The only original C-3PO head remaining in the collector’s market sold for $1 million at Propstore auction house in Los Angeles on March 25.

The bumbling, priggish robot endures as one of Star Wars’ defining characters, having appeared in all nine of the franchise’s original films. C-3PO was designed in the mid-1970s by Ralph McQuarrie who had impressed the director George Lucas with early illustrations of the script—McQuarrie also created Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and R2-D2. This head from The Empire Strikes Back (1980), whose eyes still light up via a battery pack, topped its upper estimate of $700,000.

The C-3PO head from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Photo courtesy of Propstore.

With its golden sheen, expressionless face, and armor-plate body, C-3PO was directly drawn from Maria, the malevolent robot in Fritz Lang’s black-and-white classic Metropolis (1927). McQuarrie’s concept art convinced an initially skeptical Antony Daniel to accept the role of C-3PO. “He painted a face and a figure that had a wistful, rather yearning, rather bereft quality,” Daniel wrote in his 2019 memoir, “which I found very appealing.”

Over the course of six months, molds were taken of Daniel’s face, torso, and limbs to cast the costume with the British sculptor Liz Moore creating the C-3PO head. It’s made of a thin fiberglass and consists of three components: backplate, faceplate, and neck ring which are all connected with a pair of neck bolts. One technological hurdle was the robot’s glowing photoreceptor eyes, which had the potential to blind Daniel. The solution was to cover the insides in black and cut out small holes through which the actor could see.

Tom Jung, Star Wars: Episode IV–A New Hope poster artwork (1977). Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

In 2024, a C-3PO head from Daniels’s own collection that featured in Return of the Jedi (1983) sold at Propstore for $850,000. The auction record for a work of Star Wars memorabilia is the $3.9 million paid for Tom Jung’s 1977 painting that lay the ground for the franchise’s earliest promotional posters. The late 2025 sale at Heritage Auctions surpassed the $3.6 million spent on Darth Vader’s lightsaber from The Empire Strikes Back (1980) at Propstore.

The numbers offer Star Wars memorabilia as a collecting category unto itself. One factor is time. Since the earliest days of hobby collecting in the early 1990s, Star Wars props have been among the most sought-after.

“As a result, the price level of Star Wars pieces has generally outpaced most other contemporary material,” Propstore’s chief operating office, Brandon Alinger, said over email. “As time progresses and the price level rises, especially for high-quality pieces, collectors and other sources who have these pieces have given more consideration to selling. The prices paid in the modern era are attention-catching.”

The harpoon launcher and case. Photo: courtesy Propstore.

The C-3PO head sale took place as part of Propstore’s three-day Spring Entertainment Memorabilia auction. The opening act was dedicated to film and television collectables and saw 250 lots achieve $6.5 million in sales.

A sweep of Hollywood classics hit the block. The harpoon gun from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) sold for $327,600, within estimate. The instrumental Shards of Narsil from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings more than doubled the pre-sale estimate selling for $252,000. The Dude’s cardigan from The Big Lebowski (1998) went for $16,380.

A painting for an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel by the fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, whose prices have surged in the past year, failed to sell having come to market with a high estimate of $1 million.