Funnily, my first Star Wars memories predate me having even heard of the film. It all began sometime in 1979, when my parents gave me a toy robot they'd bought at a mall in the middle east. I remember the card it came on pictured the robot against a bland starfield background, and sadly did not in itself inspire much play. Some years later I saw a film on a bootleg tape with a monster attacking people in what I believed to be sewers. The bootleg was so bad that most of the time you couldn't see what was going on. (Later I would come to realize this was the Dianoga attack in the trash compactor). A year or so later a friend showed me a tape of a movie called The Empire Strikes Back and I was awestruck. Star Wars had at last gotten my attention. Working backwards from that moment, I have realized that the "monster movie" was the first Star Wars, and that dull toy robot I had was actually a Star Wars character, R2-D2. I'd receieved my first Star Wars toy without even realizing it, and it remains in my collection to this day.(See it here.) Since then there have been hundreds more, all motivated by wanting to relive the sensation of The Empire Strikes Back. To a child the Star Wars toys were simply great toys.
(Then, one fateful day, I discovered an online retailer selling the original
12" figures. My VISA hasn't cooled down since.)
Then, after a flurry of activity during the "prequel period", I peaked and suddenly lost the urge. I had subscribed to the buy-what-you-like school of collecting. I bought
the items I thought were well made and actually appealed to me as an adult. There was always
the temptation to buy any old thing with the Star Wars logo on it but did I
really need a Queen Amidala pencilcase gathering dust in my closet? Maybe that was part of the problem? Star Wars was becoming overexposed. The market was oversaturated with Star Wars items and no-one could keep up with it all. I found my interest in collecting cooling off. Once again, I became a passive owner of Star Wars items. It's all still there in my basement, but my days of collecting everything Star Wars are over.
(I still couldn't resist the Star Wars birhtday set -party hats, candle, napkins and paper plates, table cloth -gorgeous!)
Like every Star Wars fan, I had accumulated several versions of the films on video over the years. I was aware of most of the different releases in North America and England, but always considered them too numerous to ever collect them all. After DVD took over for VHS as the media of choice, a friend of mine gave me his UK tapes. The problem is, he didn't have a matching set. The first movie was widescreen, and the last two were the fullframe versions. The completist in me balked. It couldn't be too hard or expensive to complete the set? I headed over to eBay...
...and here we are.
I now collect all home video renditions of the Star Wars saga and it's spin-offs exclusively. As such, I tread in the footsteps of many a great collector before me, who after a period of great diversity settles into a niche that is both more confined and rewarding.
To me, collecting the videos makes perfect sense, they are cheap and display extremely well (if I had the room to display them). The Star Wars videos have been released in astronomical numbers worldwide, so scarcity does not yet hike up the prices. Most videos can be had for a pittance, but some of the Japanese laserdiscs still command a premium. Like most of you, my wallet (and wife-approval factor) limits what I can buy. Still, collecting the videos has been the most fun I've had with Star Wars in years.
Collecting Star Wars videos is still not part of the collecting mainstream, and there seem to be few people out there who focus on this. The value of sharing a hobby cannot be overstated, so I have reached out to several Star Wars collecting forums in search of like-minded collectors. Mostly the reaction has been one of indifference. The few people who share my hobby don't seem to have a presence on the web. So, if you're out there, give me a holler, okay?
|