protecting this piece of cinematic history for decades,” said Dante in a statement. “To see Rosebud find a new home—and make history in the process—is both surreal and deeply gratifying. It’s a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”
The Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane (1941). Photo: Heritage Auctions.
Only three sleds created for Citizen Kane are known to survive (two were burned in the film’s final scene). One, used in the scene where a young Kane is seen playing with it in the snow, was the top prize in a 1942 RKO contest and won by a 12-year-old Arthur Bauer. The so-called Bauer sled, crafted out of pinewood, remained in his family for more than 50 years, before it was sold at Christie’s in 1996 for $233,500.
Another sled, this one in balsa wood, was snapped up by Steven Spielberg in 1982. It was recovered by a studio watchman from a pile of garbage outside the prop vault of the old RKO studios, before hitting the block at Sotheby’s, where Spielberg acquired it for $60,500. The artifact hung in the filmmaker’s office for years before he donated it to the Academy Museum in 2018.
Still from Citizen Kane (1941). Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
(There’s yet another Rosebud sled, which was given to screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, Welles’s co-writer, at the end of principal photography for Citizen Kane. It was not created for or used in the film, but is an actual 1840s artifact with a different design to the movie’s prop. Mankiewicz held on to the sled for decades; it sold at Bonhams for $149,000 in 2015.)
In material and paint, Dante’s sled was found to be similar to Bauer’s and Spielberg’s artifacts. But it has one unique feature: a rope that is threaded through holes in its runners, likely for the purposes of storage hanging.
