There are few scenes from the seminal holiday classic Home Alone that are more memorable than Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) riding a wooden toboggan down the stairs of his house and out into the snow-covered front yard.
That same toboggan is now coming up for sale with Heritage Auctions, it still shows some wear and scuff marks from its use in the film, and it’s being offered with a starting bid of $6,000 USD. This makes it one of the most expensive toboggans (or sleds) of this type in history, but it’s also arguably the most famous.
Above Video: This is the original theatrical trailer for Home Alone (1990), it shows all the major highlights of the film, including Kevin’s toboggan trip down the stairs and out into the snow-covered front yard.
As the story goes, the toboggan scene actually involved a custom ski ramp that was built inside the house by the stunt team. Larry Nichols, Culkin’s 30 year old stunt double, was then tasked with climbing onto the toboggan and performing the stunt.
After filming the toboggan ended up in the ownership of John Hughes, the writer and producer of the film.
Hughes was a director, producer, and screenwriter responsible for many of the most memorable films of the era, including The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, She’s Having a Baby, and Uncle Buck, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, The Great Outdoors, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Dutch, and Beethoven.
Home Alone was released in 1990 starring Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, and John Candy. The film grossed $476.7 million USD worldwide, almost half a billion dollars, and it would remain the highest-grossing live-action comedy until the release of The Hangover Part II 21 years later in 2011. When inflation is factored in, Home Alone is still be ahead.
The toboggan scene is one of the most memorable in the film. In order to film it the stunt team built an indoor ski ramp which Larry Nichols, Culkin’s 30-year-old stunt double, then rode down in the toboggan shown in this article. Images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.The Home Alone toboggan measures in at 59″ x 17″ x 0.5″, it’s an original bent-wood, dual-finished toboggan with six cross-slats, a front chain, and a rope handle. It comes with a certificate of authenticity (COA) from Heritage Auctions.
If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here. The auction ends on the 26th of July and at the time of writing, no one has yet placed a bid.
Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions + 20th Century Fox
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
