No, it doesn't all suck. And what better way to remember that it doesn't suck than celebrating the Archive all...year...long! For the first installment of our Editor Interviews, we're joined by Gus Lopez and Ron Salvatore.
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OFFICIAL BLOG of the Star Wars Collectors Archive
Celebrating 30 years of bridging geographical and generational gaps between collectors in fun, educational and accessible ways.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Thursday, July 18, 2024
A Love Letter to The Star Wars Collectors Archive on Its 30th Anniversary
David writes:
In Mike Mensinger’s entry for the AT-AT Driver hand-painted hardcopy, he shared photos of the front and back of the prototype, as well as an “exploded” view revealing the unpainted areas where the separated limbs connected to the torso. And he provided a side-by-side comparison shot showing the paint differences between the hardcopy and the production figure. For many of us, having access to see even one prototype was a gift. And the Archive offered the rare opportunity to view hundreds of pre-production Kenner pieces, as well as the packaging artwork, product concepts and proof cards.
When it came to the unproduced prototypes, the Archive was one of the earliest resources to focus on the Rocket-Firing Boba Fett figure. It also had a section devoted to Power of the Force carded samples that never reached retail outlets. Through the site, we were able to get a glimpse of what could have been - if the 12” figures continued through The Empire Strikes Back, and if the Droids and Ewoks animated lines were given additional waves of all-new characters.
When visiting a region for the first time, it helps to understand the language spoken there. So I was immediately drawn to the site’s Lexicon. Chris Georgoulias and Isaac Lew oversaw the Lexicon, and aimed to define the terminology used by the Kenner designers and more informed collectors in order to “make smarter and better collectors out of everyone.”
And although I could not fully grasp many of the concepts at the time, I knew that being exposed to these terms would help me to see the larger picture eventually. In the entry for “acetate,” Ron Salvatore mentioned that one Kenner sculptor preferred this hard, plastic-like material to the more common medium of wax. I had no idea that the starting point for the action figures was a wax model, and was fascinated by the fact that a sculptor had mastered the art of carving into acetate.
And the Lexicon further illustrated its terms with actual illustrations - the entry for acetate contained links to examples within the Kenner line across three different scales. As a collector, I was able to see how a sculptor created the large-sized 12” C-3PO, as well as the 3.75” General Madine figure I owned as a child and the unproduced Power Droid miniature for the Micro Collection.
Chris Georgoulias used his knowledge of engineering and tooling to explain some of the more technical terms in a way that would make sense to your average collector. And these entries were pieces of a puzzle, that when laid out in front of you, gave you a fuller understanding of how the toys we loved were made.
One of the most unique segments of the Archive was Chris G’s Toy Shop Scrapbook. For many collectors in the 1990s and early 2000s, Toy Shop magazine offered a treasure trove of rare and unproduced prototypes and production pieces through the ads that graced each issue’s pages.
Chris created an online scrapbook, scanning the unique ads he saved and cataloging them by year. Each page was a collection of the names and phone numbers of the sellers, as well as the items that were sold at set prices or were auctioned by phone bids. Next to each page’s link, Chris mentioned some of the noteworthy items featured in it.
A December 1991 ad offered an FX-7 carded figure sample from Toy Fair, on an unproduced Power of the Force card. The price was $250. A carded mock-up of a Rebel Commando prototype on an Empire Strikes Back Lando Calrissian proof card had an asking price of $300 in the July 1993 issue. And the ads from December 1996 featured a carded Vlix for $2,000, as well as a hand-painted hardcopy of the Power of the Force 2 Han Stormtrooper mail-away figure for $250.
Aware of the gradual but inevitable shift toward online retail at the turn of the century, Chris captured the last vestiges of the era of print sales in his scanned scrapbook. And it was through Chris’ foresight to share these images on the Archive that I and many other collectors have learned more about the items over the past three decades: what they were, when they were sold, and their values at that time.
The Special Features section was truly a group effort, and showcased many of the contributors to the Archive through their research and discoveries. One of the earliest pages I studied was “A Collector’s Guide to Kenner Baggies,” a collaboration between Bill Wills and Todd DeMartino. It not only highlighted the varieties of heat-sealed and taped plastic bags used, but ranked each bagged figure by rarity, where a Category 1 was the most common and a Category 6 was for pre-production samples in which only a few existed.
In an article about Star Wars concept models, Ron Salvatore guided us through the history of the earliest versions of some of the most iconic toys, with corresponding images of the models used in Kenner photography. When it came to bootlegs, Joe Yglesias covered the existing Model Trem figures from Brazil, and John Alvarez wrote about ones from Argentina and Eastern Europe. And with the feature “A Look Inside Kenner’s Plans for 1985 and 1986,” Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz showed us the Star Wars line that the designers pitched unsuccessfully to Lucasfilm after 1985’s Power of the Force.
And in each entry, the names of the contributors were more than mere bylines. Their individual personalities surfaced in a satisfying way. The writing styles were more informal, more conversational, and some of the articles were marked with a sharp wit that made them connective and addictive.
Reading an article felt more like speaking with a fellow collector, a fellow friend, and learning something new in the process. I was often struck by the quality of each entry, and how much I enjoyed reading through full sections. It was the contributors who made the entries meaningful.
At some point that year, I made a promise to myself. If I became knowledgeable enough about collecting, I vowed to follow in the footsteps of these writers and collectors who came before me, and to contribute to the hobby in a meaningful way. I was a padawan who longed to be like the knights and masters around me, and I aimed to find a way to give back by helping others learn more about collecting Star Wars memorabilia.
Do you remember discovering The Star Wars Collectors Archive for the first time?
You may have clicked on it during the early days of the internet, when the site’s creator, Gus Lopez, introduced it to the online world in 1994 as “Toys R Gus.” Or, you may have found it in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as you searched for the latest breaking news on the production of the prequel films.
If the promise of a sequel trilogy reignited your interest in Star Wars, you may have visited the Archive in 2015, along with a wave of collectors eager to reconnect with the franchise. Or the site may have landed on your radar during the pandemic-era collectibles boom of the 2020s.
However, if you’re a latecomer, this very article may be your introduction to this amazing resource on its 30th anniversary.
Or, like me, you may have discovered it a year before George Lucas sold his franchise to the Walt Disney Corporation.
In 2011, a confluence of events led me to channel my lifelong Star Wars fandom into collecting the action figures again. Feeling the pangs of nostalgia for my favorite childhood toys, along with having disposable income as well as the time during my commutes to search for buys on eBay, I became a devoted collector and sought to learn about the line that had stirred my imagination in my formative years.
Committing to the world of Kenner figures, I searched for any information I could find online. And the website that resonated with me the most was The Star Wars Collectors Archive.
I remember my initial expectations for collector websites were low. I envisioned seeing Geocities-era tributes to a hobby likely long forgotten, with a smattering of images accompanied by simple captions. I longed for depth, but assumed I would have to settle for brief, anodyne resources. But I was hungry for knowledge about the collectibles, and during those earliest days, even the barest of offerings was exciting.
Visiting the Archive, however, I ate heartily.
The site was set up like a theme park. Scrolling through the various sections was like walking from land to land, seeing familiar characters and encountering all new experiences. It was brimming with information, and was overwhelming in the best possible way.
I made it a point at the end of every night to spend at least twenty minutes on the site before heading to bed. My goal was not to rush through the entries, but to really digest the descriptions on every page.
My memory of discovering the Archive has remained vibrant, and the feeling has stayed with me for over a decade. The days of coming home from work or being out with friends and closing out the night with a tour through a handful of entries was exciting, and like our hobby, provided an outlet that veered from life’s normal rhythms and pressures.
The idea that these entries and features were written by collectors inspired me. They were not published in a guidebook by Kenner. They were not part of some larger company’s offering to advertise or detail its own product. Instead, they were created by those who grew up with the toys, who had a connection to the films that birthed them, and who found the action figures as interesting as I did.
I spent the first few evenings clicking on various sections of the site, just to get a taste of what awaited me. But I focused largely on the U.S. Kenner carded figures in the Toys section, because they were and still are my central interest.
In that section, Dan Flarida crafted a guide to differentiating the Kenner cardbacks. Ron Salvatore, Todd Chamberlain and Will Grief did a series of entries around the Kenner three-pack figure assortments, items I had never seen in stores and didn’t know existed. And I was shocked to see Australian-only releases of the Gamorrean Guard and the AT-AT Driver on Power of the Force cardbacks.
The Archive also introduced me to images of carded versions of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi with their incredibly rare double-telescoping lightsabers, and I dreamed of owning the trio someday. And I paid careful attention to the photos and descriptions in the section about fake Star Wars figures, determined to avoid those pitfalls with the help of these experienced collectors’ words of wisdom.
Broc Walker’s entry of his Empire Strikes Back run of 41A-back carded figures was one I revisited often. Through his photo and description, I learned that the carded Leia Bespin bearing the Survival Kit Offer was the hardest figure for him to obtain. But seeing examples of all 41 figures, along with proof cards, quality control samples, the store display, the shipping carton and the original art for the cardback illustrated the extensive possibilities awaiting me in curating a focus.
The Prototypes section of the Archive exposed me to a world of collecting I didn’t know existed, with pieces that had survived and somehow had fallen into the hands of collectors.
When it came to the unproduced prototypes, the Archive was one of the earliest resources to focus on the Rocket-Firing Boba Fett figure. It also had a section devoted to Power of the Force carded samples that never reached retail outlets. Through the site, we were able to get a glimpse of what could have been - if the 12” figures continued through The Empire Strikes Back, and if the Droids and Ewoks animated lines were given additional waves of all-new characters.
——————
After exhausting the action figure entries, I explored the Toy Information and Reference section, which was maintained by Gus Lopez. The word “comprehensive” began many of the articles’ titles, which is exactly what a collector with a researcher’s brain desires from a reference section.
And although I could not fully grasp many of the concepts at the time, I knew that being exposed to these terms would help me to see the larger picture eventually. In the entry for “acetate,” Ron Salvatore mentioned that one Kenner sculptor preferred this hard, plastic-like material to the more common medium of wax. I had no idea that the starting point for the action figures was a wax model, and was fascinated by the fact that a sculptor had mastered the art of carving into acetate.
And the Lexicon further illustrated its terms with actual illustrations - the entry for acetate contained links to examples within the Kenner line across three different scales. As a collector, I was able to see how a sculptor created the large-sized 12” C-3PO, as well as the 3.75” General Madine figure I owned as a child and the unproduced Power Droid miniature for the Micro Collection.
One of the most unique segments of the Archive was Chris G’s Toy Shop Scrapbook. For many collectors in the 1990s and early 2000s, Toy Shop magazine offered a treasure trove of rare and unproduced prototypes and production pieces through the ads that graced each issue’s pages.
Chris created an online scrapbook, scanning the unique ads he saved and cataloging them by year. Each page was a collection of the names and phone numbers of the sellers, as well as the items that were sold at set prices or were auctioned by phone bids. Next to each page’s link, Chris mentioned some of the noteworthy items featured in it.
A December 1991 ad offered an FX-7 carded figure sample from Toy Fair, on an unproduced Power of the Force card. The price was $250. A carded mock-up of a Rebel Commando prototype on an Empire Strikes Back Lando Calrissian proof card had an asking price of $300 in the July 1993 issue. And the ads from December 1996 featured a carded Vlix for $2,000, as well as a hand-painted hardcopy of the Power of the Force 2 Han Stormtrooper mail-away figure for $250.
Aware of the gradual but inevitable shift toward online retail at the turn of the century, Chris captured the last vestiges of the era of print sales in his scanned scrapbook. And it was through Chris’ foresight to share these images on the Archive that I and many other collectors have learned more about the items over the past three decades: what they were, when they were sold, and their values at that time.
The Special Features section was truly a group effort, and showcased many of the contributors to the Archive through their research and discoveries. One of the earliest pages I studied was “A Collector’s Guide to Kenner Baggies,” a collaboration between Bill Wills and Todd DeMartino. It not only highlighted the varieties of heat-sealed and taped plastic bags used, but ranked each bagged figure by rarity, where a Category 1 was the most common and a Category 6 was for pre-production samples in which only a few existed.
In an article about Star Wars concept models, Ron Salvatore guided us through the history of the earliest versions of some of the most iconic toys, with corresponding images of the models used in Kenner photography. When it came to bootlegs, Joe Yglesias covered the existing Model Trem figures from Brazil, and John Alvarez wrote about ones from Argentina and Eastern Europe. And with the feature “A Look Inside Kenner’s Plans for 1985 and 1986,” Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz showed us the Star Wars line that the designers pitched unsuccessfully to Lucasfilm after 1985’s Power of the Force.
And in each entry, the names of the contributors were more than mere bylines. Their individual personalities surfaced in a satisfying way. The writing styles were more informal, more conversational, and some of the articles were marked with a sharp wit that made them connective and addictive.
Reading an article felt more like speaking with a fellow collector, a fellow friend, and learning something new in the process. I was often struck by the quality of each entry, and how much I enjoyed reading through full sections. It was the contributors who made the entries meaningful.
At some point that year, I made a promise to myself. If I became knowledgeable enough about collecting, I vowed to follow in the footsteps of these writers and collectors who came before me, and to contribute to the hobby in a meaningful way. I was a padawan who longed to be like the knights and masters around me, and I aimed to find a way to give back by helping others learn more about collecting Star Wars memorabilia.
————————
In addition to discovering the Archive, I also stumbled upon the Star Wars Collectors Archive Podcast within the first few months of becoming a collector. Also known as the ‘Chive Cast, the monthly audio magazine devoted to Star Wars and collecting was a perfect partnership between hosts Skye Paine and Steve Danley. In each episode, Skye and Steve focused on one character from Kenner’s action figure line, sharing their unique takes that were as funny as they were educational.
The ‘Chive Cast was an extension of the Archive. It delivered information through conversation. I devoured episodes during my hours-long commutes to and from New York City. And through the alchemy a medium like podcasting provides, I felt like I was firmly in the company of friends and collectors. I felt like I knew them, even though we had never met. The podcast put voices to the names of those within our collecting community, including many of the authors of the Archive’s articles.
The ‘Chive Cast offered me a seat at the collectors’ table. It took the concepts, the history and the terminology found within the Archive and put it to practical use in following the conversations Steve and Skye had with their guests. The pre-production process of a toy began to make more sense, and I developed an appreciation of so many areas of collecting through their passionate discussions.
But maybe most importantly, the ‘Chive Cast prepared me for the future conversations I’d have with the hosts and our fellow collectors, when I finally met each one in person.
———————
In 2014 on the 20th anniversary of the Archive, the editors introduced a new addition to the website. The official SWCA Blog was born, and gave contributors a space to create long-form articles around specific collecting topics. The blog also became the site’s home for the ‘Chive Cast’s episodes and updates, complete with images and additional written content. 
Mike Lonergan and Pete Fitzke ran the popular MarketWatch segment on the blog, giving context to the special toys and prototypes that sold at high-profile auctions and on eBay each month. Pete also did a series of collector spotlight interviews, and his conversation with Tim Eckholdt about Tim’s 2D and 3D pre-production runs is one I’ve read numerous times over the years.
And when it comes to all-encompassing coverage, the blog continues to be a powerful resource for the current decade. In 2023, Yehuda Kleinman published the largest and most comprehensive look at vintage Star Wars watches. And this year, Jonathan McElwain did a report similar in scope about the Japanese Coca-Cola campaign of 1978.
In addition to offering deep dives into various areas of the hobby, part of the excitement in reading the blog was the revelatory information that our peers uncovered in their pursuits.
A 2016 entry by Ron Salvatore highlighted how Kenner may have reused the wax sculpts from some of the most iconic Star Wars action figures to create new ones for its Empire Strikes Back line. Ron’s equally interesting 2022 blog post on the Early Bird Kit not only gave insight into how the novel “IOU gift” was viewed by parents and retailers in the late 1970s, but also unearthed new information, like the fact that 500,000 of those legendary kits were destroyed by Kenner.
These types of revelations and the work that went into crafting each article for the enjoyment of other collectors made the blog relevant to a community utilizing new social media platforms, giving all of us a chance to further discuss the topics to our heart’s content.
In many ways, the Archive marked the starting point of my time as an adult collector of Star Wars memorabilia. The blessings from discovering the site back in 2011 continue to this day in profound ways. And the most meaningful ones are the friendships that developed.
I took my first Star Wars-themed trip six years after I began collecting, to the April 2017 Celebration Orlando convention. The Archive charity party was held on the Thursday night of that weekend event, and it was there where I met many of the site’s contributors for the first time.
It may sound silly, but I was as excited to meet them as I was to meet Mark Hamill.
I wanted to shake their hands, give them hugs and tell them how their work within the hobby impacted me personally. I wanted to thank them for teaching me, for guiding me and for connecting me to collecting. They had, in fact, made me a “smarter and a better collector” in the process. And their enthusiasm and commitment to collecting further ignited my passion for the toys of my childhood.
In attending the Archive Party, I felt like I was visiting old friends for the very first time. The worlds of writing and podcasting are intimate realms. And I had spent the past six years listening to their discussions, and reading how they viewed the collectibles and our community.
A few months later, I attended my first collectors club meetup in New York, at the home of Ron Salvatore. As I stood in his house, surrounded by members of the Empire State Star Wars Collectors Club, I recalled driving to a toy show by myself a year earlier, listening to a ‘Chive Cast episode recorded from a meetup Ron hosted. The idea of attending collectors meetups seemed like an impossibility, like they were held on another planet. At the time, I couldn’t imagine how I would ever be a part of anything like that.
And yet, that day, I was viewing items in Ron’s collection in person, ones that I had studied endlessly on the Archive. And by the time I had left Ron’s home, I was a member of the Empire State Club, with an entirely new group of friends who are like family to me today.
I’ve heard people say that it gets harder to make friends as you get older. Thanks to the wonderful collectors in our hobby, I can truly say I’ve never experienced that problem. In the past seven years since my first convention and club meetup, I’ve spent so many moments in their company. We’ve traveled to different regions of the country together, for toy shows and collector events. They’ve introduced me to a new outdoor activity, as we’ve hiked the Hudson Valley and Georgia’s Kennesaw Mountain.
We’ve attended large group events together, like the New York Annual, ICE and Rogue Fun.
And we’ve spent countless weekends at the homes of friends, building lasting memories.
Becoming a collector absolutely changed my life. At times, I felt like Luke Skywalker - at home one minute and then whisked away on some unforgettable, out-of-this world adventure.
In 2019, as part of the promise to give back to the community that freely shared so much information with me, I created my own Star Wars podcast. For the past six years, Star Wars: Prototypes and Production has been my creative outlet to provide commentary and information about the films, series, memorabilia and community events that make up our Star Wars fandom. I have been fortunate to have had many of the Archive contributors appear on the podcast, sharing their knowledge on yet another platform. And I am honored to have recorded conversations with them and to call them my friends.
And recently, I was invited to become part of the Archive team, to write articles for the blog I’ve read for the past decade. I’ll be sharing my experiences from many of the toy show trips and collectors meetups and events I attend, and I plan on doing some special collecting-themed entries as well. My goal is to spotlight the heart and imagination of our community, and why the experiences are just as important as the collectibles.
Being a part of the writing team and working on the blog is a true fulfillment of the promise I made back in 2011. I had hoped to be knowledgeable enough someday to contribute to the larger collecting conversation and to educate, encourage and connect others in the process. And I’m honored to do it this year, alongside those who educated and encouraged me for more than a decade.
Thirty years is an incredible milestone. It is a testament to the legacy of the Star Wars franchise, as well as to the power of the memorabilia from the various onscreen stories. The articles written by the Archive contributors were not only informative and entertaining, but they have affected me and so many other collectors along the way.
Seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” introduce a Star Wars film still captures the anticipatory excitement I experienced as a child.
And I still feel that same joy in seeing the star field background of the Archive’s main page, and wondering which new part of the galaxy we’ll explore next.
*Stay tuned for more on celebrating Thirty Years of the Archive. If you’d like to learn more about the many contributors to the Archive, you can read their biographies here.
The SWCA Blog was the next evolution in feeding the collecting community’s desire for in-depth knowledge about the history of Star Wars events and memorabilia. I never knew which topic the writers would cover next, but the standard they set over the previous twenty years ensured it would be a quality read.
In one early article, Tommy Garvey examined the timeline of the online collecting discussions around Star Wars, which began on the Usenet groups and transitioned to other platforms as the internet evolved. In another memorable blog post, Tommy took readers through the creation process of a Star Wars action figure - literally from concept to screen to collectible - using one of the most extensive toy runs known to the Star Wars collecting world.
Amy Sjoberg gave collectors an inside look at how the first International Collector Event (ICE) materialized in Seattle in 2013, kicking off more than a decade of some of the most memorable meetups around the country. Stéphane Faucourt detailed the challenge of assembling a run of offerless Empire Strikes Back carded figures. And Stephen Ward interviewed Kim Simmons, the photographer responsible for the majority of the Kenner toy packaging.
Mike Lonergan and Pete Fitzke ran the popular MarketWatch segment on the blog, giving context to the special toys and prototypes that sold at high-profile auctions and on eBay each month. Pete also did a series of collector spotlight interviews, and his conversation with Tim Eckholdt about Tim’s 2D and 3D pre-production runs is one I’ve read numerous times over the years.
And when it comes to all-encompassing coverage, the blog continues to be a powerful resource for the current decade. In 2023, Yehuda Kleinman published the largest and most comprehensive look at vintage Star Wars watches. And this year, Jonathan McElwain did a report similar in scope about the Japanese Coca-Cola campaign of 1978.
In addition to offering deep dives into various areas of the hobby, part of the excitement in reading the blog was the revelatory information that our peers uncovered in their pursuits.
A 2016 entry by Ron Salvatore highlighted how Kenner may have reused the wax sculpts from some of the most iconic Star Wars action figures to create new ones for its Empire Strikes Back line. Ron’s equally interesting 2022 blog post on the Early Bird Kit not only gave insight into how the novel “IOU gift” was viewed by parents and retailers in the late 1970s, but also unearthed new information, like the fact that 500,000 of those legendary kits were destroyed by Kenner.
These types of revelations and the work that went into crafting each article for the enjoyment of other collectors made the blog relevant to a community utilizing new social media platforms, giving all of us a chance to further discuss the topics to our heart’s content.
———————
In many ways, the Archive marked the starting point of my time as an adult collector of Star Wars memorabilia. The blessings from discovering the site back in 2011 continue to this day in profound ways. And the most meaningful ones are the friendships that developed.
I took my first Star Wars-themed trip six years after I began collecting, to the April 2017 Celebration Orlando convention. The Archive charity party was held on the Thursday night of that weekend event, and it was there where I met many of the site’s contributors for the first time.
It may sound silly, but I was as excited to meet them as I was to meet Mark Hamill.
I wanted to shake their hands, give them hugs and tell them how their work within the hobby impacted me personally. I wanted to thank them for teaching me, for guiding me and for connecting me to collecting. They had, in fact, made me a “smarter and a better collector” in the process. And their enthusiasm and commitment to collecting further ignited my passion for the toys of my childhood.
In attending the Archive Party, I felt like I was visiting old friends for the very first time. The worlds of writing and podcasting are intimate realms. And I had spent the past six years listening to their discussions, and reading how they viewed the collectibles and our community.
A few months later, I attended my first collectors club meetup in New York, at the home of Ron Salvatore. As I stood in his house, surrounded by members of the Empire State Star Wars Collectors Club, I recalled driving to a toy show by myself a year earlier, listening to a ‘Chive Cast episode recorded from a meetup Ron hosted. The idea of attending collectors meetups seemed like an impossibility, like they were held on another planet. At the time, I couldn’t imagine how I would ever be a part of anything like that.
And yet, that day, I was viewing items in Ron’s collection in person, ones that I had studied endlessly on the Archive. And by the time I had left Ron’s home, I was a member of the Empire State Club, with an entirely new group of friends who are like family to me today.
———————
I’ve heard people say that it gets harder to make friends as you get older. Thanks to the wonderful collectors in our hobby, I can truly say I’ve never experienced that problem. In the past seven years since my first convention and club meetup, I’ve spent so many moments in their company. We’ve traveled to different regions of the country together, for toy shows and collector events. They’ve introduced me to a new outdoor activity, as we’ve hiked the Hudson Valley and Georgia’s Kennesaw Mountain.
We’ve attended large group events together, like the New York Annual, ICE and Rogue Fun.
And we’ve spent countless weekends at the homes of friends, building lasting memories.
Becoming a collector absolutely changed my life. At times, I felt like Luke Skywalker - at home one minute and then whisked away on some unforgettable, out-of-this world adventure.
In 2019, as part of the promise to give back to the community that freely shared so much information with me, I created my own Star Wars podcast. For the past six years, Star Wars: Prototypes and Production has been my creative outlet to provide commentary and information about the films, series, memorabilia and community events that make up our Star Wars fandom. I have been fortunate to have had many of the Archive contributors appear on the podcast, sharing their knowledge on yet another platform. And I am honored to have recorded conversations with them and to call them my friends.
And recently, I was invited to become part of the Archive team, to write articles for the blog I’ve read for the past decade. I’ll be sharing my experiences from many of the toy show trips and collectors meetups and events I attend, and I plan on doing some special collecting-themed entries as well. My goal is to spotlight the heart and imagination of our community, and why the experiences are just as important as the collectibles.
Being a part of the writing team and working on the blog is a true fulfillment of the promise I made back in 2011. I had hoped to be knowledgeable enough someday to contribute to the larger collecting conversation and to educate, encourage and connect others in the process. And I’m honored to do it this year, alongside those who educated and encouraged me for more than a decade.
Thirty years is an incredible milestone. It is a testament to the legacy of the Star Wars franchise, as well as to the power of the memorabilia from the various onscreen stories. The articles written by the Archive contributors were not only informative and entertaining, but they have affected me and so many other collectors along the way.
Seeing the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” introduce a Star Wars film still captures the anticipatory excitement I experienced as a child.
And I still feel that same joy in seeing the star field background of the Archive’s main page, and wondering which new part of the galaxy we’ll explore next.
*Stay tuned for more on celebrating Thirty Years of the Archive. If you’d like to learn more about the many contributors to the Archive, you can read their biographies here.
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