$100k For Kenobi's Cloak

dws90 writes "The cloak worn by Sir Alec Guinness when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars original trilogy has been sold at a TV and Cinema auction. The cloak sold for £54,000, which is about $103,923 according to Google calculator. According to the article, the cloak was missing for nearly 30 years, during which it was rented out to a number of other films, including the Mummy. It was found two years ago, and has been part of a film memorabilia exhibition in London since then. The cloak sold for more than any of the other movie costumes the article listed, beating out Sean Connery's dinner jacket from Thunderball and a helmet worn by Terry Jones in Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

Comments

Only $100k?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I'd imagine that Leia's slave outfit from ROTJ would go for much, much more than $100k.

After the novelty wears off

[drooling-dog]

So I wonder how it feels to have blown that much money on something like this, after the novelty's worn off and you've already worn it around the house and invited your friends over to see and touch it. A little buyer's remourse, maybe?

Re:Value?

[Opportunist]

We're talking a one-of-a-kind here. And one that some people deem valuable for some reason. The more people deem it valuable, the higher its value. That's why paintings are valuable and range in the millions, 'cause pretty much everyone considers a painting of Picasso valuable. By itself, it's pretty much worthless, it's some linnen and some oil paint.

The same is true for that cloak or the cards you mention. Other good examples are stamps. There is no "real" value attached to them. Their value comes from being rare and the fact that there are some people who'd love to have them.

As you've said, the price of an item is what the market will bear. And since there is a market, the price goes up. Another reason for the price of those rare items going up is simply that they can't be multiplied. There's one. If you have it, you have the only one in existance. And as long as the economy does not collapse, its value will at the worst stay the same, and given some luck it goes up. In other words, if nothing else, it's a good investment.

Re:Cloak

[Puff of Logic]

posession of the garmment may well imbue you with an ability to acquire females with whom previously you stood no chance, but I would like as not expect, they would not be ones I, nor you, would happily hold forth as example of 'babes' I suspect, however, that possession of the sort of financial holdings that allow one to blow that sort of cash on a movie prop would imbue the holder with the ability to acquire females definitely falling into the 'babe' category.

Remember, it's the size of your wallet, not what you do with it!

Re:Full Auction Catalog

[Reziac]

What a lot of these hardcore fans don't recognise is that there probably wasn't just ONE "Kenobi cloak" -- there probably were half a dozen, to allow for damage, cleaning, etc. (they can't stop the cameras for a week just because you spilled coffee on your costume -- they bring out another one, you change, and off you go again).

An item that's not yet in the costuming house's inventory is usually stitched together quick and dirty, so I'd be surprised if the probable-several-cloaks were more than a cursory match -- good enough for the camera at the time, if not for the nitpickers 3 decades later. And over the course of being rented out for later productions, these cloaks probably underwent minor alterations/repairs, too.

As I recall, there were at least 8 partial or full Darth Vader costumes from the first 3 films. So if anyone claims to have the One True Costume, they're delusional. :)