I did not originally do the LOD, I let the game do it. I have since provided an LOD for the model with a 128 lod texture. the file size has actually decreased as a result. but, I do use 512 as a base texture for all my work. just part of my process.

The LOD for this has almost twice as many tris (50) as the full model (26)! Also, does it really need a 512x512 texture for such a small prop?