Luke Skywalker lightsaber and Oz witch hat headline Heritage auction

Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, used by Mark Hamill in The Empire Strikes Back, will anchor Heritage Auctions’ Hollywood & Entertainment Signature Auction, with bidding set to open at $1 million. The five-day sale runs July 13-17 in Dallas and online, and Heritage says the lot includes the severed-hand effects rig from the Cloud City duel with Darth Vader.

The auction pairs that Star Wars prop with another object from a very different corner of movie memory: Margaret Hamilton’s screen-worn flying hat from The Wizard of Oz. Heritage set the opening bid at $100,000, and Smithsonian coverage has placed the hat in exact physical terms that help explain its pull, nearly 14 inches tall with a 19.5-inch brim and a 22-inch chin strap. Joe Maddalena, Heritage’s executive vice president, has compared its significance to the ruby slippers, one of the few surviving touchstones from the 1939 MGM classic.

The sale reaches beyond film. John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for If I Fell open at $500,000, Gene Wilder’s photo-matched Willy Wonka top hat starts at $50,000, and two hero rugs from The Big Lebowski begin at $15,000 apiece. A screen-matched Otto the Autopilot prop from Airplane! is listed at $25,000 or more. Heritage says many of the items are appearing at auction for the first time, and Maddalena described the lineup as “the full spectrum of entertainment history” from Hollywood’s Golden Age to modern blockbuster cinema.

That breadth matters because the market for screen-used artifacts has become a high-end asset class as much as a fan category. Heritage set a record in July 2025 when Orson Welles’ Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane sold for $14.75 million, the second-biggest purchase of Hollywood memorabilia ever. In December 2025, the auction house sold the original 1977 Star Wars half-sheet artwork for $3.875 million, setting a record for Star Wars memorabilia and movie-poster art. Against that backdrop, the lightsaber and the Oz hat are not just famous props. They are evidence that a shrinking shared pop-culture canon can still generate seven-figure bids when the object is rare, screen-used, and tied to stories that still command a premium across generations.