Darth Vader's $1M Lightsaber From 'I Am Your Father' Duel Heads to Auction

The lightsaber Darth Vader swings in the Cloud City duel, the scene in which he tells Luke Skywalker 'I am your father' and severs his hand, is back on the auction block, with bidding set to open at $1 million (£756,000).

It is the same blade that took the hand off. And it returns to sale only months after that hand, still clutching Luke's own lightsaber, set the record for the most valuable prop in the franchise's history.

The saber headlines Heritage Auctions' Ultimate Star Wars Signature Auction on 12 November, with the live floor session due to begin at 1:00 p.m. CT. Carried by Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and matched again to a close-up in Return of the Jedi, it is one of more than two dozen lightsabers in a sale that spans Star Wars Episodes I through IX, alongside props from other films and television series set in the galaxy George Lucas created.

Vader's Saber Leads Star Wars Prop Sale

Heritage, the Dallas-based auction house, lists the lot as a screen-matched hero duelling saber. It was photo-matched to a production still from the 1980 film by the curved D-ring on its handle, and tied to Return of the Jedi by a dent on the lower endcap. The house adds that it may also have appeared in the original Star Wars of 1977, though that cannot be proven.

The prop was built not from the Graflex camera part used for the Jedi sabers but from a 1950s British Micro Precision Products flash unit, fitted with black T-track grips, a belt D-ring, and a steel rod for interchangeable wooden blades. No blade is included. Heritage describes the saber in its catalogue as an 'extraordinary surviving artifact of two of the most consequential confrontations in motion picture history.'

The rest of the catalogue runs deep. Duelling lightsabers carried by Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, from their confrontation on the lava world of Mustafar, are each tipped to bring at least $10,000 (£7,560).

An EE-3 carbine blaster wielded by Boba Fett throughout The Empire Strikes Back is estimated at more than $100,000 (£75,600). The sale also takes in a Yoda puppet hand operated by Frank Oz, a TIE fighter pilot helmet from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels' signed, personal third-draft screenplay for the 1977 original.

A Star Wars Prop Market That Keeps Climbing

The $1 million opening bid is not this saber's first brush with a big number. The very same prop sold for $3,654,000 (£2.76 million) at Propstore in Los Angeles on 4 September 2025, enough to make it the most valuable Star Wars item sold at auction at the time.

That record stood for less than a year. In July, the lightsaber from the other side of the very same duel, the one Mark Hamill wielded as Luke, sold for $3.75 million (£2.84 million) at Heritage's Hollywood & Entertainment Signature Auction on 20 July 2026. It came with the severed-hand effects rig built for the moment Vader cuts the hand away, cast in resin from Hamill's own and assembled around a modified Graflex flash unit by the late makeup designer Stuart Freeborn.

Heritage said the price was the most ever paid for a prop used in a Star Wars film. The Luke saber had never been offered publicly before that night.

The two halves of that single moment have now gone to market separately. Luke's hand and the weapon it held changed hands in the summer. The blade that removed it returns to sale in November, for the second time in 14 months, its $1 million floor sitting well below the sum it drew a year ago.

Heritage has not named the buyers or sellers behind the recent sales, and the identity of whoever claims Vader's lightsaber on 12 November is unlikely to be made public either.