Ron writes:
Bill Cable, a talented artist and the creator of CreatureCantina.com, has been a friend of the Archive, if not from its inception, then at least since the late '90s. In addition to many wonderful works of art, he is responsible for the rad 30th anniversary logo that you see at the top of this page. In his write-up, he highlights what might be considered the Archive's killer app – its ability to broaden collectors' awareness of what is out there, just waiting to be found.
Bill writes:
My Archive collecting story begins just about when my vintage collecting began, in the spring of 1998. A few of my fellow OSWCC members encouraged me to attend the toy show at Kane County, which is where I purchased my first vintage figure. That got me hooked, but I didn't know the best way to go about it. So I followed the examples of John Wooten, Dan Flarida, and Chirs Fawcett, all of whom extolled the practice of character focus collecting. Pretty soon I had landed on the goal of collecting C-3PO on every different cardback.
Invaluable to that effort was Dan's own "Comprehensive Guide to U.S. Figure Card Backs." It helped me learn all the different cards and offer combos Kenner produced, and served as a checklist for me to keep track of the ones I'd purchased and the ones I still needed. My greatest objective was to get an example of C-3PO with every single mail-away offer; a complete catalog of every C-3PO one might ever had seen on the pegs.
Through lots of research and networking, I learned this would not be easy. I discovered two of them certainly didn't exist. No C-3PO with a Boba Fett offer (SW20C through SW20H) or a Display Arena offer (ESB45) had ever been discovered. The ESB45, in particular, was extensively researched, as it was a key item for "premiere" carded figure collectors (people who wanted each figure in the very first packaging on which it was available). ESB45 was supposed to launch the redesigned C-3PO with Removable Limbs figure, as pictured on the backs of all ESB45 cards. But no example of one had ever been found. Finally, while it was thought likely they existed (since they were stickered at the warehouse), I couldn't find any evidence that there were any C-3POs with the Anakin offer sticker either.
I resorted to preproduction examples for the two printed offers. By a miracle I ended up getting the Boba Fett offer Cromalin proof from Tom Neiheisel, which just happens to be the only example of a Fett offer 3PO in the world. I picked up two Display Arena proofs at Celebration II at the legendary Steve Denny room sale. I was pretty content. But there was something on the Archive that vexed me...
There was an entry for "Empire Strikes Back C-3PO" on which you can clearly see the Display Arena offer. It's a small, grainy photo, and the bubble had been removed from the card, but it clearly suggested the ESB45 C-3PO was sold at retail. In Peru. Wait... in PERU?? Yes, in Peru. A company called BASA had a contract to distribute Kenner Star Wars figures in Peru, as well as to produce an array of Star Wars-branded products (school supplies, lunch boxes, etc.). The thing is – BASA figures are unbelievably rare. Only a handful of them had ever been found. BASAs are considered perhaps the rarest of foreign figures. The C-3PO from this Archive post not only had the Display Arena offer (which wasn't supposed to exist), it also had the BASA logo sticker the company affixed to the top-left corner of Kenner figures they distributed.
For many years I would speculate online and in person how such a figure would even make it to Peru. Did Kenner have a case of rejected ESB45 figures they just shipped off? Were there any other oddball BASAs? How is it possible the only known ESB45 C-3PO was only available on the rarest foreign card? It boggles the mind... at least it boggled my mind. It also lived in the forefront of my mind. That's why, in a thread on RebelScum where it was asked for everyone to list their "holy grail," I responded with the BASA ESB45 C-3PO.
It just so happened the owner of the BASA ESB45 C-3PO that was pictured on the Archive read that thread and saw my reply. Luis Galvez reached out to me, and he told me not only did he own that BASA 3PO, he was pretty sure his childhood friend still had another. The one owned by his friend also had the bubble removed, but the BASA sticker and card were otherwise intact. Luis brokered a deal between us, which involved Luis' mother visiting Peru and exchanging my cash for his friend's cardback. It was wild. All I could do was imagine this little old lady climbing the mountains around Machu Picchu to arrive at some remote Peruvian village to get this silly Star Wars toy for me. That's probably isn't what happened, but I don't know for certain, so I choose to pretend it did.
That ESB45 cardback remains a centerpiece of my C-3PO collection, along side my Cromalin and "the Golden Grail." And it's all thanks to the Archive, whose editors understood the importance of cataloging these obscure and unusual collectibles all the way back when the World Wide Web was in its infancy.
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