History for Sale

Just saw in the Huffington Post news rundown that the lightsaber used by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars was just sold at auction for $200,000. Anyway, I hate to use the ol’ HuffPo for my own personal gain but if anyone’s interested, I’m pretty sure I have in my possession two of the original four “D” batteries that were used to power the lightsaber. Obviously I don’t have documentation or a certificate of authenticity or anything “official” like that. But the guy I got them from -- his name is Tom but I’m really not at liberty to say more than that -- says he’s pretty sure it was director George Lucas himself who actually put the batteries in.

Also, interesting story for you film buffs, you’ll notice the batteries are slightly dented. Apparently they only kept the lightsaber lighted up for, like, two and a half minutes before the thing made a crackling noise and went dead and it ended up shutting down production for, like, half a day and Lucas got so angry he took the batteries out and threw them against a wall.

Now, I want to be straight up here -- it might not have been Lucas who put them in and then took them out and threw them against a wall. Could have been some prop guy. In fact, push comes to shove, I’d probably go with the prop guy version. But like I said, I can’t be sure and that Lucas story sure has the ring of truth to it, at least from what I read in the tabloids. Anyway, not looking to get rich here or anything -- whatever you think the batteries might be worth. But given that they just sold the lightsaber for 200 grand, you can probably guess the kind of financial neighborhood I’m going to want to be in.

Oh, I also have some black electrical tape that I have on pretty good authority may quite possibly have been used to give Mark Hamill a better grip on the lightsaber. From what I’m told, Mark had a bit of a sweaty palm issue during production and he kept dropping the thing and Lucas got pretty sore. Again, no documentation on that one either and the tape's a little sticky, but if you’re willing to roll the dice to be a part of cinema history...