The Archive at 30: Ron Salvatore

Ron writes:

 I realized a few months back that 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of Gus Lopez's launching of the Star Wars Collectors Archive.

Thirty years is a long time.

In internet years, that’s nearly two centuries, which is like the average age of Congress.

To give this some context, a Wikipedia entry lists existing sites that were founded prior to 1995. Although the SWCA isn’t included (seriously, wtf?), it mentions that only 2,738 websites existed as of the middle of 1994.

My (probably inaccurate) memory is that at least a third of those 2,738 were devoted to Star Wars. Of that third, at least 70% featured a starfield background. 100% of the 70% had one of those little "under construction" gifs somewhere in the lower third of the home page (which never went away, because the site was never not under construction).

Seriously, though, Star Wars was big on the early internet. 

As SWCA co-editor Steve Danley recently discovered, there was even a 1997 CNN segment about it. And it showed the main page of the SWCA!

Our logo really hasn't changed since then.

The SWCA logo and public shootings, two things that will likely be with us forever!

As far as I know, the SWCA was the first website devoted to Star Wars collectibles. 

I mean, the whole idea was pretty novel -- an entire internet thing devoted, not just to Star Wars, but to commercial crap connected to Star Wars.

How esoteric, how obscure, how nerdy.

Remember, this was before most of us had fully grokked the internet's capacity to monumentalize triviality. 

Now, of course, we're awash in memes and TikToks and other "viral" internet media. So much so that it's hard to deny that triviality is right at the center of the culture. Indeed, sometimes it seems that triviality is the only thing that's really significant. But in 1994 devoting server space to photos of intergalactic tchotchkes was a little hard to wrap your mind around. Who would want to view that?

Shoot, at that time most didn't even understand what the World Wide Web was. I know I didn't. 

As I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere, when I first learned of the site, probably via rec.arts.sf.starwars (that's Gus' original announcement that you see above), I couldn't figure out what it was. To me, the internet was textual -- a network of discussion groups and bulletin boards. A friend explained to me that you needed something called a "browser" to view it. And when I looked into that, I realized my computer wasn't powerful enough to run the leading browser program (I suppose it was Mosaic).

That was pretty disappointing. I worried I'd never get to see the Star Wars Collectors Archive -- whatever that was.

But come 1997 I was working on the site. I can't quite remember how that happened. I think Gus or Chris Georgoulias (or both Gus and Chris together), whom I knew through the collecting newsgroups, asked me to help out with entries. At that point in time, we were the only ones working on it, though I believe John Wooten came on board soon after that.

Working on the site entailed learning a lot about arcane things like HTML, FTP, and scanners.

Above you see the HTML book I bought at Waldenbooks to master the basics. As the cover reveals, it dates from a time when tables and Netscape were considered the "latest." 

Gulp.

We coded everything by hand, by typing HTML into a text document, then uploading it to Gus' server. Believe it or not, the site still operates like that to a large extent, though it was made substantially easier years later when Chris Nichols moved us to a database format (thanks, Chris).

We always had an audience, especially among collectors on the old Usenet newsgroups and their successors, internet forums. You'd do an update, and (usually) get immediate feedback. 

And it had an impact outside of the internet as well: I'd go to shows and conventions, and people would mention things they saw on the Archive. Some of them didn't even have internet access: They'd heard about the site, then gone to an internet cafe or a library just so they could view it. And I knew they weren't bullsh*tting me because they'd mention specific things they'd seen -- often with looks of amazement on their faces, because prior to that they didn't know they existed. 

You have to remember that, back then, there was no way to view photos of rare collectibles outside of books and magazines. Social media hadn't been invented. If you wanted to share something rare in your collection, you didn't have many DIY options outside of the Archive. So people were often very eager to have their items showcased.

I still have piles of printed photographs (remember those?) that collectors sent to me, in the hope that their treasures would be featured on the nascent World Wide Web. 

Above you see a few of them.

Now, of course, smartphones and social media have made the acts of image capturing and publication nearly simultaneous, and the idea of mailing a physical photograph to someone so they can put it on the internet seems as absurd as, I dunno, buying a cow so you can have milk with your morning coffee.

I remember when I first heard of digital cameras. "Whoa," I thought, "you mean no more scanners? It's digital right from the get-go?" These days, you don't have to worry about file transfers or coding either. You just click a button and there it is on Facebook. 

But the Archive is a product of a different era, and despite all that we've added to it -- the podcast, the blog, the social media outposts -- it'll probably always remain a product of Web 1.0. To a large extent, I'm a product of Web 1.0, and I suspect my colleagues are as well. Zoomers are never gonna mistake us for cutting edge. Not even if we all got those weird poodle haircuts.

So what has the SWCA accomplished over the years?

Well, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, for a while there at least, it was ground zero for information on vintage Star Wars collecting. It was the most influential voice out there. And, unquestionably, this influence was felt most profoundly in the realm of prototype collecting. 

Consider this: At one point in the late '90s, if you did a Yahoo search for "prototype," the Archive was the second or third hit. 

I'm talking about "prototype" as a word, now, without a connection to toys or Star Wars. You searched for prototypes because you were trying to get a manufacturing project off the ground, and you got a site run by toy nerds. 

We all got a big kick out of that.

In the late '90s and early '00s, so many novel collectibles were being hauled out of Cincinnati, and so much learned about the developmental process behind the Kenner toys, that the Archive doubled as a record of discoveries in the realm of prototype Star Wars material. We were finding all this cool stuff, and sharing it with collectors in real time. As we learned about it, so did they. To this day, I think the shrewdness of Star Wars collectors, particularly concerning the toy development process, remains somewhat unique. And that's partly down to the influence of the Archive.

Eventually it slowed down. Everything eventually slows down. But over the last 15 years the site has kept chugging along at a semi-regular pace, its influence continuing to be felt in the hobby. The 'Chive Cast, the brainchild of Skye Paine and Steve Danley, was the first podcast focused on vintage Star Wars collectibles, and our blog has featured some of the best writing on the hobby ever published. What's more, I feel like the Collecting Track at Star Wars Celebration, which Gus has done a terrific job of spearheading, is an outgrowth of the culture fostered by the Archive. 

Jeez, lots of things are outgrowths of that culture. It's really something the folks who've contributed to it can be proud of. 

On a more personal note, I've been publishing my writing on the web for many years now, and one of the things I've learned is that (somewhat ironically) internet content has a permanence that printed content does not. I've written magazine articles, but no one talks about those, because no one reads the magazines once they're off the newsstands and either filed away or thrown out. But you can still find things I wrote in 1997 via a simple Google search. And people are finding them all the time. I know because I see them referenced pretty regularly.

Of course, internet content isn't permanent if it doesn't remain on the internet. Will the site be around 30 years from now? Probably not. But then a bunch of us will be dead anyway. Is there life after death? Is there content after internet?

Thanks to Gus for having the vision and the fortitude to stick with it. And thanks to all of the readers and contributors for the memories. Here's to the experiences that remain ahead of us!