© 1997 – Paramount Pictures
One notable slab of wood in movie history just sold for nearly a million dollars.
Heritage Auctions announced Monday that its recent Treasures From Planet Hollywood auction collected $15.68 million in total. Movie props sold at the auction included Harrison Ford’s bullwhip from 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the axe Jack Nicholson wielded in 1980’s The Shining and, most notably, the piece of balsa wood that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet hang onto in the final scenes of 1997’s Titanic.
While the prop item is commonly referred to as the “floating door” by fans of the movie, the item is actually “part of the door frame just above the [ship’s] first-class lounge entrance,” per the auction.
The iconic movie prop sold for $718,750 at the auction and marked the the event’s highest-selling item, among 16 total props that sold for more than $100,000. It was not the only prop from James Cameron’s Titanic movie made available at the auction — a prototype of the same piece of wood sold for $125,000, while the wheel used for the boat in the movie sold for $200,000.
The dress Winslet, now 48, is seen wearing in Titanic‘s final act as her character Rose and DiCaprio’s character Jack descend into the water, sold for $118,750, while a telegraph prop used in the film sold for $81,250, per a release.
Information included within Heritage Auctions’ website reads that the slab of wood is “based on the most famous complete piece of debris salvaged from” the real-life April 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.
The wooden prop used in the film has long been the subject of fan debate over whether DiCaprio and Winslet’s characters could have both stayed afloat on top of the slab of wood. Jack famously freezes to death in the Atlantic Ocean after he and Rose narrowly escape the sinking ocean liner and they determine only one of them can fit on top of the debris.
“Jack might’ve lived, but there’s a lot of variables,” Cameron, 69, said in National Geographic’s Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron special, which aired in February 2023 and sought to scientifically determine if the wood could have held both characters. “I think his thought process was, ‘I’m not gonna do one thing that jeopardizes her.’ “
This article was first published on People.com.