Darth Vader's Lightsaber Sells for US$4.875 Million

A lightsaber used by Darth Vader in two Star Wars films has sold for US$4.875 million at Heritage Auctions, a US auction house. ArtNews reported the result and said the price is a record for Star Wars memorabilia, meaning objects connected to the film series.

A lightsaber is the glowing sword-like weapon wielded by the Jedi and the Sith in the films. This one appeared in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). It was the weapon at the centre of the "I am your father" scene in The Empire Strikes Back, the moment Vader tells Luke Skywalker that he is Luke's father.

The sale also included other Star Wars items. Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and a special-effects rig for a severed hand sold for US$3.75 million. A rig is the set-up used to film a visual effect, so the item was a piece of the machinery behind a scene rather than a prop an actor held on screen.

The Vader lightsaber's price is the headline, but the sale is not the first big result for Star Wars material at auction. A poster painting for Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, the film that opened the series, sold for US$3.875 million in 2025, according to the same report.

Auctions work by open bidding. The item goes to the highest bidder when the auctioneer closes the sale, and the buyer usually pays an extra fee on top of that winning bid. Reports often quote one of two figures: the winning bid itself, or the total the buyer pays once fees are added. The figures above are the ones ArtNews reported, and they are not the same measure as each other.

For fans, the results show how far the original film objects have travelled from the sets where they were used. Many of these items were made for filming and were never meant to be kept. Today, a few of them are traded for millions of dollars, and each sale moves an object from one owner to another.

Heritage Auctions is one of several houses that handle entertainment memorabilia. Its catalogue for the Vader lightsaber was the place where the item was offered to buyers, and the house ran the sale.

Anyone curious about the films can see the sale results on ArtNews.