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Jack Nicholson's ax from 'The Shining' sold at auction for more than $200,000

Jack Nicholson's trusty ax from 1980’s The Shining — perhaps the most famous ax in movie history — has sold at auction for £170,000 (about $209,000 U.S.) — nearly four times the amount it was estimated to fetch.

The iconic tool became involved in a bidding war at the Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, held at London’s British Film Institute on Tuesday, and was expected to haul in between £40,000 and £60,000 (around $49,000 to $73,000 U.S.).

Jack Nicholson peering through axed in door in lobby card for the film 'The Shining', 1980. (Photo by Warner Brothers/Getty Images)
The ax from the 1980 Jack Nicholson film The Shining has been sold at auction. (Photo: Warner Brothers/Getty Images)

Nicholson's deranged Jack Torrance menaced a terrified Shelley Duvall with the fire ax in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick's benchmark psychological horror.

Prop Store CEO Stephen Lane holds Jack Nicholson's "Jack Torrance" hero axe from the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining, which is estimated to sell for between ??40,000 - ??60,000, at an auction preview, ahead of their sale of entertainment memorabilia at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo, London. (Photo by Kirsty O'Connor/PA Images via Getty Images)
Prop Store CEO Stephen Lane holds Jack Nicholson's ax from the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining. (Photo: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Images via Getty Images)

And though he puts it through a door, in one of the film's most famous scenes, the lot was said to be in “excellent condition.”

Strangely, it wasn't the only movie ax going under the hammer — Jason Voorhees's trusty chopper was also being auctioned from the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th, with a guide price of £3000 to £5000 (about $3,600 to $6,100 U.S.).

The axes were among 900 lots to go up for sale in the annual auction, among them a range of replica guns from the Bond movies, one of the model sharks from Jaws, Vito Corleone's pea coat from The Godfather: Part II and Russell Crowe's armor from Gladiator.

There was also an original Stormtrooper helmet from the first Star Wars movie, and the Batsuit worn by Michael Keaton in 1989's Batman.

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