The James Bond franchise has spent the better part of five years in a holding pattern, promising a new direction while offering none. Now, in lieu of an actual film, collectors can bid on the next best thing: the clothes. Propstore's upcoming online auction features some 400 lots spanning every single 007 picture, but the headline items belong to the Daniel Craig era—his Tom Ford suit from Skyfall, Ana de Armas's slinky black dress from No Time to Die, and assorted props from the five-film run that redefined Bond as a bruised, mortal figure rather than a quip-dispensing cartoon. The sale is a fascinating temperature check on a franchise that hasn't released a frame of new footage since Craig's final outing in 2021.
The Craig premium
Bond memorabilia auctions are nothing new, but the composition of this one is telling. The Craig-era pieces are positioned as the marquee draws, reflecting both recency bias and genuine cultural weight. His tenure coincided with the franchise's commercial peak—Skyfall remains the highest-grossing Bond film ever, unadjusted—and his grittier interpretation attracted viewers who had previously dismissed 007 as a relic. Whether that translates to hammer prices north of six figures remains to be seen, but Propstore is clearly betting that Craig nostalgia has not yet curdled into indifference.
A franchise between acts
The auction's timing is almost poignant. Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have been publicly deliberating over Craig's successor for half a decade now, auditioning names in the press (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Regé-Jean Page, the inevitable "unknown") without committing to any of them. Amazon's acquisition of MGM in 2022 was supposed to accelerate matters; instead, the streaming giant has largely left Eon Productions to its glacial pace. In the interim, Bond's cultural real estate has been colonized by Mission: Impossible, John Wick, and a dozen lesser imitators. Selling off the costumes feels less like a victory lap than a yard sale during a renovation that never ends.
What the bids will reveal
Auction results are imperfect proxies for fandom health, but they are proxies nonetheless. If Craig's Skyfall suit fetches north of the mid-six figures, it signals that the audience is still emotionally invested, still waiting. If the lots underperform, it suggests that five years of silence have done real damage—that Bond has drifted from "dormant icon" to "pleasant memory." The franchise has survived long gaps before (six years between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye), but it has never faced a media landscape this fragmented or an audience this impatient.
Our take
There is something melancholy about a franchise reduced to auctioning its tailoring. Bond has always been about forward motion—the next mission, the next girl, the next Aston Martin. This sale is backward-looking by definition, a monument to a version of 007 that ended with Craig walking off into the mist. Eon would do well to announce a new lead before the gavel falls. Otherwise, the auction becomes the story, and the story is that James Bond is, for now, a museum piece.
