Star Wars collectibles are big business these days.
And that’s not just the millions upon millions of new collectibles that are produced for new consumers every year.
Single item Star Wars collectibles are hugely valuable to collectors.
If they’re the right item.
That might mean props and relics from the films themselves.
But also rarities and oddities from the enormous range of toys, accessories, and costumes made for kids to play-fight their own lightsaber battles with.
Here is a top 10 by value of Star Wars collectibles in September 2024:
12. Rebel "Blockade Runner" ship miniature
A Blockade Runner, a design that was originally intended for the Millennium Falcon. Image courtesy Hollywood Auctions.
What could be better than your own Star Wars ship?
This filming miniature from the film we now have to call Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (but which was released as plain old Star Wars) realised $450,000 at auction in 2015.
It would undoubtedly sell for more today.
11. Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber
The Graflex branding of the original torch on which the Jedi blade was based was taped over for filming. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
Some of you will have read, “what could be better than a Star Wars ship”, and answered, “well, can I have a lightsaber?”
Of course you can!
If you were in the right place in June 2017 and had $450,000 you could have swashbuckled away from a Dallas auction house with a Mark Hamil-used blade - well, handle, the blade was painted on in post production - from the first two films in the series.
The big secret?
It was made from a 1930s torch.
10. Return of the Jedi blaster
Mimicked with fingers by millions of kids, the actual Han Solo blaster is worth over 1/2 million dollars. Image courtesy Rock Island Auctions.
Blasters are very good business for collectors, and in 2018 one of a probable three maximum Han Solo guns was sold at auction for $550,000.
Ford probably lost the gun from the first film, forcing prop makers to do a rebuild.
This example, from Return of the Jedi, the third release in the original Star Wars series, was owned by James Schoppe, who handled art direction on the picture and was Oscar-nominated for his troubles.
9. Boba Fett toy June 2024
There's a tragedy at the heart of the story of the rarest and most valuable Star Wars toy.
So we come to the first second-order Star Wars item in our list, and it’s a familiar one to anyone who follows this scene.
Boba Fett was a great character. His look - the big, shiny, no-eyes helmet - guaranteed him a lot of love in the Star Wars community, and they wanted to own their own.
And there is one Boba Fett toy to rule them all.
This rocket-firing model was withdrawn before it could be released after the awful death of an American child who choked on a piece from a toy.
That immediately shut off supply, and the very few examples (staff at the company that made them were allowed to keep some, others were picked up out of a dumpster) that survive are worth at least their weight in something very precious.
One sold in June 2024 for $525,000 and became the world’s most expensive toy in the process.
8. Stormtrooper costume
No-one likes him. He doesn't care. Stormtroopers are disgustingly evil, and much loved on the collectors market.
It’s OK, you’re allowed to think Stormtroopers (with a very much Nazi-derived name and embodiment of the evils of imperial galactic power) look cool.
Someone thought they looked $645,000-worth of cool, and paid that amount for the classic uniform from the first film.
Screen matching is key to such sales.
Experts pore over images from films (or sports coverage) and use tiny, unique details to prove that a particular item appeared at a particular moment in a particular film.
You won’t be able to do that with AI and VR sadly.
7. C-3PO head
Experts compare minute detail to prove movie props were actually used on screen.
Collectors love it when a star tires of a part of their past, or needs money, or is just having a clear-out.
And C3-P0 star Anthony Daniels, for whatever reason, came to that point.
So, a large collection of Star Wars memorabilia hit the auction scene in the UK (Star Wars was largely filmed in British studios).
The item everyone wanted was this, the protocol droids famously pedantic (but ever-so big-brained) head.
It was hammered for £642,000 ($843,051) in November 2023.
6. Han Solo blaster
At the time, Han Solo was certainly the coolest man in a galaxy far away.
Another blaster, another big sale, this time our first million-dollar price tag.
It was sold in August 2022 in Illinois and realised $1,057,500 at auction, shooting up and beyond its top estimate of $500,000 like a Millennium Falcon in flight.
According to the sellers, this was the original gun used in Star Wars Episode IV. Harrison Ford, as Han Solo, appeared on millions of posters brandishing it.
And he looked very cool.
Like Luke’s lightsaber though it was part cast off. Go and watch Frank Sinatra’s 1967 movie The Naked Runner (ignore the awful reviews) and you should see Ol Blue Eyes wielding the weapon that was retooled for space use some 10 years later.
5. R2-D2
Despite never speaking a word in an intelligible language, R2 became one of the most loved inhabitants of the Star Wars world. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
It would have broken my young heart in 1977 if you’d told the 6-year-old Star Wars-loving me that R2-D2 and C3-PO hated each other.
Anthony Daniels, who played the tall, snooty golden man just didn’t get on with Kenny Baker, who stood in the R2-D2 costume.
“It might as well be a bucket” was his view of the little droid.
But watchers certainly saw the character in R2 who became one of the most beloved - and imitated - characters in the whole franchise.
In June 2017, an R2 became, for a while, the most valuable Star Wars item on record, when - despite being put together from various production models - it sold for $2,760,000.
Not bad for a bucket.
4. Darth Vader head
Not someone you want to meet in a dark alley, Lord Vader is one of the screen's most memorable villains. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
It took two larger than life men to bring Lord Vader to life.
James Earl Jones (whose death we mourn this week in September 2024) was the voice of the worst (or most misunderstood and misled) man in space.
But, on screen was David Prowse, whose full-strength Bristol accent would have knocked global audiences off their seats had his voice survived into the final cut.
Prowse, a much-loved Star Wars scene veteran, died in 2020, aged 85.
But Vader’s a great character, and he’s more than the sum of his parts, that include one of the most iconic movie costumes in history.
A screen-used mask from the first film is genuinely iconic, and was sold as a “Holy Grail” artefact in September 2019 for $1,125,000.
3. Boba Fett rocket figure
Paperwork like this is key to the value of many collectibles, including the rarest of all.
It’s that legendary bounty hunter again.
That record set earlier up this list didn’t last long.
A second Boba Fett withdrawn prototype made $1,34 million just a few months later in August 2024.
The number of these toys that exist is somewhat disputed, but it’s probably around 100, split into two variants.
The sellers said this was one of just three examples of its type - intended for mail customers - and came with extensive documentation linking it to the makers.
There was a redesign in an attempt to address the choking threat of the rockets, but all to no avail.
Now, they’ve gone past a million dollars it seems like the sky is the limit for resales of these figures that are tiny, just 3.75 inches high.
2. Gold Leader Y-wing Starfighter
He's behind you! The battle to blow up the Death Star looked and felt real to millions of watchers. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
I sometimes write about Star Wars props and describe them as “models” of spaceships.
But there’s no need. There’s no ship of them to be a model of!
But, despite the relatively low-tech of the time the team who made these ships, Industrial Light and Magic, really made them come to life.
Very much a team effort, the names of Colin Cantwell and Ralph McQuarrie are most often mentioned as guiders of the process from vague idea in George Lucas’s head to living, flying, lazer shooting ship.
This piece appears in some of the most famous sequences in Star Wars as the Rebel pilots desperately make runs across the surface of the Death Star looking for the elusive perfect shot that will destroy it.
All of that magic added up to $1,550,000-worth of sale price in July 2024 (with a sell-on listing of over $2.3 million).
1. X-wing
An X-Wing in flight is among the best known images in Star Wars. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
This is the archetypal Star Wars image and a deserved number 1.
The price? $3,135,000.
What you get?
A relatively small piece of resins and metal that’s been nicely decorated, has halogen lamps, and X-wings that move.
But what you actually get is the lump of space hardware (Colin Cantwell’s work again) that Luke Skywalker uses to blow up the Death Star.
That’s what the new owner paid for.
Only four of these pieces were made for the film (there were much larger numbers of ships made that could be blown up).
This one was “piloted” by Luke as well as two other Rebel pilots as fighters zipped around in one of the most exciting space battles ever created on screen.
Buying movie props today
Will these prices ever be beaten?
I think so.
In fact, movie memorabilia is a booming market.
You can see some of what we have on offer here.
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