Two original Star Wars helmets found in a skip at Elstree Studios have fetched nearly £40,000 at auction.

The Stormtrooper helmets were apparently two of 12 used in the first 1977 film, A New Hope, and were dumped in the skip on return from filming on location in Tunisia.

According to Christie's, the London auction house which sold them, a mystery man, thought to be a studios employee, has kept the helmets for nearly 30 years and put both up for sale last week.

The lots, listed as rare Imperial Stormtrooper helmets, as worn by Stormtroopers (or Sandtroopers) in the Tatooine sequences', went for £19,200 and £18,000.

However, local experts are surprised the price was not higher.

Norman Harrison, who runs Elstree Props, a film memorabilia store, from an office at Elstree Studios, in Shenley Road, Borehamwood, reckons bona fide helmets could fetch around £80,000.

He said: "There seems to be a lot of helmets about, but I only know of a few that are real. There are very, very few real helmets about."

A Christie's spokesperson said the helmets were real. In fact, he said, the inside of the helmets even smelt geniune after being worn in the heat of the Tunisian desert.

Film historian and Borehamwood & Elstree Times columnist Paul Welsh said: "After the film was made, there were skips on the site. Nobody understood then that the film would become a world cult film forever more."

Mr Welsh has salvaged historic documents such as film scripts from studio skips, in the past.

"It was just common place in the 1970s film memorabilia didn't have a huge market value. But now, with eBay, people have cottoned on to the idea that these things are valuable."

Nonetheless, he said the dumping of potentially precious film-related objects still went on. "In a sense, it's still a problem today because of lack of space you've got to have somewhere to put them and display them," he said.