How it all began.. again

[SAVORY100]

I was inspired by the recent podcast and conversations with (my junior school friend) Mark Daniels, to have a raid through the loft and dig out some old photo albums. The podcast mentioned and associated SWF.UK posts show a great pic of Mark looking like Rick Astley sitting with his mid 90's collecting/dealing stash and so I thought it worth looking up the couple of pics of my student halls of residence (those that can be legally published!) where my embryonic Star Wars collection first really started.

Most of us have a similar story of selling off everything as they were growing up, maybe to buy a bike, or get some drinking money together... for me it was to buy Ice Hockey kit. Many of us though also have a similar story of getting back into collecting at boot fairs or the like in the early to mid 1990's some a little later in line with the prequel trilogy coming out.

For me I was in my first year of university at Middlesex (North London) in 1992 and I became friends with a chap called Chris. He still had his entire childhood collection including a few MOC; the highlights of his collection was a EV9-D9 MOC, Boxed Millennium Falcon, Boxed Tie Fighter and Boxed Y-Wing (the last three of those are very graciously still in my collection). Not only did he re-ignite my passion for Star Wars, but he introduced me to trawling boot-fairs to gather the toys at (by today's prices) absolute give-away cost. We would tour the boot fairs of North London, occasionally in Wiltshire and around his home town of Maidstone. We also visited a few of the Cheshunt fairs in the later Uni years to grab some 'more serious' pieces through till the prequel releases where everything got a bit grubby and focussed mistakenly shifted to modern for a while.

The two pics below are the embryonic start of my collection, pretty much all of which I still have to this day; those I don't are with my friend James' twin 3 year olds!

How did you all get back into collecting?

Any early collecting, rather than childhood stories or pics?

 

[sith-smith]

Luckily I had the vast majority of my childhood collection...some still boxed!

In summer '92, while in my first year at university I found the first heir to the empire trilogy novel which I couldn't stop reading and reignited my love of SW. I made a few offers on people's small collections with no luck, but apart from that i had no idea how to go about buying vintage stuff.

However in October '92 for my 20th birthday my girlfriend bought me a handful of imperial figures from a carboot sale. From then on, almost every week I'd go with a small sum of money and buy what i could!

By about '94 that died out as star wars was now hugely popular again and what was there was too expensive.

A few years later I found my first collectors shop...The Twilight Zone in Tunbridge Wells...not long after that my first collectors show in cheshunt followed by memorabilia at the NEC and by 2000, eBay.

The last piece was collectors forums from about 2002, with rebelscum, Imperial outpost and this site.

It's been an interesting development. Like all, I wish I knew what I know now back then! My focus changed a lot over the years and I guess the process it went through was necessary for it to end up where it has.

 

[Woolyniner]

Thanks for sharing your stories, always a good read.

I'm quite a recent returnee. I stopped collecting as a child in 1984, and returned last summer. My parents had been keeping a suitcase with all the old star wars toys in them and I felt sorry they had been keeping such a big cumbersome item so I said I would take it off them. I put it in my garage where it sat for another year.

I had a nice long summer off last year and decided to clear out the garage. When I opened up the suitcase and saw the star wars stuff my childhood memories came flooding back. I lined up my old figures and knew back in the day I never finished collecting them all. So naturally I went to the internet to see what I was missing. Before I knew what was happening I found this place, and was busy purchasing the figures I never had and buying the items which had been broken or lost. I've very nearly finished re-building my childhood collection.

However, in seeing all the great collections and community that you guys have established I decided not to stop there. I'm now starting to focus on a longer term goal of diecast collecting.

What started as a humble trip down childhood memory lane has evolved into a new hobby, and I thank you all for it (in a good way ).

 

[Cazza]

Super Star Wars on the SNES rekindled the love when I was at Uni and I soon found myself digging out the old figures and was interested in collecting others.

It was a bit of an education! It never dawned on me that there would still be unopened figures still knocking around. I remember going into a small comic shop in Cheltenham and being educated on last 17, most of which I never knew existed. Amanaman and Yak really worth £15?!

Bought my first MOC's there- 2 Logray for £7 ea. Also got a loose Slave 1 for a fiver and was pleasantly surprised to find a mint Boba hiding in the back when I got home.

Got my next couple of bits from Cirencester Toy Fair. A Wing Pilot for a tenner and a very nice B-Wing for an expensive £60. Funny how some prices have gone through the roof and some haven't changed much over the years.

One of my mates said he still had a box of stuff at his Mum's that I could have. Most of it was trashed, but there was a decent Yak and Anakin in there. Also managed to find another Yak (a few years later) in a bunch of play stuff at the school my girlfriend was working at. Couldn't believe my eyes! Gave her a couple of POTF2 figs in exchange

Scoured the free ads and Model Mart and slowly built up the collection. Bought my boxed AT-AT and Falcon, along with Luke Stormie, Ev-9D9 and Pop Up R2 (no saber- still looking!) from a guy in Churchdown who had shed loads of stuff! All were around £40 ea. Last 17 seemed to go through the roof in the mid-late 90s.

Made the trip to Cheshunt a few times and really got into MOC's in the mid 90's, before it all ground to a halt, mainly due to money (I was spending it all on POTF2!) and space. I stashed them all in my parents' loft, finally retrieving them around 18 years later (last year).
).

 

[Sabreman]

Me and Star Wars have had an on and off love affair since I was 10 years old back in 1980 when Empire came out. I went to my local cinema to watch Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back double bill. Next day my parents took me to my local toy shop and I bought a At At Driver for £1.59, Since that day Star Wars Toys have been in my blood.
Saying that I have never really collected it until early last year. I did buy the odd item but I have mainly been a Vintage Actin Man collector for the best part of twenty years. However my passion is now Vintage Sar Wars, my collection is very modest but it excites me, sadly for me being late to vintage collecting I appear to be priced out of the more high end items especially Palitoy 12 backs.
I have no idea why it has taken me this long to get not it, I have always known it's what I should have been focusing on.
This forum has made me even more passionate about my hobby, knowing people exist who's passion is in a par with mine makes me happy, looking at the pictures of fellow collectors gives me something to aspire to.

 

[x-pack]

This is my collection circa 1990/1. It must be earlier than late 91 as that's when I found my 12" Chewie, and he isn't there.

Like probably every other collector on here I had the toys as a kid from about '81 onwards. Then when things started to fizzle out with the line I went onto MASK toys and then Nintendo. Then high school started and that was it.

In about 1989 I can remember bringing some Star Wars back to my Mum's place from my Dad's. My brother wanted it and he displayed it on top of his wardrobe (he was about 8 at the time). Then my Mum re-married and we moved in with her husband who was a book collector and antique dealer. That was when things really picked up - probably around 1990. In his travels my stepdad would pick up vintage Star Wars, as that's all you could get back then. I remember one Christmas around that time when we went routing (as you do) and found a bin liner full of ships and figures hidden in a wardrobe. That was a cracking Christmas

From then, like many, I was scouring local carboot sales, calling into toy shops asking if they had old stock (picked up a few cool things that way), placing want ads in the paper, chasing school friends for stuff. Bloody great days

At the time I was just leaving school in 1992 I was approached by a friend of my Mum who told me about a display going on in the Harris museum in Preston called 'People Collections' or something like that. She said I could put my Star Wars on display ...so that's what I did. I worked in the museum for a couple of weeks helping set up the displays. There were some great collections like rubbers, Coca Cola stuff, matchboxes etc. I really wish I had a photo of my display. Apparently there was one in the paper. It looked awesome all set out in a large glass case with black wooden stands I made with the guys who worked there. Happy days 8)

A lot of my collection now is still that early stuff. The high point was definitely 92 - 95. I can remember my stepdad having met this vintage toy dealer at a sale somewhere near us. He said we should go round to his place for a look... It was wall to wall vintage Star Wars filling up his flat :shock: Not like a display, just boxes of stuff stacked up everywhere. I remember it to this day. Back then I didn't really know what I was looking for, but I did have the Sansweet book so knew about VCJ's and Blue Snags. However I didn't search nearly hard enough in that flat. Only really scratched the surface of what he had. Still, picked up some nice bits that I still have.

My biggest regret is selling off some stuff when I moved to London in 2003 after travelling India for a while. Mum wanted all my **** gone so I sold off a lot including some nice MIB pieces - ex shop stock. Absolutely mint vintage. Still, be thankful for what you have and all that. Just glad I kept some choice pieces aside :wink:

 

[SublevelStudios]

Love threads like this! And the photos are really of their time (love the Naked Lunch poster Steve!) 8)

It's clear that for some of us, we've always been Star Wars collectors, and I think it's something that doesn't really leave you.

For me it's the hunt, the acquisition of a piece I really want or a bargain, the creation of a display and most importantly, the friendships I've made along the way.

 

[lejackal]

I sold my childhood figures to buy a combination of Starcom and Games Workshop stuff but still always watched the movies and read the EU novels religiously. I did consider collecting stuff again but (and this will sound stupid/short sighted depending on how kind you want to be) but I looked at SW stuff when I started earning in around 96/7 and again in 99 when TPM came out (at that point I was a projectionist so saw it in advance 8) ) but thought £30 or £50 for a figure was ridiculous (and look at the amount I happily pay now). Started collecting at the end of 2013 start of 2014 when my son was about to be delivered and when I quit smoking. It was a bit of everything to start with and now apart from the occasional short-lived relapse to modern its all vintage.
Found this place in May/June time last year, signed up in July and haven't looked back

Bloody love it, all of it!

 

[x-pack]

Great thread. This, to be honest, is what interests me most about the hobby - where it all started.

Oh and Jackal man, not sure I thanked you for the canopy. Fits a treat

 

[Jez]

Cool thread. I'm still hunting for childhood photos of me playing with my stuff. One day i will find some.

 

[lejackal]

Great thread. This, to be honest, is what interests me most about the hobby - where it all started.

Oh and Jackal man, not sure I thanked you for the canopy. Fits a treat

No worries Barry, how did you get on fixing the wing? I have a vested in finding out as I just stood on the boys and broke 2! :twisted:

 

[SAVORY100]

Cool thread. I'm still hunting for childhood photos of me playing with my stuff. One day i will find some.

I've looked through all my Mum's pics, my Grandparents pics and the few pics that were left to me by Dad too, nothing Star Wars.. maddening, there are pics of me on my Raleigh Burner, with Meccano, Scalextric and with Action Man a plenty, but the thing I really loved and still love.. nothing! At least these glimpse of it all coming together again as a student gives some relief from that pain :wink:

Hope you find some Jez!

 

[Jez]

Thanks mate. My kids will never have the same problem. I think at the last count we have about 80 Gigs worth of family photos! Their biggest problem will be sorting through them!

 

[palitoyjunky]

Great thread guys 8)

My story is more or less a typical one. By the mid 80s I had pretty much forgotten about SW toys as I had got into other toy lines, Technic Lego, then moved on and got into skateboarding, roller skating and then developed an obsession with NBA basketball.
Thankfully my diamond of a mother had kept all my SW toys :wink:

During the mid 90s the Trilogy was re-released digitally remastered with a George Lucus interview 8) upon snapping up the vhs's I was v excited to discover the Hasbro/Kenner leaflet inside advertising the new wave of toys 8) What got me going was the fact the new vehicles were made from the original moulds and they used the vintage figures in the photos of them. So it was so kool to c revamped vintage ships if u like.

That was it :!: I had been recaptured by SW I dug up my childhood collection, found a local 'New Curiousity Shop' that sold vintage, started going to local toy fairs and discovered the Picketts Lock and Cheshunt sc-fi fairs which were also local to me. I quickly got into carded figures and boxed vehicles/playsets-the packaging of the vintage stuff really did it for me regarding nostalgia.

Anyway it's been a fun 20 odd years and am looking forward to many more years of the same

 

[SAVORY100]

Some great stories coming through guys, really good to see how you all got back into it 8)

 

[peekaygee73]

By the mid-80s we'd stopped buying SW and also got into other lines such as Transformers. In the mid/late 80s we sold all our SW toys to someone who worked with my Mum. Looking back it's bizarre, as I remember when I was a kid my Dad got his Dinky cars out to show us and said his Mum had given away most of them and he wished she'd kept them, as they'd be worth a fortune! Oh well.

I didn't really think about Star Wars again until ESB and ROTJ were premiered on terrestrial TV. Then it was the first widescreen VHS releases in 1991 which were quickly snapped up and used as an excuse to spend some, er, 'quality time' with my then girlfriend when my parents went out one Saturday evening! "Nah, we'll stay in and watch 'The Empire Strikes Back'!! :shock: :lol:

A year or two after that the same girlfriend was at Sheffield Uni, which was an opportunity to visit the local comic mart, and that's where I purchased my first post-80s loose figures - Han Trench and Leia Poncho, mainly because I thought they looked cool and had been released after I stopped buying them back in the 80s. At a Leeds mart a couple of months later I saw someone selling MOCs and boxed items and bought a Teebo 79-back (which I still have) and an AT-ST in a completely knackered Hoth ROTJ box. After that I came across Model Mart and 'Intergalactic Junk' and added Lando Skiff and Han Trench MOCs. By the mid-90s I'd stopped buying but the SEs got me interested again in a mix of vintage and POTF2, and I started building my loose collection. Then TPM hit and for some insane reason I stopped buying vintage and focused on the modern lines. Then back onto vintage around 2001 for a year, just before getting married and buying a house put a stop to any frivolous expenditure for a while.

That was pretty much it then until 2013, when I came across my old MOCs. I thought about selling them for about 3 seconds, then thought "Why the hell would I do that?". I found this place not long after and I've never really looked back since, and I can't imagine ever stopping now - there's just too much nostalgia involved.

 

[stormcab]

To be honest, I don't remember a time when I didn't want the toys. I never got bored with them, shops just stopped selling them. I was born in 78. I have a distant memory in the late 80s going around toy shops asking if they still sold Star Wars figures. "no sorry, not for a while". Then around the mid 90s, my Uncle, who was into Batman, and worked at a Cash & Carry with me, took me to my first toy fair. When I walked in and saw carded figures for the first time since the early 80s :shock: :shock: as I was working all summer in the C&C I had some funds. I knew roughly what was important, as I read up in the collectors mags - 12 backs, Yak, VCJ. I grabbed what 12 backs I could, and luckily they were good ones - white background Vader, Takara Leia, Clipper Han. Then basically any they had, which sometimes wasn't much - an ugnaught with a cracked bubble. I ended up with about 45 MOCs, and they remained in a box hidden in my Uncle's loft until I finished college in Bournemouth and bought my flat in 2001. I had met my now wife then, and juggling a mortgage and wanting to travel, it's not that I had forgotten about MOCs, it's just I couldn't justify blowing hundreds on one or more.

I had been meaning for years to get my rarer ones graded by AFA but was scared stiff about putting them in the post. Then in 2014, as I was planning a trip to the south in the US, starting in Atlanta, I suddenly thought "so where is this AFA place? if it's within a few hours drive of Atlanta, then I'll take them in person". Google map search. STUFF ME, it's 30 minutes drive outside of the centre. So I boxed up my 7 rarest and took them. I had organised in advance to drop, pay for premium grading so they were ready in 2 weeks, and successfully picked them up. I got an email halfway through the trip saying they couldn't grade my Palitoy 45 back Boba Fett because of a recent "scandal". EH? Now we know. In 2015 I sold most of those 45 MOCs and all my pro camera gear, and put the funds into the building a collection of exactly what I wanted, instead of all the randoms I bought at toy fairs.

 

[Usetheforceluke]

To be honest, I don't remember a time when I didn't want the toys. I never got bored with them, shops just stopped selling them. I was born in 78. I have a distant memory in the late 80s going around toy shops asking if they still sold Star Wars figures. "no sorry, not for a while". Then around the mid 90s, my Uncle, who was into Batman, and worked at a Cash & Carry with me, took me to my first toy fair. When I walked in and saw carded figures for the first time since the early 80s :shock: :shock: as I was working all summer in the C&C I had some funds. I knew roughly what was important, as I read up in the collectors mags - 12 backs, Yak, VCJ. I grabbed what 12 backs I could, and luckily they were good ones - white background Vader, Takara Leia, Clipper Han. Then basically any they had, which sometimes wasn't much - an ugnaught with a cracked bubble. I ended up with about 45 MOCs, and they remained in a box hidden in my Uncle's loft until I finished college in Bournemouth and bought my flat in 2001. I had met my now wife then, and juggling a mortgage and wanting to travel, it's not that I had forgotten about MOCs, it's just I couldn't justify blowing hundreds on one or more.

I had been meaning for years to get my rarer ones graded by AFA but was scared stiff about putting them in the post. Then in 2014, as I was planning a trip to the south in the US, starting in Atlanta, I suddenly thought "so where is this AFA place? if it's within a few hours drive of Atlanta, then I'll take them in person". Google map search. STUFF ME, it's 30 minutes drive outside of the centre. So I boxed up my 7 rarest and took them. I had organised in advance to drop, pay for premium grading so they were ready in 2 weeks, and successfully picked them up. I got an email halfway through the trip saying they couldn't grade my Palitoy 45 back Boba Fett because of a recent "scandal". EH? Now we know. In 2015 I sold most of those 45 MOCs and all my pro camera gear, and put the funds into the building a collection of exactly what I wanted, instead of all the randoms I bought at toy fairs.

Great story! I bet it looked amazing going to the fair and seeing all the moc! What was the scandal? Tt?! Why couldn't they grade your boba because of it?

 

[stormcab]

To be honest, I don't remember a time when I didn't want the toys. I never got bored with them, shops just stopped selling them. I was born in 78. I have a distant memory in the late 80s going around toy shops asking if they still sold Star Wars figures. "no sorry, not for a while". Then around the mid 90s, my Uncle, who was into Batman, and worked at a Cash & Carry with me, took me to my first toy fair. When I walked in and saw carded figures for the first time since the early 80s :shock: :shock: as I was working all summer in the C&C I had some funds. I knew roughly what was important, as I read up in the collectors mags - 12 backs, Yak, VCJ. I grabbed what 12 backs I could, and luckily they were good ones - white background Vader, Takara Leia, Clipper Han. Then basically any they had, which sometimes wasn't much - an ugnaught with a cracked bubble. I ended up with about 45 MOCs, and they remained in a box hidden in my Uncle's loft until I finished college in Bournemouth and bought my flat in 2001. I had met my now wife then, and juggling a mortgage and wanting to travel, it's not that I had forgotten about MOCs, it's just I couldn't justify blowing hundreds on one or more.

I had been meaning for years to get my rarer ones graded by AFA but was scared stiff about putting them in the post. Then in 2014, as I was planning a trip to the south in the US, starting in Atlanta, I suddenly thought "so where is this AFA place? if it's within a few hours drive of Atlanta, then I'll take them in person". Google map search. STUFF ME, it's 30 minutes drive outside of the centre. So I boxed up my 7 rarest and took them. I had organised in advance to drop, pay for premium grading so they were ready in 2 weeks, and successfully picked them up. I got an email halfway through the trip saying they couldn't grade my Palitoy 45 back Boba Fett because of a recent "scandal". EH? Now we know. In 2015 I sold most of those 45 MOCs and all my pro camera gear, and put the funds into the building a collection of exactly what I wanted, instead of all the randoms I bought at toy fairs.

Great story! I bet it looked amazing going to the fair and seeing all the moc! What was the scandal? Tt?! Why couldn't they grade your boba because of it?

Yeah was the TT scandal. All they said was there were some fakes that had been discovered, and until they get to the bottom of it they weren't grading any more Palitoys (without logo on front), which was weird, as they had graded a Palitoy ROTJ Luke Farmboy I gave them. I was convinced mine wasn't a fake as it had been in my possession for nearly 20 years, and surely fakes would have been made recently? Well I joined SWFUK shortly after and posted photos. Was told it was a TT . I paid £110 for it, and sold it on eBay with full disclosure about TT issue, and it went for £192. So I consider myself very lucky. Others will have paid many hundreds on a MOC later on before discovering it was a TT.