The sale makes it the second most valuable piece of film memorabilia ever sold, surpassed only by a pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, which fetched $32.5m (£24.2m) last year.

The seller was director Joe Dante, who was gifted the prop in 1984 while working on the Paramount lot. He recounted how a crew member, aware of his passion for vintage cinema, saved it from being discarded. “I was astonished,” Dante recalled. “Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be glad to take it.’”

Made of pine hardwood, the prop shows signs of wear and is missing some rails, believed to have been donated to a wartime scrap metal drive. Dante gave the sled a second life on screen, featuring it in his own films, including Explorers, The Burbs, and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, The Guardian reports.

While the exact number of sleds made for Citizen Kane is unknown, one was sold to Steven Spielberg for $60,500 in 1982 and another fetched $233,000 in 1996, highlighting the item’s remarkable increase in value.