A few months ago, our friends at io9 reported that someone had paid a frankly unfeasible $3.75m for the lightsaber prop used by Mark Hamill in the iconic “I am your father” scene from The Empire Strikes Back. The sum remains the highest paid for a piece of Star Wars memorabilia—but perhaps not for much longer, because now the other lightsaber from that scene, the one wielded by Darth Vader, is also up for auction.
The prop is the headline item in Heritage Auctions’ Ultimate Star Wars Signature Auction, which includes a total of 189 pieces of Star Wars-related paraphernalia. There’s Boba Fett’s laser carbine, which looks badass as hell on film—in isolation, though, it looks kinda like a toy that someone broke in half. There are also several of the spaceship models used for the original trilogy, including the first Y-wing model made and a Snowspeeder model that belonged to Carrie Fisher.
As ever, our eyes go to the concept art, and there’s at least one fascinating examples thereof in this auction: a beautiful sketch of the trench run from A New Hope. People more interested in the franchise’s history than its props will be intrigued by an early draft of the script for A New Hope. It’s dated August 1975, entitled “The Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller”—a name that was ditched for the far superior “Skywalker” because it reminded George Lucas of Charles Manson murdering Sharon Tate—and as a bonus, it’s signed by Anthony “C-3PO” Daniels.
But if it’s the lightsaber that catches your eye, know that bids start at a cool $1m. Even in a world where insane wealth is accruing increasingly to people who can only be described as nerds, there surely can’t be that many people who can drop seven figures on a film prop. Right?
Whatever the answer to that question, we do wonder whether the Darth Vader saber will go to the same buyer as the Luke Skywalker one (the latter, by the way, also came with Luke’s severed had as a bonus). We’ll probably never know, but they’d make a nice old multi-million dollar mantelpiece display, so if you end up going home with someone and notice such a display, make sure they pay for your Uber. And if you’ve just come into an unexpected inheritance from a fantastically rich uncle or something, the auction is on November 12, and internet bidding is open now.
