How Much Did the Tablets From ‘The Ten Commandments’ Movie Sell for at Auction?
You can own two pieces of movie history, and you won’t even need to climb Mount Sinai to get them.
The stone tablets that Moses (Charlton Heston) received in the 1956 biblical epic The Ten Commandments went up for bid at Propstore’s Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction. The auction took place in Los Angeles and online from March 12-14 and included nearly 1,700 lots of film and TV memorabilia.
The bidding for the tablets started at $20,000, and Propstore estimated they could be sold for between $40,000-$80,000. The winning bid was for $50,000 (inclusive of buyers’ premium).
These movie prop tablets weren’t written by the finger of God, and they’re not even actual stone. “These two lightweight fiberglass tablets were hand-painted with slightly different red and black-speckled patinas, engraved with ancient Hebraic text, and intentionally molded with slight irregularities to further resemble chiseled stone,” the lot description says.
According to Propstore:
The creation of the tablets required intensive research to meet DeMille’s significant creative demands. The director tasked Paramount Studios scenic artist A.J. Ciraolo with creating a finish that both specifically resembled Mount Sinai’s distinctive red granite and historically-accurate Midrashic commandment etchings for the mountaintop and Golden Calf scenes. After production, this set was gifted to a publicist by Paramount executive Bernard Serlin, who kept them in his studio office and who it is believed drilled holes on one of them for mounting.
Of course, The Ten Commandments — and those precious tablets — will be seen again on ABC this Easter season:
Remind 
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