Though last night's 20th Century Evening Sale at Christie's, the first of New York City's fall marquee week, was by all accounts a successful auction, there were not many surprises. It was not exactly shocking that the night's top lot, a desirable flame-colored Rothko from the Weis Collection, went for $62 million. Few eyebrows were raised when Matisse's "Figure et bouquet (Tete ocre)," already requested by MoMA for a show next year, climbed from $10 million to $13 million in seconds, eventually fetching three times that.
One such item just set a new record for Star Wars props sold at auction. It's not just any item, either: It's one of the lightsabers wielded by Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. According to auction house Propstore, this lightsaber can be seen in both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the buyer paid a record-setting $3,654,000 for it.