And its provenance is impeccable: This very phaser was acquired in the late 1960s directly from Star Trek prop designer and builder Wah Ming Chang, who the official Trek website calls “one of the great unsung heroes of the show,” given his work on the communicator, the tricorder, the Gorn, the tribbles, and, yes, the phaser. The phaser shows the inevitable wear that comes from years and use – it was, after all, repainted several times during the show’s brief run. The Star Trek phaser tops the list of armaments because of its extraordinary rarity this is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That’s just a taste of what’s in the Heritage Auctions’ armory for the July 16-18 sale, stocked like never before for an auction bound to hit the bull’s-eye. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers. The phaser joins an all-star line-up of iconic weapons from decades’ worth of sci-fi and superhero films, among them Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber Wonder Woman’s Sword of Athena Thor’s hammer Mjolnir a M41-A pulse rifle used by the Colonial Marines to kill some Aliens and Katniss Everdeen’s bow and quiver. As Star Trek Prop Authority noted in 2008, “this historic piece, with its intricate internal design mechanisms, represents the pinnacle of 1960s prop making expertise.” The phaser features everything a fan could want, from the moving silver thumbwheel, which was used to adjust settings and raise the targeting site, to the rotating “photon accelerator” on the front nozzle.

It consists of three components: the palm-sized Type-1 phaser inserted into the Type-2 pistol, with the brass handle that doubled as a power pack (as seen in the episode The Omega Glory). Enterprise, this Type-2 phase is called the “hero” for a reason. This is something right out of Captain Kirk’s arsenal, down to the last detachable detail.ĭesigned by Star Trek’s first art director and production designer Matt Jefferies, the man responsible for the U.S.S. The pistol making its auction debut at Heritage Auctions during the July 16-18 Entertainment and Music Memorabilia event is isn’t one of the foam vacuum-formed plastic props handed out to redshirts, but one of only two original-series “hero” phasers known to have survived the show’s three-season run. ‘Star Trek’ Type-2 phaser “hero” prop, created for the television show, estimated at $1,000-$1,000,000įifty-two years after NBC canceled Star Trek, one of its most sought-after – and rarest – pieces of prop-culture comes to auction for the first time: a detailed, ready-for-its-close-up Type-2 phaser.

Set to stun star wars