Movies
The Missing X-wing in the Garage
ILM built four hero X-wing miniatures for the 1977 Star Wars. Three were accounted for. The fourth spent decades in a cardboard box of packing peanuts — until it sold for $3.135 million.
As significant a find as the ruby red slippers or the Maltese Falcon.
Industrial Light & Magic built just four "hero" X-wing filming miniatures for the original 1977 Star Wars — the detailed, servo-winged models used for close-ups in the Death Star trench run. Three were accounted for. The fourth, "Red Leader," was known in effects circles simply as "the missing X-wing," its whereabouts a 40-year mystery.
The answer: a garage in Los Angeles. When Oscar-nominated model-maker Greg Jein died in 2022, friends helping his family sort a collection sprawled across two houses, two garages, and two storage units opened a cardboard box and found the missing X-wing buried in packing peanuts — unmodified and undisplayed since it left ILM. Effects historian Gene Kozicki called it "as significant a find as the ruby red slippers or the Maltese Falcon."
In October 2023, the X-wing sold at Heritage Auctions for $3,135,000 — a record for any screen-used Star Wars prop — after a bidding duel between a floor bidder and a phone bidder. The Jein collection as a whole brought $13.6 million, the second-highest-grossing Hollywood auction ever.
The lo.st takeaway: Even the people who knew the X-wing existed couldn''t find it, because "somewhere in a collector''s storage" is a black hole. The world''s most valuable items are routinely lost inside boxes their owners forgot they packed. Tag the box.