A Star Wars prop has just sold at auction for more than a million dollars after a competitive bidding war. Recently, an auction was recently held by the Rock Island Auction Company for collector firearms. In the past, they've auctioned off other screen-used pistols from various movies, including John Wayne's gun from True Grit. However, the new auction for the DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol used by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope has reportedly sold for a cool $1,057,500. It had been estimated to sell for anywhere from $300K to $500K, making this more than double what was expected.
The Star Wars blaster is one of three prop guns that had been used by Ford for the original Star Wars film, released in 1977. It had been created from a Mauser that the props department converted into a weapon incapable of firing live rounds, so the winning bidder won't necessarily be able to take it out for skeet shooting, but given its value, it's probably much better for the firearm to stay on display. It's not entirely clear what happened with the two others, according to the auctioneers, making the auctioned blaster the only one left. The auctioned blaster also came with a special bonus, as a photograph of Han Solo autographed by Harrison Ford was also included.
The official listing for the auction, which has since ended, reads:
Much of Lucas' vision for Star Wars was based around the characters, gear, vehicles, and settings being believable, a concept he often called "used future". The "used future" concept he envisioned relied heavily on the equipment the characters used and the vehicles they traveled in having a "lived in" or well-used appearance, a concept that had previously been almost entirely absent from the often "over-polished" and "over-sanitized" genre of science fiction. This drive to create a more grimy sci-fi world paired with quite limited initial funding led to some interesting solutions in the prop department, especially when it came to the weapons that would be used in filming. This specific pistol is a prime example of that resourcefulness, combining components from multiple different readily available surplus weapons.
The Star Wars Blaster Isn't the Only Harrison Ford Prop to Snag Big Bucks
As someone who has appeared in many iconic films, there are also more props used by Harrison Ford in movies that have fetched some high bids at auction. Last year, a fedora worn by Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sold for $375,000. That certainly seems high for a hat, but it still wasn't as high as the $500,000 fetched by the hat he wore in Raiders of the Lost Ark at a 2015 auction.
With Star Wars, however, it's not entirely uncommon for certain props to sell for gargantuan amounts of money. In June, an X-Wing fighter model sold for an incredible 2.3 million. Some of the other big-money props to be auctioned off include Darth Vader's Empire Strikes Back helmet for $898K; Princess Leia's Blockade Runner model for $450K; Luke Skywalker's lightsaber for $450K; and going back to Ford, Han Solo's leather jacket sold for $191K.