A RARE Darth Vader costume is expected to fetch between £160,000 and £300,000 when auctioned next month.
Its mask and helmet are production-made from the 1980 movie The Empire Strikes Back. READ MORE

Cool. Would be interesting to know who the seller is and it would be cool if there would be published more pictures - esp close-ups of the helmet.

Gotta be honest, that helmet looks RotJ.

More pictures: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101027/ap_ ... arth_vader

I'd like that chick to adjust my helmet!

Is this the helmet that Jez posted about a while back which had a repaint?

Nevertheless it looks very authentic. Hopefully we will get some more infos and pics.

Looks RotJ to me.

It IS the second one shown off here: 6-vt2464.html?start=82

Paint details matches on the the helmet. He mixed them up and originally showed off the tour suit as the claimed screen used, but it was much softer and had the 20th C dome ring configuration. The sharper helmet has an odd ridged pipe on top not seen on any originals, afaik.

Codpiece looks wrong... perhaps a replacement?

Speaking of which, Joe.... I'm sure it wasn't the helmet you wanted the chick to adjust for you!

It looks to me like It's a promotional suit. The Gloves are too long, The ESB never had a Cape chain like that, The Surcoat is too short to really be a screenused ESB. The Cod Piece just looks wrong. and the Helmet appears to be a ROTJ or a Tour piece. That Vader looks almost like the one that they used for Night at the Museum 2.

Now as you say this, also thought me this after a closer look.

Take a look at the capechain....
http://www.bscreview.com/wp-content/upl ... museum.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQB1n68KFQ
...looks realy like the same

Also the gloves are very long on this NATM 2 costume.

The paint scheme on the NatM2 helmet is reversed - not the same as this one.

LINK 1

LINK 2

In the UK my helmet is my manhood.
Also I don't think the seller is claiming the soft parts to be screen used. As far as I'm aware it's only the helmet, shoulder armour and shins.
The rest I believe is tour stuff.
If anyone had spent as much time as I, AA and Jez did speaking on the phone you would realise that he is a very intense person but a gent. Andrew did try and tell him that he wasn't and asked me to help him authenticate it. Andrew never really wanted to do it but the seller practically insisted he did. That's why Andrew set up a meeting with Dave Prouse to try and satisfy the seller. He didn't know how or who else that would say it was an original.
We told the seller that there was doubt on it being screen used but it did look authentically a production piece and all Andrew could do is confirm that the screws and fixings etc were consistent with the era of the film. He doesn't pretend to know anything about Vader. It's the seller that has bigged up AA, not himself.
The seller has a long paper trail and is convinced it is what it is and didn't want to believe anything different.

Man, is it so hard to find some real expertise? Just type thepropden.aokforums.com en press enter!

No it's not and that's why myself and Jez came here to discuss it and posted pix for the experts to see. Unfortunately Andrew isn't a member of these forums and isn't a fan like our good selves.