knowing we are all sw addict, i thought it would be interesting to know why we have ended up collecting sw toys?

i will start…

first of all, collecting is in my gene (thanks dad!) but i was more fascinated by the stock market (thanks mom!). so i decided to trade on the stock market for 10 years to then realize that it was boring as hell! yeah i could be slow sometimes! boring to watch the movement of intangible assets all day long.

then i thought about these sw action figures that i used to play with. had a look at the bay and was shocked! dt luke and ben for $19k! “normal” moc for $2k (boba 21)! but the most important part, they were all there unopened after 30 years!! the attraction was immediate and i am addicted since then!! these toys represent great childhood moments. rember receiving the millenium falcon for christmas? this figure or this other when shopping with your parents? running to the toys area when entering woolco to see if new items were received? what a phenomenon!!! in addition, i consider these as first class collectables or hard assets if you will (yeah we know this dom!!) and their value is more stable compared to stocks and bonds. would be surprised to see them plunged to zero…and anyway they are so cool they are not bought to be sold at a profit but rather because they are the coolest thing to collect! i will probably always sell a piece here and there to upgrade or simply buy something else to focus on specific characteristics…but will not buy with a resell tactic in mind, too boring...

having one parent being involved in finance for 40 years it is impossible not to think of the “investment” aspect of it. so i wonder how this collectable market will be impacted by the 40 years of sw? just hope it will not turn too crazy…

i would say when i received my first sw toy on christmas.long long time ago.it would be cool if i could find some old pic's of when i was a kid at christmas opening present's and getting my first sw toy.i need to get to my parent's house one day and get up in the attic.that's were it's all at.Dan

Shortly before my son turned four I played the first Star Wars film for him. He loved it so much so I thought Star Wars figures would be a great birthday gift. I did a google search for vintage Star Wars and the "Cloud City Collectibles" site came up. I could not stop looking at the web page and purchased the first 21 figures for myself and all the "Bend ems" figures for him. At that time I thought I would someday get the Empire and Jedi figures loose and that would be that. Wrong . . .

Things just kind of built up to it for me. In the early 90's I had some cousins that got me hooked on the Role Playing Games and it was that which sparked my interest again into Star Wars. I got a few of my friends involved and we started watching the movies quite a bit and I got hooked into the Thrawn Trilogy of books.

One day I went to the local bookstore to take a look at the RPG books and they had Steve Sansweet's: Concept to Screen to Collectible Book. That book started the flood of memories about the toys and I thought it would be great to collect them, but had no idea where to start. Another book I found was this price guide to Star Wars and Star Trek Collectibles.

A friend of mine got some vintage beaters from some cousins and showed them to me. I was pretty jealous that he got them and asked about buying some of the doubles off him. From what I remember he wanted top dollar from the price guide and I luckily didn't buy any. I guess I even cared about condition back then. lol

I've posted the ad before about some of the baggie figures I bought back then and those probably were my first vintage figures. The other thing that I'll never forget was a family vacation to Florida. I found an ad in the Yellow Pages for Intergalactic Trading Co. and begged my dad to allow us to stop there. I was floored by the sight I saw. They had carded figures, loose figures, and loads of ships. It felt like I had gone back in time. I was still only roughly 14-15 at that time, so I didn't have a whole lot of cash. I remember buying my Imperial Guard on a cut card for $6 and a loose incomplete Boba for $3. I also signed up for their mail order catalog and ordered a few times over the years. I still get their newsletter and they are supposed to have a huge booth at CV which I'm looking forward to.

Thats easy, getting my first figure when I was 4 or 5....Walrusman!! All of the others soon followed, with the "boring human characters" coming lastly. (Well except for BEN, even as a kid I recognized that Ben was and is the MAN) I can clearly remember a store that I used to love to go to growing up in NY, the awesome WoolWorths! There was Woolworths, J.J. Newberry, and Ames, all of which supplied me with plenty of SW figures. I remember them regularly having sales of the "2-for-$3" nature, and going and getting figures that I already had just because I loved them so much! lol I remember at one time having 3 or 4 Greedos and a pile of Sandtroopers. I used to carry them around in a Barnum and Bailey's Animal Crackers box with the little string handle attached! A couple years later my buddy Damon said "come on over after school man...got somethin to show ya..." I went over, and upon entering his room I STOPPED dead-cold...it was an At-t and the damned thing nearly came up to my waste!! Years later I distinctly recall seeing bins and bins of Jedi figures at a store called Zayres, they were marked either .59 or .99 with magic marker on the cards, and there were so many that the ones on the bottom of the wire mesh bins were crushed right out of their packages and my buddies and I used to "steal" their weapons off the floor!! LOL

Wait...what was the question again?? What got me INTO collecting? The films of course!! Oh, and WALRUSMAN!!

"Sorry, I'll be more careful.." "You'll be DEAD!!" Man, one of my only REAL laments about the vintage line is that Kenner didnt make Dr. Evazon or Wuher. ...Or Garindan for that matter. Ah well, at least we got Gammorean and Malikili...but ya cant EVER have too many portly, surly, drunks, can you? They made most of those characters in the 1995 line, and I have nearly 100 of those, but they arent quite the same as the vintage line for me. They are CLOSE, sure, but I dunno..just not the same.

Good times...

Take care!


Andre

Just before xmas my 5 year old was getting into star wars the clone wars and I brought the Empire strikes back.....since that time he watches one of the first 3 films every night as he goes to sleep and the more I watched them the more i thought what great films they were with all the sets, characters etc and as a collecting nut just knew I had to start looking at the vintage figures........why didnt i start back in 89 when I started collecting corgi cars :O(

I got interested when i seen how much money my brother was making it buying and selling it, however i found i didnt like parting with it and it was becoming an addiction, this was in the ealry 90s, i used to go to all the UK toy fairs, NEC etc and buy all kinds, do the car boot sales etc etc and amassed quite a bit. I sold a lot off last year and regretted it but times were hard at the time so sacrifices were made. I really missed my Ledy when i sold it all on Ebay (i didnt add good photos so it only made about £40)

Back with a vengeance now tho and i really did miss having a good laugh with you guys in Jays first star wars live chat place

C3PO was my first EVER action figure at age 5. I saw SW figures one day at a Kmart about 25 miles from my house. I had no idea what they were but I knew they were awesome & I wanted some! Sadly that was not to be. We were kinda (ok, not kinda) poor & even one figure was not in the days budget.A week or so later my dad had to go in that area again for his job & randomly picked up a SW figure. 3PO was the lucky figure. I remeber going down to the station where my dad worked & sitting on the step, where I opened my very 1st SW figure. That was the start of a total obsession for years.

As I child I loved star wars. But when I got older I only loved the comics, books, games and movies.

When I was 22 years old I so some collections on the internet and a light lit inside me. I have now collected for 10 years.

I can't explain it better, I did not know what really did happen, I just began to collect after the light lit inside me.

Maybe it has something to do with that I did not have that much star wars as a child and I thought it could be cool to have it all now.

But I am not sure.

I had a real rough childhood growing up. We were very poor and my mom spent the little money she had working as a waitress to buy the few SW figures that she could afford to get my brother and I. My step-grandma literally stole them from me and gave the figures to my cousins because I was a mixed kid (asian and white) and I wasn't hispanic like everyone else. They burned my shoes when we went camping they beat me constantly and stole the few things I owned. Now that I'm grown I'm twice as big as any of them and meaner than a junk yard dog just trying to buy back my youth that was stolen from me!! Now come try to take my stuff!!

Sorry for depressing everyone I just have this LOVE for vintage SW that no one can ever take from me even if they take everything I own!!

My first figure, if memory serves, was Snaggletooth. Followed buy C3PO, Bespin Luke, and on and on. After a time I drifted on to G.I. Joe. But my SW figures were always a part of that time as well. I used them as my own made up characters. When I moved out of my parents house to live with my then girlfriend, I clearly remember packing my last remaining SW figures into a box. Along with a Taun-Taun. A couple of years ago mom and dad moved and I had to get all my old toys. The G.I. Joes and He-MAn and M.A.S.K. and M.U.S.C.L.E. figures were there along with playsets and such. But the box with the 10 or so SW figures was gone!! Still haven't found it either .

I wasn't too worried about it becasue I wasn't "collecting" SW at the time. I was just confused as to why my other stuff was there but the SW wasn't.

Anyway, fast forward to late 2009. I was palying around on Ebay one night and decided to look up "old Star Wars figures". I bought a lot of four figures for fun. And the rest is history. Now I'm a bootleg addict, and know things like the meaning of MOC and repro.

For me, it was having someone talk about SW all the time 24/7. I first got into it in 95 for the cash. But a few years later in 2007, I actually started to like the things I had as a kid. Thats what got me into it for the memories of Christmas mornings opening up Vader, Luke, Fett, etc and the Imperial attack base. Never had any of the major accessories like MF, X-wing, etc.

I've collected toys for a long time, and for the last 10 or so years I've concentrated on vintage robots and ray guns from the Thirties through the Sixties. Before that, I collected vintage, first edition science fiction paperbacks, as well as lots of original book and pulp artwork. So I've always had the collecting bug.

I played with SW toys as a little kid, but moved on when G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man caught my attention. Still, I never lost my love of the movies.

About two or so years ago, I started noticing the SW figures in a local toy store called Love Saves the Day (no longer with us, sadly). I was really struck by them... but I put it out of my mind. I was a robot and ray gun collector, and I wasn't interested in putting money or space towards anything else. But, still, I couldn't get those darn figures out of my head.

Shortly after, I was at a comic convention and there was a guy selling SW toys. I decided I really wanted an original R2. Just that one figure... Nothing else.

That lasted about a week before I decided I wanted other R2s. Then eventually the rest of the droids. Then more of the Takara toys. Then the original 12, then an inflatable lightsaber, then this, then that...

When I decided to pull the trigger on an Early Bird set, I knew I was completely hooked.

At about the same time, I met John Alvarez, who had just started collecting ray guns. He was asking me about the vintage toys, I was asking him about SW toys. He opened my eyes to the larger SW world, and since then my collection's really grown in ways I never could have imagined when I first stumbled upon those figures at Love Saves the Day.

Since then, I've learned so much about the hobby. I've picked up some amazing toys. And I've met all sorts of incredible people. Good stuff!

I have my grandmother to thank for getting me into collecting as a child in about 1980 or so. She bought me an X-Wing and Luke for Christmas and I never looked back. I remember my parents buying me the Falcon next Christmas, and then I saved my allowance for what seemed like forever but it paid off when I bought my own AT-AT. I still to this day have every SW toy from my childhood, minus a few lost weapons of course.

I also got the collecting gene from my Dad who loved Star Wars. As a child he was more obsessed with getting them all for me and my brother than we were. He'd be forever bringing new ones home, and eventually we where the first of all our friends to have them all.

During my teens, after years of never touching them, my Mum, much to my disagreement sold them all at a friends second hand shop. A few years later, everyone started going on about how much they where worth, and I joked about it to my Mum, who insisted she hadn't sold them and that they where in the attic. I looked but didn't find.

Now somewhere in the midst of all this, 1995 had come and gone and the new Star Wars figures where on sale. At the time I can remember wishing I could afford to collect them, but at the time I was a year away from leaving school so couldn't afford to start collecting. One day very bored and my Mums constant insistance that my childhood collection had not been sold and was in the attic still playing on my mind, I decided to hunt! Eventually I found a bin bag stuffed between the rafters, in it about 50 verybattered old figures. The remnants of the collection, her friend had given back all the boring ones which hadn't sold. ( which very nicely contained 6 last 17 figures ).

Me and my best friend used to make small films as a hobbie, and sometime about 1997 my brother had borrowed a camera off his mate, who loved his science fiction and gadgets, he'd buy all the new gadgets, then get bored of them and flog them to my brother. Lacking something to do one day I decided to make a film on my own ( which is difficult ) so I used the Star Wars figures as my actors and made a piss take Star Wars spoof. After showing it to my friend, we went back and filmed to scenes together, combining Star Wars with a drug fulled story line. To our supprise the short unfinished film gained a kind of cult status in our town. At this point we decided to remake the whole trilogy using the "new" story line. People would constantly ask when it would be finished. The problem was we only had 50 battered figures and didn't even have half the main cast.

One of the people who loved the bit we had made was the guy who had lent us the camera, and he had been buying all the new figures that had been released since '95, only problem was, with a second set of twins on the way he needed to free up his "collection" room, and knowing that we would be interested, sold me his entire collection.

Right about this time, I had left college and got my first full time job, and still living at home, had more money than I new what to do with. my mate had his first car,so we used to drive down to York every weekend and I'd spend a fortune in a Star Wars collectors shop, basically continuing the collection I'd been sold. The aim being to be able to make the ultimate film.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I bought Sansweets Star Wars Action Figure Archive and was mortified to find that my childhood collection had in actual fact not been complete and was missing 4 figures. I decided there and then, that I would not fail this time round.

A couple of years after I started collecting modern stuff, a little shop open in my town, specialising in Star Wars, vintage and modern. I bought a couple of beat up vintage figures, thinking that I might be able to complete my childhood collection in a beat up way. One day I walked in to find a Brown hair Bespin Luke and a yellow hair version, sat on the shelf in imaculate condition. I couldn't resist. The nostalgic feeling I got far outwayed the buzz of collecting the modern stuff, so I continued. The shop shut shortly after which put me on hold for a couple of years until I eventually got on line. I also drifted out of collecting modern stuff, when it just got silly, with all the reissues and Clone Wars crap.

Sorry for the epic tale, but there is no real short way of explaining it, it was a mish mash of totally random events, prodominantly set around a film which ironically never got made!

Like Jesse my grandmother first got me into collecting as well. She bought my first figures, which were Uzay from Turkey. Soon after I inherited by older brothers vintage Kenner collection, which was like around 20 pieces. My favorite 2 figures though were always 2 caped ones which coincidentally were Uzay - the weird blue one which I was always trying to identify in the movies movies (blue star), and the one with the long red ratty red cape (which of course, I remembered as an ERG).

Fast forward 20 years - I move back to my home town after several years in NYC, and my mother tells me to clean up my old toys in their attic. I find the figures, and decide to figure out what the blue figure is. I've been hooked on bootlegs ever since. Although I am 30 years old, I'm very young in collecting years since I've only started less than a year ago. Its a great story when I think about it. Now I'm looking forward to finally meeting some of you peeps and nerding out at Celebration

Mete

making long story short---> As a kid I had the complete collection , but time passed really fast ; I grew up and I moved from my hometown and almost everything dissapeared , in 2006 my father send my the only 7 figures that survived , since then I start to collect them again ,since then I finished the Loose collection and MOC collection .... now going for the ultimate goal, to finish the Ledy MOC collection!