Rare film memorabilia and props have long been prized at auction by collectors, with Star Wars the franchise that reliably fetches the highest prices. With the release of The Rise of Skywalker just around the corner, Sothebys are holding a Star Wars online auction today, selling a selection of interesting art and objects from the Original Trilogy.
There are many lots up for sale, including concept art for A New Hope posters, signed concert posters, posters from The Empire Strikes Back charity premiere and a rare complete Millennium Falcon toy. But the two lots that are really turning heads are two… well, heads.
The first is a promotional C-3PO head created by ILM around the time of Return of the Jedi. While it wasn’t used in the making of the film, it appears to be of the same quality as the on-screen costume, and is expected to fetch between $20,000 and $32,000.
Even rarer than that is the one-of-a-kind Stormtrooper prototype helmet. This was created as part of the pre-production process for A New Hope in January 1976. The product, which looks very similar to the final version, is based on Ralph McQuarrie’s art and was created with input from George Lucas. That’s expected to fetch somewhere between $35,000 – $70,000.
But those prices are a drop in the ocean for what the very rarest Star Wars stuff can go for. For example, the blaster prop used by Harrison Ford in Return of the Jedi sold for $550,000 in 2018. A complete R2-D2 from A New Hope, meanwhile, went for $2.76 million in 2017. And just this year, there was a lot of buzz about a full Darth Vader costume from The Empire Strikes Back, which was expected to be a record-breaking sale for the franchise before it was mysteriously withdrawn from auction.
In short, if you want to own a piece of Star Wars history, you’d better have deep pockets!
