Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/16/captain-kirks-original-phaser-and-communicator-on-the-auction-block.html
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Smithsonian:
(Sort of)
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Gee, I hope they set it to “stun” before giving it to the new owner.
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[looks in wallet] . . . will have to pass, disappointing spectre of 12-yr-old me.
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The construction of the communicators has been exhaustively documented at this point, as you might expect. Moire patterns and stopwatches.
https://herocomm.com/Home.htm
There was much excitement not so many years ago when someone finally determined the particular pencil case used for the exterior mold.
https://herocomm.com/Details/BuckOrigins.htm
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I love the ingenuity of sixties design.
That Phaser!
It’s amazing what you can do with an electric razor,
a hose spray nozzle,
and a bit of wood.
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I had a shaver A LOT like that.
My hose nozzle is either that exact one, or one really close!
When I was part of Star Fleet in HS there was one guy, Mike, who was a scratch model builder and made props. He brought some to show off to James Doohan at a convetion, and he remarked they were nicer than the ones on the show!
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Well, there it is.
Turns out my childhood was shit after all.
Nah, just envious… 
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Ain’t technology grand? Forget the phaser. Now, all you need is a communicator to stop people in their tracks. 
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I’m such a nerd, I had a scholarship from Starfleet.
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You can always try to make a functional one…
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I sculpted a Type 1 phaser in HS using the template in the Starfleet Engineering Manual so I could make a plaster cast of it and make many more. My nerd, let me show it to U.
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Can it still hold a charge after all these years?
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never previously noticed that there’s a communicator, uhm… body, which makes up the top of the phaser. (prop parts conservation perhaps…?) and/or declare it to be that other-sort of phaser type-1? anyway, same prop housing. .nifty.
just as @1000YearBan wisely points out this structure is actually part of the official story-line (i had no idea)
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I’m no Star Trek know it all, but I had a model kit of the communicator and phaser gun when I was a kid and they definitely just slotted together like that. Like, the blaster requires the communicator to function.
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Isn’t the part on top supposed to be a compact Type-I phaser (as @theophrastus’ image caption states) rather than a communicator? Or you mean the toy version swapped in the communicator instead?
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… the idea was, the phasey-wasey part in the middle was expensive and scarce, but also small and light, so instead of making more, Starfleet would take the same mechanism and plug it into different sized battery packs
yes that is an unnecessarily complicated backstory for a prop
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Now that you mention it I recall it was 3 piece kit - flip top communicator, little hand held phaser, and the gun mount for the phaser! I think that’s authentic to TOS.
So my question is, is the gun-handle phaser mount just a trigger mechanism for the hand-held phaser, or does it jack up the power in some way?
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I’m betting they’re severely underestimating the final sale price.
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