Steven Spielberg poses with the “Rosebud” sled from Citizen Kane, which he purchased at Sotheby’s auction in June 1982.

Steven Spielberg will donate the iconic  “Rosebud” sled, made for Orson Welles’ landmark 1941 film Citizen Kane, to the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Spielberg told BBC Radio 1 he considered the balsa wood prop sled to be one of his prized  possessions.

“There were three made to burn at the end,” Spielberg said. “Welles directed all the insert photography and Welles was happy with the second sled they burned, and so the third sled was not needed, and that was put in storage at RKO (Pictures), and I purchased the sled at a Sotheby’s auction in the mid-80s.”

He added, “It’s going to be at the Academy Museum eventually – the new Academy museum. It’s in my office right now and it’s been there for years and years, ever since I purchased it. It was at home for a while and then it was in my office. But I think it really belongs in a museum so everybody can see it.”

Welles once recalled that four sleds were made for Citizen Kane – a pinewood sled seen early in the film, which sold at Christies’s auction for $233,500 to an unidentified bidder in December 1996, and three balsa wood sleds for use at the fiery close of the film. Spielberg paid $60,500 at Sotheby’s for the surviving balsa sled in June 1982.

According to press accounts 0f the 1982 auction, the sled had been owned by John Hall, RKO’s chief archivist, who had bought it from a studio watchman. The watchman had found it in a trash heap outside the prop vault in the old RKO studios in Hollywood.

During the BBC Radio 1 interview, Spielberg revealed that Indiana Jones’ trademark whip and fedora from his 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark are also kept in his office. “It’s not on display but it’s … if I need it I can whip it out.”

Located on Wilshire and Fairfax in Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is set to open in 2019.