Stuff From My Studio: Lightsaber!

These days having a replica of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from “A New Hope” is probably no big deal. They are likely a dime a dozen. This one is at least a little special. It was the first Lucasfilm authorized limited edition prop replica ever created for collectors. It was produced by a company called ICONS, which created and marketed a number of authenticated and authorized prop replicas from Star Wars and other movies and TV Shows like “Terminator”, “Xena”, etc. ICONS went out of business in 2000, and a company called Master Replicas took over the Lucasfilm licensing for prop replicas.

I got this in 1996 and other than occasionally taking it out to use as a photo reference (it sure came in handy when I did the art for all three of the final Star Wars films) it’s been in its acrylic case in my studio, so it’s in perfect condition despite being almost 25 years old. It’s numbered 1091 out of 10,000, but according to those in the know they never produced anywhere close to 10,000 of these so it’s a little more rare than that. A fair number of those are also in rough condition being used for cosplay and somewhat prone to rusting.

I’ve been told by true Star Wars geeks that the ICONS replica of this lightsaber is inaccurate in a number of ways. It apparently has the wrong number of grips (six as opposed to seven), the wrong “D” ring at the bottom, and the shape of the emitter is off. This is apparently because of the lack of reference materials available at the time they created the replica, but I can’t understand that since this was officially licensed by Lucasfilm and you’d think they had the actual prop in a junk drawer somewhere on the Ranch. Ah well, I don’t really care. It’s a effin’ lightsaber!

This has been another exciting episode of…