The 58-key piano used to play "As Time Goes By" in the 1942 classic film "Casablanca" with actors Dooley 
Wilson, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart might be one of the most famous pianos to ever be featured in a full length motion picture. The unusual 58-key upright is not your usual dark wood colored piano and it is easily recognized by its unique and colorful shade of distressed yellow and green. The piano is actually quite small and actor Dooley Wilson, who played Sam in the film towers over the instrument in the very memorable scene when Bergman’s character tells Dooley to, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” Although that line is usually misquoted as “Play it again, Sam” in pop culture today, one thing that is not often misquoted these days is the value of the iconic “movie star piano.”
Wilson, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart might be one of the most famous pianos to ever be featured in a full length motion picture. The unusual 58-key upright is not your usual dark wood colored piano and it is easily recognized by its unique and colorful shade of distressed yellow and green. The piano is actually quite small and actor Dooley Wilson, who played Sam in the film towers over the instrument in the very memorable scene when Bergman’s character tells Dooley to, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” Although that line is usually misquoted as “Play it again, Sam” in pop culture today, one thing that is not often misquoted these days is the value of the iconic “movie star piano.”The film “Casablanca” is often considered as one of Hollywood’s best efforts in which Humphrey Bogart plays an American in Morocco during World War II, with Ingrid Bergman as his paramour. But the piano itself is also considered one of the stars of the film as it evolves into a symbol of the tragic love story played out by Bogart and Bergman.
The last time the famous Casablanca piano was valued, it sold for $154,000 to a Japanese collector in 1998. Just like the title of the song, “As Time Goes By,” in the time since 1998, the old upright has picked up a lot more value. So much more value in fact, that the famous Sotheby’s auction house estimated the current value of the short board upright at prices ranging from around $800,000 up to $1.2 million. The Sotheby’s price estimate was thought to be accurate enough that when the piano was once again offered up for sale by the collector this year in honor of the film’s 70th anniversary, most people thought it would fetch about a million dollars at auction.
When the most recent auction took place at Sotheby’s in New York, an unnamed buyer was able to take the iconic instrument home for the bargain price of $602,500. Although the selling price was pretty far below the most optimistic estimates of its value, the selling price was well over half a million dollars, and that’s still a lot of green cash for an old and very worn, yellow and green upright piano. However, considering the rich history of the diminutive piano, the current selling price may turn out to be a bargain compared to what the same instrument might be worth in another decade or two.