The famous green and yellow elf costume donned by Will Ferrell in the holiday film “Elf” sold for over $319,000 at an auction just outside of London on Friday, alongside a swath of other props from hit movies.
Propstore, an auction house based in Hertfordshire, England, featured the iconic Christmas suit donated by “Elf” producer Jon Berg’s personal collection in its Winter Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction.
Buddy the Elf’s signature costume — featuring a green, fur-trimed jacket with gold embroidery, yellow tights and a green triangular hat — sold for roughly $319,300 — or £239,400.
In the film, Buddy, played by the 6-foot-3 Ferrell, wears his traditional elf uniform from the North Pole for the bulk of the movie, save for his brief stint working in the mail room at his father’s publishing company.
The costume sold at auction was specifically worn during the scene where Buddy presses every single button in an elevator because he thought it looked “like a Christmas tree,” according to the auction house listing.
The 2003 movie “Elf,” Ferrell’s first since departing “Saturday Night Live” the year prior, follows a man who was raised as an elf after he was mistakenly brought to the North Pole as a baby. Once he learns that his biological father, a crotchety publisher played by the late James Caan, is on the naughty list, he travels to New York City in hopes of righting his family’s wrongs and learning about his parentage.
Today, cheap replicas of the costume are often worn by pedicab drivers in the Big Apple during the holiday season.
While the auction did boast props from celebrated Christmas films, including “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Mickey’s Christmas Carol,” there was no apparent theme.
The heavy hitters in the auction hailed from some of Hollywood’s most successful franchises. A fedora worn by Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” sold for just over $437,000 and bounty hunter Boba Fett’s EE-3 carbine blaster from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” went for around $613,000, according to the auction house.
In 2021, another copy of Buddy’s elf costume sold to an anonymous buyer for $296,702.
In November 2003, Santa’s sleigh went up for auction just one week after “Elf” was released in theaters. The sleigh appears in the tail-end of the movie when Buddy helps a marooned Santa evade the police in Central Park.
