Ron writes:
In his write-up, Archive editor Todd Chamberlain highlights what may be the most important aspect of collecting, and of the SWCA: the building and maintenance of friendships. I'm happy to say that I became friends with Todd during the time he was living in SoCal, which he describes in his piece as the period when he was first making friends through the internet. Gus Lopez recommend that I reach out to him, and I think I bought a pog from him. Or a lenticular trading card? Something like that. I'm happy to say he remains a close friend to this day.
Todd writes:
The Star Wars Collectors Archive is a great information resource, but for me the first things that come to mind are the relationships it represents. I first met Gus Lopez at a toy show in Portland, Oregon, back in May 1993. I was set up as a seller, and he bought an assortment of loose action figure vehicle and playset parts. He asked some thoughtful questions about the process of buying collections, and the interaction also stood out since he paid with a check. That was fine with me, but it also provided a name.
That summer, I set up at a Seattle toy show and met him again. We struck up a longer conversation this time, and at the end of the show I went out to dinner with him, Pam Green, and Richard Glass. I had attended toy shows regularly since the mid-'80s, and while I met people through that, our interactions were always limited to the show. This was the first time I’d actually had an extended conversation with other collectors in another setting, and it was so energizing!
In practical terms, the internet didn’t exist for me yet. I had a vague sense there were ways to communicate through computers, and a few college friends had CompuServe or Prodigy accounts, but the implications for collecting simply didn’t occur to me. I had a network of people I bought from locally, developed through collectible shows, and I posted ads in the Oregonian newspaper.
In early 1994, I moved to Hermiston, a small town in Eastern Oregon. All my old haunts and friends were now three hours away. This was the era of telephone communications for me, and Gus was one of the main people I talked to about Star Wars. My long distance bill was huge -- often $200 or more a month. But it was exciting to finally have other people I could talk to about something that had been an important, but private, part of my life for so long. I also had a place to stay in Seattle over toy show weekends. Gus and I would stay up until 3:00 AM talking, and then get up at 6:00 AM to head out for the show.
At some point, Gus told me about a new technology (the World Wide Web, as we know it now) that enabled people to present information on a network that was accessible worldwide. Gus talked about building a resource for Star Wars collecting, but this was all abstract for me, and it really didn’t occur to me that it was something I could access myself. Having seen a Clark’s Star Wars shoe display at my mom’s house, Gus asked if I could provide a photo of it to publish on his site. So I sent him a physical photo of it that he posted, even though I didn’t have a way to see it. It's still on the site at
http://theswca.com/images-store/clarks-display.html. [The updated entry, with better photo, can be accessed here. -- Ed.]
By the time I started grad school in fall 1995, I had still never been online, but by then I had e-mail and internet access, as well as access to the Star Wars Collectors Archive, and that opened up a whole new world of information and connected me to dozens of people who had made contributions to the site. Since I now had e-mail, I could write to people globally who shared similar interests, trading with them to get items I couldn’t access before. I still talked to people on the phone a lot, but the Archive provided a hub for building those connections. When I moved to Southern California for graduate school, I was able to connect with collectors who met through internet newsgroups and provided the early entries that made up the SWCA. It was a ready-made group of friends with a shared passion.
Many of the relationships from that time form the core of friendships I have today. I have traveled across the United States, Mexico, and the United Kingdom to meet up for collecting events, but also attended weddings and shared about our lives. There are multiple factors that contribute to longevity in the hobby, but having people to share that passion with is critical, and it’s one of the things the SWCA enables.
