Slashdot Mirror
LucasFilm Auctioning Star Wars Memorabilia
Captain Chad writes: "LucasFilm has donated some items to eBay's "Auction for America". They include a lightsaber used by Ray Park (Darth Maul) and a stormtrooper helmet used in The Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi. Check out the list of auction items! I think some of the bids will get astronomical. Would anyone be willing to give me a few hundred thousand dollars so I can get the lightsaber?"
Sounds great and all... but why not donate some of the revenues from the films (which we already pay a hell of a lot of money to go see anyways) to these charities... why auction off only one or two things which can only be attained by the rich?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So how much of your income from Win32 driver dev. job do you donate???
...a page on ebay slashdotted :-)
good work people!
They have a ZERO (0) feedback rating on ebay. How do we know they won't take the money and run???
;->
I personaly think that the storm trooper helmet will reach a much higher price than the light saber. Simply because the helmet is from one of the originals that have essentially become classics. The light saber will be expensive but not as high because episode 1 was not as popular as the original 3.
Ok -- for no logical reason, I sure wouldn't mind having an authentic Stormtrooper helmet, but come on. They've already bid it up for over $8k. Sweet charity, or no -- $8,000 for a movie prop is impossible to comprehend.
Well that -- and the armor never seemed to protect the actual stormstrooper from anything. Not even a damned Ewok with a rock.
For those of you who don't know, or are too lazy to find out, Ebay's auction for america is a method of raising money for various charities, such as the September 11th Fund, The New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund, The Twin Towers Fund and the American Red Cross.
Doesn't surprise me much. A lightsaber prop sitting on a shelf or in a display cabinet doesn't necessarily look like anything special (especially if it's not part of a larger collection on display). You might even think it's a flashlight or something. But it's pretty tough to mistake a Stormtrooper helmet for anything else. :-)
The stormtrooper helmet is from a good movie.
The lightsaber is from a crap-fest.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Helevius
#include "heavy-breathing.h"
#incluide "voice-distortion.h"
"Princess Lea, now you will see the true nature and power of the Dark Side of the force."
"No, Lord Vader! We are just a peaceful planet of granola eaters and tree huggers!"
"Yes, watch as the Empire unleashes the ultimate weapon....the Slashdot effect!"
Really, this is amazing, we've Slashdotted eBay.
...Do you know how much money I'd pay to get my own fully-functional Death Star? He's about to make a mint.
(Of course, I'd want the first one, as we all know the second one is not yet fully operational.)
just the server that hosts the pics (208.55.221.157). try harder guys! :)
keep it simple.
This probably won't last much longer, but there's a Vader helmet (used in Empire) going for a fraction of what the Stormtrooper helmet is up to now. ($1,700 vs $8,865)
That's the power of a direct link from Slashdot's front page!
They include:
- ILM
- Universal Home Video (they sold props from The Mummy Returns, including the Book of the Living, the Book of the Dead, and the Scorpion Bracelet... unfortunately most of the auctions have since expired but there were at least 20 pages of props up for bidding)
- 20th Century Fox
My feeling on these auctions is hey, it's all for charity, so if you have money to burn, why not do it for a worthy cause instead of for yourself?
Everything else seems to be a professionally-built kit model. They all come with certificates of authenticity, but what they authentically are doesn't seem to be to be all that unique.
It should be remembered that for the newer movies, authentic models will be rare indeed since they're using a great deal fewer of them in favor of CG.
And the brethren went away edified.
That's 'cause Lucas messed up the value on the Vader helmet by scribbling on it.
OTOH, maybe a lot of guys are like me, and couldn't sleep with that thing in the house.
-Peter
Are you talking about these guys?
Or these guys?
Or possibly even these guys?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Vader: What is thy bidding, my master?
Emperor: My bidding is on your helmet, and I won. Hand it over.
Vader: But I need this to liiiive...
Dear Mr. Lucas,
We will give you 5,000 now -- plus 15 when we reach Alderan.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Probably because the Vader helmet is a duplicate, not the real deal. The Stromtrooper helmet was worn by one (possibly more) extras in two movies. The one is a neat looking mold that I don't think can even be worn. And the the other is a piece of movie history that you coul wear on Halloween. See the difference?
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I remember when you could mail order these Darth Vader helmet replicas. They sold for $2,000 each, as I recall. Not signed by George Lucas though, unless I'm mistaken.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Checking Sourceforge...
GNU lightsaber: Nope.
KDE front-end for hyperspace navigation: In alpha release.
O'Reilly's "The Force In A Nutshell": Delayed.
PHP/MySQL admin interface for Death Star: Again, no dice.
And you people still wonder why the Empire runs on Microsoft?!?
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
What's with all this 'model' crap? I want my own Millenium Falcon!!! How else am I supposed to make that Kessel Spice run at the end of the month?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
George Lucas is known for being the first filmmaker to make big money with merchandising rights. Before the original Star Wars, merchandising was just to promote the film, not a moneymaker in its own right. Lucas owned the merchandising rights to the original Star Wars, but not the movie itself. Merchandising made him enough money that he was able to own and produce all his later films. Today, some films seem to be more oriented towards shipping merchandise than selling tickets.
Just search Goggle for "Don Post" "Star Wars" helmet, you'll see a variety of Star Wars helmet replicas that you can use for your next Halloween costume (I have Boba Fett's helmet in my collection).
Reminds me of the 'old' adage about Bill Gates: that if while on the way to work in the morning, he stopped to pick up a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk. He'd actually LOSE money, because he makes more in those few seconds than the bill is worth. As to why he's walking to work in the first place...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Ok....I can understand things going for a lot of money if they're authentic. But people bidding a couple thousand dollars to get a really nicely painted AMT/Ertl model that you can buy in any Kay-Bee Toy Store is quite funny.
I mean there is a certain thing to be said for them to be painted & detailed by actual ILM modelmakers, but the least they could have done was actually have them be authentic ILM models and not the historically-badly-made-and-badly-manufactered AMT kits. I have a few of the Star Trek kits that AMT makes and they are so badly done that there are actually entire websites devoted to giving instructions and selling parts so that the pieces will actually fit together properly!
Sheesh.
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
At any reasonbly big science fiction convention, you can get either passive sparkly plastic blades or "light kits" that use single-ended neon bulbs inside a plastic sleeve for the blade. These look fantasic. Of course, they're fragile.