Jason's Friday the 13th Hockey Mask Sold for $225,000 at Auction

Some auction lots arrive with a pedigree, and some arrive with a body count. In the summer of 2021, Prop Store's "Entertainment Memorabilia: Treasures from Film and Television" auction offered one of the most famous faces in horror, a battered, burnt Jason Voorhees hockey mask worn on screen by Kane Hodder in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The estimate was $20,000 to $30,000, but when bidding closed, the hammer had fallen at $180,000, and with the buyer's premium, the winner paid $225,000 for the mask. At UX Auctions, where we cover government and collector auctions every day, we can't think of a better Friday the 13th story for the Halloween season.

A mask nobody planned

Jason didn't start out in a hockey mask at all. He went without one in the first two films, and the idea came almost by accident during a camera test for Friday the 13th Part III, the 3-D sequel released in 1982. Instead of sitting through hours of makeup, actor Richard Brooker was handed a goalie mask that belonged to 3-D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff, a hockey fan, and director Steve Miner liked the look so much that he had a version made to fit Brooker's head.

The crew built it from a mold of a real goalie mask, and the finishing touches, including the red chevrons on the forehead and cheeks and the extra holes punched across the face, gave Jason the look that horror fans have known ever since. The story is often told that Sadoff's mask was a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask, though no photo of that original mask has ever surfaced. What is certain is that a simple piece of hockey gear turned an unknown killer into one of the most recognizable characters in movie history.

The mask that went to hell

By 1993, Jason was on his ninth film, and the mask had been through as much as he had. For Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, effects supervisor Howard Berger designed a mask that looked like it had been burned, soaked and fused to Jason's face over a decade of sequels, and the K.N.B. Effects Group built it from molded, vacuum-formed plastic, painted white, gray and brown and held on with three brown leather straps. It was aged on purpose with grime, scratches and chips, and only the red triangle on the forehead survived the abuse.

The mask that crossed the block was worn by Kane Hodder in the early part of the film, and it is screen-matched to the scene where a SWAT team ambushes Jason and blows him apart, which means the marks on the mask line up with what audiences see on screen. Hodder even signed it, writing "To Tom, You're Next, 'Jason'" above the red triangle. It came from the collection of special effects artist Tom "Brooklyn" Bellissimo, along with his letter of authenticity.

Why bidders went wild

Screen matching is what turns a movie prop into a true collector's piece, and a screen-matched Jason mask worn by Kane Hodder, who played the character in four films, checks every box a horror collector could want. Bidding blew past the $30,000 high estimate and kept climbing to $180,000, more than seven times the top of the range, and the $225,000 total put it among the most valuable Jason masks ever sold at auction. It also beat the screen-matched pulse rifle from Aliens that sold in the same auction for $106,250.

The original Part III masks have their own legends. The hero mask from the 1982 film is believed to be lost, and a stunt mask from that film, known among fans as the "Holy Grail," changed hands privately in 2011 for an undisclosed price. That makes the masks that do reach a public auction all the more prized, and every Friday the 13th, fans go looking for the next one.

Movie cars, props and one-of-a-kind finds show up at auctions all year long, and so do retired government vehicles with stories of their own. Search every government auction platform at once at uxsearch.app.