Talk about set for stun. It’s amazing to see what sci-fi memorabilia goes for these days, but if you’re lucky enough to have the kind of money to buy it, you can take home your own little piece of Star Wars or Star Trek.
This is apparently what one lucky fan just did. As Deadline confirms, at a Hollywood Legends auction, a Star Trek rifle from the show’s second pilot went for $231,000, which is amazing, especially considering some thought it would only go for $50,000 or so. (Marilyn Monroe’s bra from Some Like It Hot only brought in $28,125.)
As the site ScienceFiction.com notes, this rifle was used in the second Star Trek pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and it was never used in any other episode. Although Star Wars memorabilia has been selling like crazy in the past several years, Trek props have also been doing very well at auction as well.
Indeed, the Trek spaceship Galileo went for $70,000, and Captain Kirk’s chair also went for $270,000. Yet as the site StartrekAuction points out, the rifle that just sold is “the Holy Grail of Star Trek props.” The site also posted a little history of the rifle we thought we’d share as well.
The prop was created by a toy inventor named Reuben Klamer at the request of Gene Roddenberry. When Star Trek was ready to get a second chance at NBC, the network wanted more action, so Roddenberry wanted Klamer to build a big gun. This rifle is what Klamer came up with, and he built it in two weeks. (Klamer also created it for free).
When Roddenberry held the gun in his hands, he yelled, “This is it! This does the job! Those guys at NBC will be surprised when we have this in the show! Let’s get going with this right away!” Klamer himself said, “In my personal opinion, this rifle was instrumental in selling Star Trek as a series.”
After it was used in the pilot, the rifle went back into Klamer’s possession, and from there on out the crew of the Enterprise used smaller hand-held phasers in self-defense. So while this rifle is not the most expensive Trek prop out there, it is indeed a very important piece of Trek’s history, and one lucky fan now owns it, which has to be making geeks all over the world green with envy.
