Last year, fans were shocked when the original three-foot Constitution-class USS Enterprise model — lost for decades after it went missing during production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture — suddenly appeared in an eBay auction.
Quickly removed from sale, the model’s suspicious reappearance drew both interest and questions from fans, Trek professionals, and of course Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod who shared the below statement in November… indicating he was in contact with the present owner of the long-lost model.
Now, after several months, Roddenberry and the team at Heritage Auctions have announced that the model has been authenticated as the very Enterprise once held by Gene Roddenberry — and that the miniature starship has been returned to the Roddenberry family’s possession.
Said Rod Roddenberry, “This is not going home to adorn my shelves… this is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.”
The model first came through the offices of Heritage Auctions, who worked to confirm its authenticity before it docked at the Roddenberry home. From today’s Associated Press report:
Heritage’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena, said the auction house was contacted by people who said they’d discovered it a storage unit, and when it was brought into their Beverly Hills office, he and a colleague “instantly knew that it was the real thing.”
They reached out to Roddenberry, who said he appreciates that everyone involved agreed returning the model was the right thing to do. He wouldn’t go into details on the agreement reached but said “I felt it important to reward that and show appreciation for that.”
Maddalena said the model vanished in the 1970s after Gene Roddenberry loaned it to makers of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which was released in 1979.
“No one knew what happened to it,” Rod Roddenberry said.
This USS Enterprise model would easily sell for more than $1 million at auction, but really “it’s priceless,” Maddalena said. “It could sell for any amount and I wouldn’t be surprised because of what it is,” he said. “It is truly a cultural icon.”
Notable Star Trek production experts have also been up close and personal with the recovered Enterprise, including Doug Drexler, Mike Okuda, and modelmaker Gary Kerr, all key members of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s conservation efforts on the full-sized Enterprise model back in 2016.
It’s not yet known where or when the model may make its way into public view — after nearly 60 years, it’s quite fragile and in need of some repair work (as Kerr notes above) — but when we know more, you’ll certainly learn about it here at TrekCore.
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