Darth Vader's Lightsaber Could Cost You An Arm And A Leg

Darth Vader's original lightsaber from the Empire Strikes Back is up for auction in Los Angeles, expected to fetch $1-3 million.

Transcript

00:00Darth Vader's legendary lightsaber from Star Wars is now up for sale. It was used in the Empire

00:18Strikes Back, the movie where Vader cuts off Luke Skywalker's hand. This lightsaber is more than

00:25just a movie prop. For Star Wars fans it's a piece of history. This literally came in

00:33on a cold call. It was a Friday afternoon, gentleman phoned in and said I have an

00:37original lightsaber used in the making of the films. He didn't know which character

00:41it was and he didn't know exactly how it was used but he knew it was an original.

00:45He sent us photos and immediately we recognized it as a Darth Vader lightsaber

00:49as the black emitter here at the top, the black center band. Vader's the only

00:54character whose lightsaber has those attributes. Obviously the black coloring

00:58ties in directly with the Darth Vader costume. Experts believe it could sell

01:04for up to three million dollars at an auction in Los Angeles. It has been with

01:09a private owner in the US for 40 years and was recently rediscovered. So because

01:15it's an auction we don't know exactly what it's going to sell for until auction

01:18day so we'll know for sure on September 4th but the pre-sale estimate on it is

01:22one million to three million US dollars. So in British pounds about seven hundred

01:26fifty thousand to two point two million. It is just an estimate we don't know

01:30exactly what it will sell for. That estimate is based on comps, comparables,

01:34other high-end Star Wars pieces that have sold in the past.

01:37Collectors verified its dents and marks by comparing them with scenes from the film.

01:43There's some unique attributes on the bottom here there's a dent right there and

01:50there's a there's a shot in the film that you can go through in 4k resolution

01:54frame by frame you can see this exact dent in this exact location on the bottom.

01:58It's just an amazing piece of film history really you know the fact that it is the

02:03fighting lightsaber the dueling lightsaber it's what Vader and Luke had

02:08their confrontation with just makes it a really significant symbolic piece of

02:13Star Wars history.

02:15The lightsaber will be auctioned by Prop Store, a well-known movie memorabilia company.

02:26Other items in the sale include Indiana Jones' whip and a neuralyzer from Men in Black.

02:32Yeah, this is an original Indiana Jones whip, belt and whip holster set from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

02:41So these are all original pieces used in the making of that film and you can see they were

02:45used together as a set. The whip has actually been fastened into the holster and

02:49bound together with these little metal ties that were installed by the props team when

02:53they were filming that movie.

02:55The business has just transformed over the years that I've been here. I've been a collector

02:58myself personally for over 30 years now and when I first started collecting there was

03:03no real commercial value attributed to any of this content. It was really just a

03:07by-product of the filmmaking process. But we've seen that just change and evolve over the

03:13decades that I've been collecting and then I started Prop Store some 25 years ago. And

03:18it's just astonishing really to see the levels of interest, the excitement that it generates

03:23now when we bring something like the Indiana Jones whip or the Darth Vader lightsaber.

03:28The auction takes place this September and fans around the world are watching closely.

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