Photo: Heritage Auctions
As per the numbers provided by real estate specialist Redfin, the average price for a home in Texas sat in August 2023 at around $351,500. Multiply that ten times, and you more or less get the price someone paid for something that is essentially a toy.
At the start of September, specialist Heritage Auctions listed a lot of Star Wars-related items as being for sale. Among them there was an X-wing model the likes of which has never been seen before on the open market.
You see, given how the visual effects industry was just getting started back in the 1970s, when Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope came out, people had to rely on a lot of physical models to film various scenes. For the many fighting scenes in this particular flick, the wizards of the time, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), devised a lot of miniatures, including X-wing 1:24 scale models.
Two kinds of these space fighters were made, Pyro and Hero. The former group, of which a lot were produced, was used to shoot scenes where the fighters had to be blown up on camera. The ones in the latter category got filmed for the scenes that required close-ups, for instance, and were a lot rarer.
How rare? History records that only four of them were made, and the one you're looking at here is part of that select group. It's said to be the one called Red Leader, seen multiple times on the screen in the movie, and the one that also played the role of Red Two and Red Five. You may remember the Five, as it’s the one Luke Skywalker himself flew at one point.
The owner of the X-wing, namely the estate of miniature maker Greg Jein, had it listed back in September with a starting price of $400,000, but by the looks of it the battle for it has been absolutely fierce.
We don't know who is now in the possession of the X-wing, but we do know they paid an astonishing $3.1 million to get it. Let me spell that out for you: three point one million dollars. That's a sum hard to describe in words, but one that goes to show just how important the George Lucas-made Universe has come to be for our civilization.
So, what did our rich collector get for their money? Not just a miniature, but a more or less functional prop with obvious historical value.
The X-wing is made from an aluminum structure over which resin, vacuum-formed styrene, acrylic, and metal components were installed. Motors in the wings allow them to get in the iconic X pattern, internal wiring allows the lasers and torpedoes to fire, and halogen lights give life to the exhaust nozzles of the four engines.
You see, given how the visual effects industry was just getting started back in the 1970s, when Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope came out, people had to rely on a lot of physical models to film various scenes. For the many fighting scenes in this particular flick, the wizards of the time, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), devised a lot of miniatures, including X-wing 1:24 scale models.
Two kinds of these space fighters were made, Pyro and Hero. The former group, of which a lot were produced, was used to shoot scenes where the fighters had to be blown up on camera. The ones in the latter category got filmed for the scenes that required close-ups, for instance, and were a lot rarer.
How rare? History records that only four of them were made, and the one you're looking at here is part of that select group. It's said to be the one called Red Leader, seen multiple times on the screen in the movie, and the one that also played the role of Red Two and Red Five. You may remember the Five, as it’s the one Luke Skywalker himself flew at one point.
The owner of the X-wing, namely the estate of miniature maker Greg Jein, had it listed back in September with a starting price of $400,000, but by the looks of it the battle for it has been absolutely fierce.
We don't know who is now in the possession of the X-wing, but we do know they paid an astonishing $3.1 million to get it. Let me spell that out for you: three point one million dollars. That's a sum hard to describe in words, but one that goes to show just how important the George Lucas-made Universe has come to be for our civilization.
So, what did our rich collector get for their money? Not just a miniature, but a more or less functional prop with obvious historical value.
The X-wing is made from an aluminum structure over which resin, vacuum-formed styrene, acrylic, and metal components were installed. Motors in the wings allow them to get in the iconic X pattern, internal wiring allows the lasers and torpedoes to fire, and halogen lights give life to the exhaust nozzles of the four engines.
Google News