My Main Loose Run - From Butterflies to Noah's Ark

I thought it was time to share some photos of my main loose run. Years ago in the 90's, when I first got back into collecting vintage again after foolishly selling off all my childhood toys whilst still a pre-teen in the early 80's, I needed somewhere to keep my collection as it expanded. That somewhere became a chest of drawers! When my loose run was 'complete' (Ha! Ha!), I felt a bit like a butterfly collector as I would open the drawers to reveal this:







You'll have to excuse the blurry photos. My camera back then was what was technically known as 'rubbish' :-D

Despite having a 'complete' (Ho! Ho!) loose run, I somehow kept managing to find and buy new figures... 'variants' I believe they're called ;-), and hence quite soon my humble drawers were no longer up to the task. What to do?... Build a display cabinet! And so I did, except that by then in the mid 90's, I was also collecting the modern line, and I needed some cabinets for those as well, so I ended up building several:







Adding the 'Star Wars' logos was a mistake, as they took ages to do and only really looked good when there were no figures in the cabinets... rather defeating the object of them being there! :lol: Also, the above photos were actually taken when I moved house and took down the cabinets from the walls of my old house to bring them with me, and by then I had a better camera! However, back when they were full and on the walls of my old house, they looked like this... courtesy of the afore-mentioned 'rubbish' camera:









You'll have to excuse the intrusion of a bit of modern line into this thread... I promise that's the last of it ;-)

So now I was in my new house and I had my old cabinets... But I was a bit slow in installing them because I wanted to decorate first, plus I can be a great procrastinator at times... and so by the time I was finally ready to install them, they were no longer large enough for the task :-(. I therefore reluctantly decided not to use them again, and instead built myself some bigger new ones!

My loose run then lived in its new home quite happily for many years and I considered it to once again be (almost) as 'complete' (Hee! Hee!) as it needed to be... There remained a figure or two (the Takara Stormtrooper and Darth Vader variants, to be precise) that I was still after, but by and large, I thought my days of acquiring new vintage figures were over...

But then, about 5 years ago, something wonderful happened! I went to the 'May the Toys Be With You' exhibition (and very good it was too), and discovered a whole new world of foreign variants about which I was previously largely ignorant! The PBP dark brown Rebel Soldier and red armour 4-LOM rekindled a passion in me to hunt down the loose figure variants that I was still missing. I added in as many regular Kenner variants as I could find to my 'wants list' too, and 5 years later (as anyone who's been paying attention to Lars' 'Toy of the Week' threads will know), I have amassed a fair few of them.

I am fortunate to have a fair bit of available cabinet display space, but even my shelves have their limits, and so whilst I wanted to display my new variant collection as best I could, with the figures not overlapping one another wherever possible in order to see the whole of each one, that simply wasn't possible with the number of variants I had accumulated. I therefore had a think about it, and eventually hit upon the idea of reorganising my main loose run display with a view to creating a 'Noah's Ark' cabinet, where I could display two different variants of each loose figure for which a visually different variant exists. It's not the full display of all my variants that I really wanted, but it felt like it was the next best thing

And so here it is... with the animals coming two by two ;-)

Incidentally, I am still after a light-haired Luke Stormtrooper, as whilst the two figures in the above display are different COO's, their hair colours are basically the same. So if anyone out there has a light-haired Luke Stormtrooper, or better yet, a pair of light and dark-haired Luke Stormtrooper variants they would be willing to let go, I would love to hear from you! :-D

Thanks.

Jeremy

looks amazing mate

That's one mint and brillient collection, thanks for sharing. Amazing display.

It's an amazing collecting journey and one amazing collection Jeremy, I can only wish for a butterfly collection like yours one day (There is something oddly satisfying about seeing them all displayed in the drawers ).

It's great to hear how your collection grew as well as seeing the evolution of the camera :lol:

Ian

Wow- that's one wiiiiiiide cabinet, Jeremy! It needs to be, too! What a superb array of minty variants! Look superb 8)

Agree about the previous cabinet- great idea and looked fab when empty. You've got to try these things out though!

Thanks for the nice comments everyone. I'm glad you liked them

Wow, great collection, love the cabinets, they all look so good on display

Looks amazing mate.

Cazza said:

Wow- that's one wiiiiiiide cabinet, Jeremy! It needs to be, too! What a superb array of minty variants! Look superb 8)

Agree about the previous cabinet- great idea and looked fab when empty. You've got to try these things out though!

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Wide? Yes, I suppose it is... but then again, these things are all relative

https://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/threads/my-modern-collection.43740/

Can't beat loose figs … amazing collection !

Thanks for posting pictures of variants, it's amazing to see how different the figures are when you zoom in. Had no idea.

robbietd2 said:

Thanks for posting pictures of variants, it's amazing to see how different the figures are when you zoom in. Had no idea.

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Same here, I'm still struggling with all of this, coos etc. Maybe one day I've have the time and patience to learn more

fantastic collection displayed superbly

looks amazing congratulations