Recently, the prop used by Harrison Ford’s character Han Solo in 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope sold at auction for $1,057,500. According to reports, the DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol was auctioned off by The Rock Island Auction Company with a price tag only of $300, 000 to $500,000. The prop gun was the only piece left out of three, it was made for the film and was used on-screen by Harrison Ford himself.
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Sources say that the blaster was originally a Mauser C96 pistol converted to a non-firing weapon that can only be used for blanks. Before the sale of the blaster, a miniature model of the Red Leader X-Wing, created by Industrial Light & Magic for A New Hope, was auctioned for USD 2,375,000 over at Prop Store.
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Han Solo’s Blaster From Star Wars Auctions for Over $1 Million
We still don’t know what happened with the two more props but auctioneers revealed that the auctioned blaster was the only one left. The last prop used by Han Solo came with a special bonus, a photograph of Han Solo autographed by Harrison Ford was included. During the proceedings, the auctioneer hyped to increase press from Comic-Con leading up to it and announced the item by saying, “The world is watching on this” and finally sold for a whopping amount of $1,057,500.
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An official listing of the auction 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” a 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.”
Other Star Wars Prop Which Had Been Sold for a Fortune
This is not the first time, earlier, a custom-made hat worn by Harrison Ford in the 1984 action classic “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” went on sale in Hollywood, with an estimated price of $150,000-$250,000. Over 1,200 items from Hollywood folklore went on on sale at that time including Princess Leia actor Carrie Fisher’s annotated “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” script and Tom Cruise’s sword from “The Last Samurai.” In 2020, a Darth Vader costume used for promoting the first film in George Lucas’s original space saga sold for $287,500.
Source: movieweb.com
