A lightsaber once wielded by Mark Hamill in one of cinema's most famous scenes has just sold for a record 3.75 million dollars at auction, making it the most valuable on-screen Star Wars prop ever sold.
The item was originally listed with a starting bid of one million dollars through Heritage Auctions, but competitive bidding pushed the final price far beyond that estimate.
The prop comes from the climactic Cloud City duel in The Empire Strikes Back, the scene where Darth Vader reveals he is Luke Skywalker's father moments after severing his hand, sending both the hand and the weapon tumbling into the depths below.What made this particular lightsaber so valuableAccording to the official Heritage Auctions press release, Joe Maddalena, executive vice president at the auction house, described the item as one of the most important surviving Star Wars artefacts in existence, noting that collectors were bidding on far more than a simple film prop.
The winning bid also included the accompanying severed hand piece, cast directly from Mark Hamill's real hand, complete with painted wrist wounds and the original spring-loaded release mechanism that allowed the hand to detach convincingly during filming.A prop born from spare parts in a London camera shopThe lightsaber itself measures ten inches in length and was built using the handle of a photographic flash originally designed for Graflex cameras.
