An original Stormtrooper E-11 blaster rifle used in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope is currently up for sale. It's a piece of movie history, which was recently rediscovered by prop maker Bapty, who constructed the blasters for the movie and The Empire Strikes Back. After the production of A New Hope wrapped, a number of the blasters used in the movie were returned to Bapty, which is where this new one comes from.

The blaster is currently on sale for $46,429. Yes, you read that correctly. To own a piece of Star Wars history from the original trilogy is going to set one back quite a bit to have the bragging rights. After the blasters from the first movie were returned to Bapty, some of them went missing. However, the one that is currently up for sale was recently found, though it was disassembled at the time. The blaster had been stripped of many of the original parts, but those were found too.

The blaster has since been carefully restored and looks exactly how it did in A New Hope when the Stormtroopers were using them. The restored pieces include a resin M38 scope, a steel scope rail made to the exact same dimensions as original scopes found at Bapty, plastic "T-track" strips along the barrel, magazine cylinders, and a Hengstler counter box adhered to one side. The blaster displays signs of production use and age, including minor corrosion, paint wear and marks, most notably on the grip. It looks really, really good and is sure to make more than a few hardcore Star Wars fans wish that they had it.

Props from the Star Wars trilogy go up for sale quite frequently and often fetch small fortunes when offered up. If fans aren't up for shelling out a bunch of cash, there are often exhibits that feature items that were used in the original trilogy. However, there were thousands of props that were destroyed after the movie was made. Back in the late 70s, it wasn't popular to hold on to that kind of stuff, especially before A New Hope was released and became a cultural phenomenon.

Since so many props from A New Hope have been destroyed, that makes this E-11 blaster so valuable. It remains to be seen if a hardcore Star Wars fan will spend that kind of money on it, but it could end up in an exhibit of some kind in the near future to share with all fans. We'll just have to wait and see. While we wait, you can head over to Prop Store to possibly buy the blaster, or at the very least, check out the awesome pictures of it. The site has a bunch of other goodies from the Star Wars universe to check out too.