10/03/2019

The Shining Axe Sells at Auctioon


Yahoo News is reporting the ax used by actor Jack Nicholson from the moving The Shining recently sold at auction for $209,000. This is almost four times the estimate. A prop axe from the movie sold in 2017 for $14,000. Always interesting to see what celebrity premiums can bring.

Yahoo reports
Jack Nicholson's trusty ax from 1980’s The Shining — perhaps the most famous ax in movie history — has sold at auction for £170,000 (about $209,000 U.S.) — nearly four times the amount it was estimated to fetch.

The iconic tool became involved in a bidding war at the Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, held at London’s British Film Institute on Tuesday, and was expected to haul in between £40,000 and £60,000 (around $49,000 to $73,000 U.S.).

Nicholson's deranged Jack Torrance menaced a terrified Shelley Duvall with the fire ax in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick's benchmark psychological horror.

And though he puts it through a door, in one of the film's most famous scenes, the lot was said to be in “excellent condition.”

Strangely, it wasn't the only movie ax going under the hammer — Jason Voorhees's trusty chopper was also being auctioned from the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th, with a guide price of £3000 to £5000 (about $3,600 to $6,100 U.S.).

The axes were among 900 lots to go up for sale in the annual auction, among them a range of replica guns from the Bond movies, one of the model sharks from Jaws, Vito Corleone's pea coat from The Godfather: Part II and Russell Crowe's armor from Gladiator.

There was also an original Stormtrooper helmet from the first Star Wars movie, and the Batsuit worn by Michael Keaton in 1989's Batman.
Source: Yahoo


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