After decades, missing X-Wing model found and up for auction

After more than 40 years, a lost relic from Star Wars has been found and is up for auction.

According to an article from the Hollywood Reporter, a model of an X-wing Starfighter that was used in the 1977 film Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope will be sold for auction at Heritage Auctions on October 14 and 15 in Dallas. The bidding will start at $400,000.

The model called the “Red Leader” (Red One) was built by Lucasfilm’s visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and it was used during the scenes depicting the Battle of Yavin in which Luke Skywalker and the pilots of the Rebel Alliance took on the Death Star.

The Hollywood Reporter article mentions that the  “Red Leader” was found in the collection of the late Greg Jein, an Oscar-nominated model maker who worked with Steven Speilberg on his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Speilberg’s film came out around the same year as A New Hope.

The X-wing model garnered some degree of legendary status as it was believed to be one of the “hero” four X-Wing models that went missing after ILM moved north from California’s San Fernando Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1978.

“This model has not been displayed or modified since it left ILM,” VFX historian Gene Kozicki said during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “For those of us that grew up in the ’70s or ’80s, and those of us that work in visual effects, this model is as significant a find as the ruby red slippers or the Maltese Falcon.”

Kozicki found the model inside a cardboard box when he was helping Jein’s family and friends organize the late modelmaker’s collection for the auction. Accompanying the VFX historian was ILM VFX supervisor Bill George, model maker Lou Zutaverm, and Jein’s friend Rob McFalane.

“I knew something was probably in the box, so I started to carefully scoop out the packaging peanuts when the nose of the X-wing showed itself,” says Kozicki. “The four of us knew immediately that it was the actual filming model, and then the magnitude of the discovery started to set in.”

Further into the interview, Kozicki noted that Jein was known for being a collector of models, and he isn’t sure how the modelmaker obtained the “Red Leader” X-wing.

According to the Heritage auction website, the “Red Leader” is a “1:24 scale filming miniature” that was “created with servo-controlled wings that spread open into ‘Attack Position.’”  The auction site also notes that this particular model played the part of the X-Wing Starfighters of Red leader Garven Dreis, Luke Skywalker, and Wedge Antilles.

The “Red Leader” is not the first artifact from A New Hope to resurface. In August 2022, the original prop of Han Solo’s modified DL-44 used by Harrison Ford was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered. The DL-44 sold for over $1 million at the Rock Island Auction Company in Rock Island, IL.

Information about the “Red Leader” X-Wing starfighter model can be found on the My Heritage website.