Darth Vader’s Lightsaber From the ‘Star Wars’ Original Trilogy Is Heading to Auction for the First Time Ever
The iconic prop, which is expected to fetch up to $3 million, will be sold in September alongside other pieces of movie memorabilia
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For one lucky Star Wars fan, it will be a day long remembered.
Nearly 50 years after the franchise’s first film was released into theaters, captivating audiences and forever changing the business of entertainment and movie memorabilia, a central piece of the series’ history is hitting the auction block for the very first time.
For an estimated price of up to $3 million, Darth Vader’s lightsaber could be yours.
The prop can be seen in the final acts of the original trilogy’s latter two films, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983. It was wielded by David Prowse, who plays Darth Vader on screen (James Earl Jones famously provided the iconic villain’s voice) and his stunt double Bob Anderson. The lightsaber presumably appears in the iconic Cloud City duel in The Empire Strikes Back, during which Darth Vader cuts off Luke Skywalker’s hand shortly before revealing he is, in fact, his father.
Quick fact: The voice of Darth Vader
When the first two Star Wars films debuted, James Earl Jones asked not to be credited for providing the villain’s voice, believing David Prowse deserved recognition for the role.
“Surviving genuine lightsaber props from the original trilogy of films are exceedingly rare, and Propstore is honored to present this historic artifact in our September sale,” Propstore COO Brandon Alinger tells the Hollywood Reporter’s Ryan Gajewski. “It is a grail-level piece, worthy of the finest collections in the world.”
According to a statement from Propstore, the company facilitating the auction, the lightsaber is “made from a British press camera flash handle” and “was converted to a lightsaber prop with the addition of dressing components such as plastic grips, small electrical wires and a circuit board with magnifying bubbles from a calculator.”
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In the place of its red laser “blade,” which was created in the original films using a combination of rotoscoping and post-production visual effects, the prop has an allen bolt sticking out of its top. Wooden blades were attached to this bolt during filming, allowing the actors to complete the choreographed fighting scenes.
The prop is the centerpiece of an auction to be held this September in Los Angeles. But before the bidding begins, the famed weapon will take a press tour through London, New York and Beverly Hills in August.
It will be joined on the tour by other historic pieces of memorabilia from the auction, including a neuralyzer from the Men in Black franchise and the helmet worn by Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The bullwhip and belt used by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are also part of the tour and sale, where they are expected to fetch between $250,000 and $500,000.
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The original budget for the first Star Wars film totaled just $11 million. But as Jennifer Levasseur wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2019, the franchise’s branding and merchandising campaigns—through the sale of toys, figurines and eventually video games—helped secure the franchise’s financial success and inspired its global fandom.
“The hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue generated by A New Hope and its souvenirs resulted in a Hollywood first in providing the financing for two additional movies, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi,” Smithsonian wrote. “The hunger for products continued through a long dry spell without new films.”
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Propstore has previously sold many items from the set of the original Star Wars trilogy. In 2022, a screen-matched X-wing fighter miniature used in A New Hope went for $2.3 million.
“The novelization of the movie represented such a fundamentally different way of understanding a movie audience as people who consumed beyond just the movie,” Jason Scott, a film studies scholar at Arizona State University, told Beth Giudicessi for a 2015 post on the school’s website about its collection of Star Wars memorabilia.
