When Peter Mayhew died in 2019, the actor best known for his “Chewbacca” role in several installments of the Star Wars series left behind an attic full of memorabilia.
The items included an original Star Wars script and a call sheet. Health problems prevented Mayhew from retrieving them from his attic when he moved, so the house’s new owners took custody.
Time passed, and the abandoned merchandise was recently put up for auction. That’s when the late actor’s wife, Angie Mayhew, got word of the potential sale and tweeted her dismay that the items were to be sold.
Auctioneer Angus Ashworth stepped in.
“I was approached by a lovely older couple who were clearing their attic a quarter of a century after moving into their property,” Ashworth said in a statement, per the BBC. “The contents of the attic included a bag of Star Wars memorabilia, which I thought might be of some interest to Star Wars fans.”
Ashworth said he only found out about the Mayhew’s family dismay when he saw the tweet. He worked things out with the owners, who were glad to give the items back to the nonprofit Peter Mayhew Foundation.
“Nobody had approached us to discuss it, and had they done so I would of course have talked to the vendors,” Ashworth said. “The monetary value of the lot is fairly modest, but knowing how much it means to the foundation, and given that it had been in the attic for over 24 years, the vendors are quite happy to donate it to the foundation to have permanently within their personal collection, not for profit, so that fans can access it in perpetuity.”