A Dallas auction house normally filled with fine art and rare baseball cards now has a mascot costume of a six-foot-tall dog, last seen in episode 1 of the HBO drama “Succession.” The audience may remember a nauseated cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) putting on the costume and vomiting through his eyeballs.
The item has been completely cleaned of prop vomit, according to auction staff members, and is now among 236 lots of exhibit memorabilia up for bidding on the Heritage Auctions website through Saturday.
“Even the eyes are mostly clear,” said Robert Wilonsky, a spokesman for the auction house.
“Succession,” the story of ultra-rich brothers vying for control of their father’s media empire, ended its four-season run in May and is up for 27 Emmy Awards on Monday, the most of any series. Fans and collectors who want to own a piece of the show can bid on the fancy suits worn by the show's cast or the vape smoked by its season 4 antagonist, Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard). Fear not: it comes with a charger.
The most coveted item at the auction may be a boxy Burberry bag ridiculed by Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) when an intruder brings it to a family event. “He brought a ridiculously spacious bag,” he says. “What's in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway?
The stock market was the subject of brutal memes. On Friday, it was the most viewed lot of the auction, with a leading bid of $4,100.
Other instruments of humiliation include the Vitamix blender used to soak Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) in Season 4 and the sausages from a hazing ritual in Season 2 called “boar on the floor.” Taxidermied boars from the same location could not be auctioned because they are “a little difficult to store,” he said. Monica Jacobs, prop master of the show.
Even the most mundane accessories could take weeks to create, Jacobs said. Credit cards were made specifically for the show (don't get your hopes up, none of them work), and a member of the show's art department scribbled handwritten speeches for the funeral scene. (Jeremy Strong, the actor who played Kendall Roy, asked to write his, he added.)
HBO has already auctioned off props from the shows “Insecure” and “Watchmen,” joining A24 and Netflix in a crowded field of Hollywood memorabilia auctions that can generate buzz — and profits — long after filming has wrapped. Sales will be shared between HBO and Heritage Auctions.
Items for the auction were selected while Season 4 was filming in the early months of 2023, said Jax Strobel, managing director of entertainment at Heritage Auctions. HBO invited him to snoop around the New York sets and pick out items (for example, the bayonet sword hanging on the wall of Logan Roy's office) that should be left out.
“What will a fan remember or recognize?” he said. “Things that appear frequently, or that have a special moment or memory.”
Also up for auction are several of the costumes that helped create a frenzy over “stealth wealth”: the subtle bending of understated pieces that are actually quite expensive. See: the brown Brunello Cucinelli jacket that Kendall wore in Season 2.
The show's characters “represent money,” Michelle Matland, the costume designer, said in an interview last year. “They represent wealth. They represent position and posture.”
Mrs. Matland dressed them accordingly, starting with their shoes, which she called “the most important article of clothing on a person's body.” Selections from her brands such as Prada, Saint Laurent and Lanvin appear in the auction with varying levels of wear.
Some fans of the show complained on social media about the marking on a blue Walmart children's t-shirt that Roman wore in the series finale. Bids for the T-shirt and corresponding pair of salmon-colored shorts from Old Navy had surpassed $1,000 by Friday.
Ms. Jacobs, the props manager, is encouraged that fans still appreciate the show's carefully curated meanings of wealth, status, self-absorption and bad taste.
Some of them were a pain to get. She ordered about 20 dried scorpions for the paperweight Tom gives to Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) in season 4 and reshaped their tails into “attack mode.” She dried the scorpions in the oven of her apartment before one, cast in resin, enjoyed just a few seconds as a guest star on prestigious television.
“My kitchen smelled terrible for a couple of weeks,” Jacobs said, “but it was worth it.”
