gonk27 wrote:
Yep, here's the text for lot 206 NHM:
Darth Vader
A black/grey fibreglass skull helmet with wide-flanged rim and faceted characterised face, the inside inscribed in white chalk 3 - made for the 1980 Lucasfilm The Empire Strikes Back.
£3,000-£4,000
Jeremy
If it is true that the ESB stunt helmets were numbered, and the hero helmets were lettered, it would be instructive to see what the number 3 looked like.
This helmet is interesting. It has a center ridge on the helmet (dome) that looks ANH...the edges don't taper as much along it's length that you normally see. The base of the flaring looks trimmed flat as one would expect from ESB. The tube ends are broken, not unlike the Paul Allen and not unlike the TM, implying some use/abuse. Is the chin grill accurate? It looks accurate to me. Harder to see the mouth grill. It doesn't have a fat lip. The holes inside the end of Vader's left and right tube seem to be the same diameter as that on the Paul Allen but I'd have to do a real comparison. What is strange is that it has no blebs or sausages on the front right cheek at the boundary to the side of the mouth triangle. There is good detail in the undercut of the tubes. It has that bit of inward slant toward the face of Vader's right side of the helmet flaring, like ESB. It has the minute groove lines inside the base of the noseslots as one would expect from an authentic or authentic-derived casting. There is also detail around the mouth triangle I see as well that looks authentic. What is also interesting to me is that the eyes are covered with pieces of plastic(?) that seem to be flatter at least on Vader's right side. So they are just covered up. That suggests to me that the mask might have been molded...otherwise why close up the eyes? I can host a high res version of the photo....