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Here's How Much It Costs to Get Mark Hamill's Autograph at Star Wars Celebration

If you have $211 spare, you could have your photo taken with Luke and Leia.
If you have $211 spare, you could have your photo taken with Luke and Leia.

If you have $211 spare, you could have your photo taken with Luke and Leia.

By Graeme McMillan, Borys Kit

How much would you pay for the chance to get an autograph from your childhood idol?

For attendees at Anaheim’s Star Wars Celebration, that’s not an abstract question. The chance to get a signature from Mark Hamill at the show costs $125, while Carrie Fisher charges $70.Anthony Daniels, meanwhile, will sign something in exchange for $50, and Peter Mayhew shows the intergalactically-renowned kindness of Wookiees by also asking $50 for his hairy John Hancock.

It’s not just the big names who are offering their signatures. John Morton, who played an X-Wing pilot in The Empire Strikes Back, will give you an autograph for $20, and Brian Muir, who sculpted the Stormtrooper armor for the original movie (although the helmet was sculpted by another artist, Liz Moore), will sign for the same amount. The autograph of visual effects artist Lorne Peterson, meanwhile, will cost 50 percent more, at $30.

Outside of Hamill, the most expensive autograph at the show belongs to Ian McDiarmid, who charges $90. It only makes sense — as Emperor (née Senator) Palpatine, he did display strong financial acumen, after all.

This is by no means a practice exclusive to this convention. Most comic book and pop culture conventions will feature guests charging for signatures, or announcing that they’ll only sign merchandise that has been purchased from them. (The website for a Vampire Diaries convention in Chicago this weekend, for example,explains that the value of getting the individual guests to sign something would be $275, while the site for an August Supernatural convention says that autographs would cost around $400.)

Also available at the celebration: the chance to have your photo taken with the Star Wars cast. Depending on who you want to appear with, it might be more economical than an autograph: Hamill only charges $108 per photo, while Fisher’s price goes up to $76. (They’ll appear together for $211, the first time they’ve offered this opportunity at any convention). Ray ParkEpisode 1’s Darth Maul, will pose with attendees for just $44, but the real draw might be the chance to get a picture taken with Billy Dee Williams; that costs $54, and is likely to be worth every penny.

Fans don’t seem to have too much of a problem paying up for the pleasure of making a decades-old dream come true; not only are the autograph lines at the convention healthy, but as Illinois' Keith Homel, 41, put it, “It’s on the steep side, but I’ve been waiting to meet him since I was 3 years old.”

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