Bonhams sold 161 lots from The Crown in February 2024, and every realised price is still published on individual lot pages. The reproduction of the "revenge dress" made £12,800. A 1987 Jaguar made £70,250. A Gold State Coach reproduction made £56,280.
This is the most complete public price record for any modern television production's props and costumes, and it is still readable. Below: what sold, what the numbers tell you, and why almost nothing from this show is buyable now.
The sale
The Crown Auction, Bonhams, New Bond Street, London — the live sale closed 7 February 2024. A companion online sale ran alongside it.
161 lots, spanning costumes, furniture, architectural elements and vehicles. Each lot still has its own page with a description and the price it achieved, which is unusual — auction results are often summarised away.
The proceeds funded a scholarship: the Left Bank Pictures – The Crown Scholarship at the National Film and Television School. That detail matters for how you read the prices. Bidders knew where the money went.
What things made
| Lot | Realised |
|---|---|
| 1987 Jaguar XJ-SC | £70,250 |
| Gold State Coach reproduction | £56,280 |
| St Edward's Chair replica | £25,600 |
| The "revenge dress" reproduction | £12,800 |
The ordering is the interesting part. The single most photographed costume in the series made less than a fifth of what a reproduction carriage made, and less than a quarter of what the car made.
That is not a judgement on the dress. It is what happens when you put a garment that fits one person against objects that anyone can display. A dress has a size. A coach does not.
What this tells you about screen-costume value
Three things worth taking away, because they apply well beyond this sale.
Reproductions can carry real value. Nothing in that list is a historical artefact. The coach is a reproduction, the chair is a replica, the dress is a costume made for filming. They still made five figures, because what is being bought is the association with the production, not the age of the object.
Vehicles outperform clothing, consistently. A car is a functioning object with its own collector market underneath the screen provenance. A 1987 Jaguar has a value even with no television attached to it; a costume's value rests entirely on the provenance, which is a thinner floor.
Wearability suppresses price. Costume lots are cut to a specific performer. Most bidders are buying display pieces, and a garment that only fits one body is harder to display than a chair.
Why you cannot buy any of it now
The sale is over and it was a one-off. These lots went to private buyers in February 2024. There is no standing Crown auction, no rolling catalogue, no second chance at these particular objects.
The pages remain up, which is why we can publish the numbers. Do not mistake a live lot page for a live listing — the item sold two years ago, and the price you are reading is what someone else paid.
And there is no official Crown merchandise line to fall back on. Unlike Downton Abbey, which has a licensed jewellery programme running for years, this production put its objects into a single charity sale and stopped.
What that leaves, if you want something from this world
Buy the period rather than the production. Almost every object in that sale was a reproduction of something real — a coach, a chair, a piece of jewellery, a dress recreating a real garment. The originals they reference are documented, and the antiques market for 1950s to 1990s British design is deep and considerably cheaper than a screen provenance.
Watch the specialist auctions rather than the resale sites. When production lots come up again — and they do, as private buyers move things on — they surface at auction houses rather than on marketplaces. Propstore runs regular screen-used sales and publishes results the same way. That is also where you can see a realised price rather than an asking price, which is the difference between knowing what something is worth and knowing what someone hopes it is worth.
And treat "screen-used" claims outside an auction house with suspicion. In a Bonhams sale the provenance is underwritten by the house and the production. On a marketplace listing it is underwritten by the seller. Those are not the same guarantee, and the price difference between them usually reflects exactly that.
What a costume auction actually contains
Worth knowing before you watch one, because "costumes from the show" covers several very different things and they are not priced alike.
Hero costumes are the ones a principal wears in a scene you remember. There are usually very few, sometimes one, and they carry the highest expectation. They are also the ones most likely to be retained by the production rather than sold.
Duplicates are the same garment made two, five or ten times over for stunts, doubles, weather and continuity. A lot described as a costume "worn by" a character is frequently one of several identical pieces, and a good catalogue says so. That is not a defect — it is how filming works — but it changes what you are bidding on.
Background and crowd costumes are made in volume and are the affordable end of any sale. For someone who wants a genuine object from a production rather than a famous one, this is usually where the sensible money goes.
Props and set dressing — the chairs, the china, the architectural pieces — behave differently again, because they are display objects with no fit problem. That is precisely why the chair and the coach beat the dress in this sale.
Read the catalogue wording carefully. "Worn by," "made for," "of the type used" and "from the production" are four different claims, and auction houses are careful about which one they print. Marketplace sellers are frequently not.
A note on the record itself
We are writing this up for the same reason we wrote about a Porsche nobody can buy: when a price record this complete exists, the useful thing is to record it accurately.
Most of what circulates about screen-costume values is asking prices from marketplaces, which run high and are frequently never met. These are realised prices — money that actually changed hands, published by the auctioneer, with the buyer's premium included.
If you are trying to value anything in this category, a set of 161 dated, realised results is worth more than any number of live listings.
FAQ
When was The Crown auction? The live Bonhams sale at New Bond Street in London closed on 7 February 2024, with a companion online sale running alongside it. 161 lots in total.
How much did the revenge dress make? £12,800 for the reproduction made for the production. Notably less than the vehicles and large props in the same sale.
What was the top price? A 1987 Jaguar XJ-SC at £70,250, followed by a Gold State Coach reproduction at £56,280 and a St Edward's Chair replica at £25,600.
Were these real historical objects? No. They were reproductions and replicas made for filming. Their value came from the production association rather than from age or historical provenance.
Where did the money go? To fund the Left Bank Pictures – The Crown Scholarship at the National Film and Television School.
Can I still buy any of it? No. It was a single sale in February 2024 and the lots went to private buyers. The lot pages remain online, but they are records of completed sales, not listings.
Is there official Crown merchandise? No licensed product line comparable to other period dramas. The production's objects went into one charity auction rather than into a merchandise programme.
Why are these prices more useful than resale listings? Because they are realised — money that actually changed hands, published by the auction house with premium included. Marketplace figures are asking prices, which run high and often go unmet.