Tom Hanks Sells Trailer He Used for 24 Years
It will be sold at auction on Friday the 13th
Throughout most of his illustrious acting career, Tom Hanks used a distinctive, aluminum-covered Airstream trailer as his home away from home. Now, it can become someone else’s mobile residence, as it is being sold in August at Quail’s Lodge Auction in Carmel, California.
The travel trailer, a 1992 Model 34 Limited Excella, provided Hanks with living accommodations while on movie sets from 1993 to 2017 — in other words, from Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump all the way to Steven Spielberg’s The Post.
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According to Hanks, he purchased the Airstream “in the days when movies moved slower … I had spent too much time in regular trailers with ugly décor and horribly uncomfortable furniture, so I decided to buy a brand-new Airstream shell with an interior made to my own request.”
The travel trailer is as custom as they come. Besides the built-in kitchen and bathroom, everything was hand-picked by Hanks: the furniture, the artificial fireplace, the bed, and an outdoor patio set. “I wanted a regular sofa, too, so I had one made with removable legs so it would get through the door,” the actor told Bonhams Magazine.
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The trailer also comes with lots of movie memorabilia that could probably fetch a neat price on their own, such as a mug signed by the Apollo 13 crew and a FedEx sticker. And just in case the ownership of the trailer was in doubt, Hanks personally signed one of its faux-wood panels.
The auction house expects the trailer to fetch up to $200,000 when it goes on sale on Aug. 13. If you’re a big Tom Hanks fan with lots of disposable income, this might be your chance to experience how the Academy Award-winning actor lived for a quarter of a century.
If you’re superstitious, you may want to pass, as the auction date is on Friday the 13th. That said, Hanks did make his movie debut in a slasher film (He Knows You’re Alone, 1980), so who knows — the auction date could be a good omen.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.