When we think of the iconic weapons of Star Wars, we tend to think lightsabers. But as cool as those Jedi and Sith weapons are, let us not forget there’s nothing like a handy blaster at your side, to paraphrase Han Solo. And speaking of the esteemed General Solo, via Collider, we’ve learned that his blaster from A New Hope just sold at auction. And it went for the not small amount of one million dollars! As Luke Skywalker would say, “we could almost buy our own ship for that.” Han’s DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol was sold via the Rock Island Auction Company.
According to the auction site, this prop was the only surviving blaster pistol originally used by Harrison Ford. Both during the filming and also for the promotion of the original 1977 George Lucas Star Wars film. In other words, this is the blaster that took out Greedo. And which left the poor owner of the Mos Eisley Cantina to clean up the mess. It also shot at a lot of Imperial Stormtroopers too. And occasionally even hit one.
The expected price this blaster was thought to go for was somewhere in the $300,000-$500,000 range. Neither exactly a small sum of Imperial credits. As we now know, it went for far higher a sum. One should never underestimate two things. The power of the Force, and just how deep the pockets of some loyal Star Wars fans are.
Han Solo’s trusty blaster was, of course, made into a toy version back in the day. Millions of kids across the world had one of their own. And they made a lot of “pew pew pew” noises as they shot at bad guys in their backyards, pretending to be the Captain of the Millennium Falcon. We’d like to imagine that whoever bought this at auction was one of those kids, now all grown up. Hopefully, they make “pew pew pew” noises with the real blaster at least once.