In 1984, a director found and saved the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane on the RKO Pictures lot; 41 years later, it sold for $14.75 million

In 1984, while working on the former RKO Pictures lot, director Joe Dante came across a worn wooden sled that had been set aside with no indication of its significance. He recognized it as the sled from Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane . He kept it in his personal collection for the next 41 years. That sled sold at Heritage Auctions on July 16, 2025, for $14.75 million.

Researchers LaSaleta and Vohs in their 2014 paper titled “Nostalgia Weakens the Desire for Money,” in the Journal of Consumer Research, stated that when it comes to money, nostalgia can make us less concerned about it, and more inclined to pay crazy prices for things that remind us of it. That, in essence, is the whole Rosebud saga in a sentence from an academic standpoint. And it is a story worth explaining why a prop sled from the 1940's suddenly turned into a financial event in 2025.