'Succession' props, from Waystar Royco employee badges to cousin Greg's dog costume, are up for auction. What the bids say about the show and its fans.
In the 2016 series premiere of Succession, during the first introduction to the character of Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), he’s wearing an enormous dog costume. It’s Doderick, the mascot of the Waystar Royco company’s theme parks. It’s not necessarily the face of the series — a viewer who may have watched all four seasons once through may not even remember it. It’s a small piece of the Succession puzzle that, seemingly, could make for a fun trivia question, but is otherwise forgettable.
Except, for true Succession fans, the actual costume itself is worth almost $3,000.
That’s according to the current bid on Heritage Auctions’ Succession Showcase, which ends on Jan. 13. The auction lists 236 items from the set of Succession, a show that ended after four seasons in May 2023.
Succession generated tremendous coverage during its run, but it isn't among HBO's most highly rated shows. The April 30 finale attracted 2.9 million viewers, according to Variety, not accounting for delayed viewing or later streams. For comparison, the network’s No. 1 show of all-time, Game of Thrones, drew 19.3 million viewers in its finale in May 2019, Forbes reported.
The show is still winning awards, too. It dominated the 2024 Golden Globes, collecting more awards than any other TV show — three of which were for main cast members Matthew Macfadyen, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin. Succession dominates Monday’s 75th Emmy Awards with 27 nominations.
While HBO declined to comment on the auction, a representative for the network told Yahoo Entertainment that there has been “an increase in viewing” Succession on streaming service Max “in the week leading up to the Golden Globes and in the days since.”
The show’s cultural relevance is what makes Heritage Auctions’ showcase so interesting. Heritage Auctions has showcased pieces from famous TV and film sets for years, including the bar from Cheers which sold for $675,000, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show desk went for $275,000 and one of the original uniforms from the first season of Star Trek for $62,500. (As of reporting, the most expensive Succession listing is Logan Roy’s office bar set for $6,750.)
What sets the Succession auction apart is that the show itself is still ascending in popularity. Unlike Cheers or Star Trek items, which have a nostalgic feel to them and are viewed by many as museum relics given how historically significant they are, can someone feel equally sentimental about a show that came to an end less than one year ago?
Jax Strobel, managing director of Heritage Auctions, told Yahoo Entertainment that he isn’t at all surprised that fans want a physical piece from the show — regardless of how recently it ended.
“How often do you get a chance to watch a TV show today and own something from it tomorrow?” he said. “It's a thrill for those of us who love Succession.”
Strobel visited the set himself to pick out the pieces for the auction. His general rule is to view each item from a fan’s perspective versus a “collector.” As a real fan of the show, he wanted to pick pieces that could illustrate all four seasons in order, starting with the Doderick costume and ending with Roman Roy’s (Kieran Culkin) handwritten funeral speech cards, which as of Thursday afternoon, are going for over $5,000.
“There’s a lot of thought and a lot of care that really goes into putting something like this together,” he explained. “I respect the fans, I always want to respect the fans of the show.”
Robert Wilonsky, vice president of PR and communications at Heritage, told Yahoo Entertainment that as a big Succession fan himself — he’s currently reading the scripts — he would want to buy and then wear Lukas Matsson’s (Alexander Skarsg?rd) mohair sweater from the finale, which as of press time, is priced at $925.
“That sweater is beautiful, it is soft, it is everything you want in a sweater,” Wilonsky said, noting that he appears to have the same clothing and shoe size as Skarsg?rd. “The jewelry, you know, [people] might wear those. I think some of these things just make more sense to use [or wear] — the espresso maker, right, Tom and Shiv’s espresso maker? How would you not want to use that?”
(The espresso maker is currently bidding at $1,550 and usually retails for around $2,400.)
While the idea of actually using, say, the bar from Cheers in your living room for a Super Bowl party seems unwise, Wilonsky argued that what also makes the Succession auction unique is how the items will inevitably increase in value as time passes.
“There's no universe in which somebody is wearing Marilyn Monroe's dress from The Seven Year Itch,” he said. “These [items] are relatively affordable at the moment. Who’s to say that in 40 or 50 years from now, we’ll think about Matsson’s bomber jacket the way we think about Fonzie’s leather jacket [from Happy Days]?”
Strobel expects every item to sell on Sunday, when the auction officially ends. What he especially appreciates about the show's props is how intricate and detailed they are. The fake New York Magazine and Forbes covers from the first season really open to dozens of fake articles stylized exactly how the real publications would. Both are bidding around $2,000.
“If you put it on the coffee table, you would think that that was a real magazine,” Wilonsky said. “It's not just one cover. It’s a whole thing — really [showing the] detail and the effort that they made in creating this world.”
Kendall's (Jeremy Strong) and Tom's (Macfadyen) Waystar employee badges (which both have bids over $1,000) list different security clearances, with Tom's being lower. “It's why he didn't get go to the good panic room,” one r/Succession subreddit user pointed out, referring to the fourth episode in Season 2.
It's details like that, Strobel says, that's going to make fans feel appreciated by the show they love so much.
Another member of the Succession subreddit, u/Captaincoolbeans, told Yahoo Entertainment that they were outbid pretty quickly on several items and were waiting until Sunday to see what was still affordable to buy (they declined to share which specific items they bid on). User u/Few-Salamander3246 said they were going to stop bidding on Kendall Roy’s lighter once it hit $1,200. As of Thursday, its highest bid is at $875.
“I’m ecstatic about the response that we’re getting,” Strobel said. “I can’t say it’s necessarily surprising just because of people’s love and obsession with Succession, but it’s exciting. I’m thrilled. It’s having the response that we had always hoped that it would and we worked towards, so I’m just happy.”
