So this is a pretty good yardsale find from the 1990's. It's been in storage ever since, but now I am putting it up on here. What I love about it is, it's a discreet enough find, kept in constant isolation, that it can tell it's own story.

This kid apparently outgrew toys before Kenner's Return of the Jedi line hit shelves. All the figures are drawn from the ANH and early ESB releases, and the case is an early model. The first wave of ROTJ figures was in 1983. A lot of kids outgrow toys by 13 at the latest, so, this gives us a birth year for the original owner of circa 1970. Probably a solid 10 years older than myself, maybe even more. This kid could have been clinging to childhood things well into junior high, putting them at what, a maximum of age 14, during the 1980 ESB wave. If the condition of the figures is any indication, this collector was a young child during the ANH runs, and kept better care of their figures during ESB. Since none of the ESB 2nd wave figures are present, it seems likely that they were already starting to get too old for toys when ESB was out.

Also, I assume these were owned by a child and not an adult fan who put them up on his desk or something, due to the playwear and missing accessories. The characters that naturally lend themselves to storytelling suffer from the most missing accessories. Luke(s), Leia, and Chewbacca got hit pretty hard in the accessory department. Yoda(s) and Obi-Wan are complete. There would have originally been an awful lot of E-11's and DL-44's present from the various heroes and the cantina aliens, so even if they lost theirs, Han, Luke and Boba could be easily re-armed.

There are 5 duplicates in the collection, none of which make any sense from a kid collecting standpoint: R2-D2, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, Luke in Bespin Fatigues, and Yoda. Both Yoda's have all their accessories so it seems unlikely that this child acquired duplicates in order to secure replacement parts. None of the duplicates are supernumeraries. Thus these seem, in the way of childhood, to be birthday presents and the like.

All in all this is a quaint little loose collection with a large number of original accessories present.

Probably the "best in show" is the Obi-Wan Kenobi with his accessories intact, and presumably from the early ANH runs. Runner up would be tied between the nearly pristine original R2, or the FX-7 with no broken limbs.

Nice score, congrats!

Indeed a nice little find. I found your forensic analysis of their history entertaining too, you're a regular Sherlock Holmes!

That's a pretty awesome find, Well done dude.

From the duplicates id say he had a brother, or indeed sister who wanted the same figures. Also the snag should have the rebel blaster, not imp. nice find though. OK to mention this on my podcast?

marcair85 wrote:

From the duplicates id say he had a brother, or indeed sister who wanted the same figures. Also the snag should have the rebel blaster, not imp. nice find though. OK to mention this on my podcast?

Which podcast?

I didn't have enough rebel blasters to go around, and Snaggletooth is too cool not to get one.