A miniature X-wing Starfighter used in a Star Wars film has sold for 3.1 million dollars (£2.5 million) during an auction of items collected and created by long-time Hollywood model-maker Greg Jein.
The collection amassed by Mr Jein, who died last year at the age of 76, brought in about 13.6 million dollars (£11.1 million) during an event at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.
The auction house said everyone from model-makers to collectors and science-fiction fans attended, making the event its best attended in years.
Joe Maddalena, Heritage’s executive vice president and a long-time friend of Mr Jein, said on Monday that the auction was “a profound testament to my friend as both a visual effects master and one of the great collectors”.
Mr Jein not only had an Oscar and Emmy-nominated career making miniature models for nearly half a century, but he also spent a lifetime collecting costumes, props, scripts, artwork, photographs and models from the shows he loved.
The Red Leader X-wing Starfighter – used in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope – sold after a bidding duel between two collectors, the auction house said.
Also going for an eye-popping amount was a Star Wars Stormtrooper costume that sold for 645,000 dollars (£528,000).
A rare surviving spacesuit from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey sold for 447,000 dollars (£366,000).
Mr Jein was a fan of Star Trek before he worked on the franchise, and some of the items he collected were popular at the auction.
A filming model of the SS Botany Bay vessel from Star Trek: The Original Series from the 1960s went for 200,000 dollars (£164,000) while prop devices from that series like a hero phaser went for 187,500 dollars (£153,000) and a tricorder garnered 175,000 dollars (£143,000).
Mr Jein, who grew up in Los Angeles, was still early in his career when he led the team that created the mothership for Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.
The model which appears gigantic in the movie is just over 5ft long and is part of the collection at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. A small preliminary model, which is about 5in long, brought in 55,000 dollars (£45,000) at the auction.
