FROM CHILDHOOD FAN TO ADULT COLLECTOR.

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 re-live the sensation of The Empire Strikes Back.

So, how does the shift from playing child to adult collector occur? Not overnight, to be sure. As most Star Wars collectors will tell you, there was a time when their toys were stashed away in the closet, even sold because they weren't playing with them anymore. Fondly remembered, maybe even kept for sentimental value, but not part of the grown up child's conscious thoughts. Then, one day, something sparked a memory, maybe they caught Star Wars on TV, maybe they happened upon the toys in the attic, and they started thinking about those toys they once cherished again. For every collector the awakening is slightly different, but thus it begins. Subconsciously maybe, but the process has begun.

* Caught up in Star Wars collector circles, it is easy to overlook the fact that to the general public this is still an infantile hobby. In the "real" world people still regard the toys as throwaway items and find it ridiculous for an adult to spend time on them and even display them. The only argument that seems to make sense to them is that they are worth money. The toys' value is the only socially accepted alibi for collecting them as an adult.

After Return of the Jedi had played itself out, and the TV animated shows had gone off the air, Star Wars just petered out for many, including myself. It had its run. It was done. Kids were on to something new, and moms cleared out their rooms and put all the toys in the attic or in a pile on the next yard sale. Then, in the early nineties, interest in Star Wars seemed to be rekindled. People were rediscovering the toys, and a slow resurgence turned into a collecting boom. Many argue it was triggered by the new Star Wars novels by Timothy Zahn published in 1992, some attribute it to the re-release of the movies in 1997. For me it (re-)started in 1993 after reading TV collectables, a small supplement to a video hardware magazine. The magazine listed the (then) current collector's value of the vintage Kenner toys and I couldn't believe the prices collectors were paying. All of a sudden the stash of Star Wars odds and ends I'd been storing in my mother's basement went from items of sentimental value to dollar value. I started thinking about them differently, suddenly it felt legitimate to like Star Wars toys again*. I was not keen on selling the toys but curious about how much they'd be worth today? I took them out, started checking their condition. Were the boxes OK? Had I kept the inserts and instructions? How many of the figures and accessories had I lost over the years? I found the toys were amazingly well preserved and complete. I always did take good care of my things. Presto! -instant Star Wars collection.

STARTING COLLECTING AGAIN. AND STOPPING.

For a long time after that I was content with the toys I already had. I had no urge to seek out more vintage toys or collect anything new. What really got me spending money again were the new Episode I 12" figures from Hasbro in 1999. As a kid I discovered Star Wars too late to catch the original Kenner 12" figures, much to my chagrin. I caught a tantalizing glimpse of the 12" range in an in-package catalog -an indistinct photo that remained my only evidence of their existence. I was already playing with the 12" Action Man (G.I. Joe) and the mini Star Wars figures seemed lacking in comparison. I pined for the large-size Star Wars figures, but settled for the regular ones. I did find the large-size R2-D2, but that was it. The late 90's re-emergence of 12" scale figures for Episode I brought all that back. The detailed sculpts and the richness of the materials that new production methods could provide, revitalized my interest in Star Wars "toys" like a lightning bolt. That's when I went from a passive owner of vintage Star Wars items to full-blown collector. I bought my first Star Wars product in 15 years, trying to satisfy my unfulfilled longing for the vintage 12" figures.

I was hooked again, and from 1999 to about 2003 I kept buying and buying and buying. My main area was the 12" line (and by now the Internet allowed me access to those vintage Kenner 12" figures as well), but I was also buying all odds and ends -some figures from the prequel films, the Kelloggs cereal, the Jar Jar toothbrush set. I was all over the place, my collecting wasn't focused. Inevitably, 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, but there was always the temptation to buy any old thing with the Star Wars logo on it. I thought I was being smart about my collecting, but I still found myself with 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 were, and are, over. (I still couldn't resist the Star Wars birthday set -party hats, candle, napkins and paper plates, table cloth -gorgeous!)

STARTING COLLECTING AGAIN. BUT WITH A DIFFERENCE.

The mismatched set that started it all, November 2006.

The year was now 2006, and I was no longer "A Collector". Star Wars had lost its grip on me yet again, but that was about to change.....again. One afternoon a friend came over with a few of his UK Star Wars VHS tapes. After DVD took over for VHS as the media of choice, he no longer needed them and gifted them to me as he knew I was "into" Star Wars. 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...

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 completing the set my friend gifted me, I kept finding more and more tapes and Laserdisc on eBay. The prices were low at the time, most videos could be had for a pittance but some of the Japanese laserdiscs still commanded a premium. Over the next few years my collection of tapes, discs and spools increased monthly.

From that point on I started to collect ONLY home video renditions of the Star Wars saga, no more toys or C-3P0 flashlights. As such, I trod in the footsteps of many a collector before me, who after a period of great diversity settled into a niche that was/is both more confined and rewarding. To me, collecting the videos made perfect sense, they were 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 it was an easy field to get started in, and the majority of them were very affordable.

TO KEEP COLLECTING.

I kept it up from 2006 to around 2014. In that time I focused on my main areas of the collection; the UK tapes, the US and Japanese Laserdiscs, and made major headway on the US tapes as well. I also started accumulating odds and ends from all over the world. The collection was expanding organically. Having more or less finished my "vintage" video collection, I changed focus as Star Wars had started being issued on DVD finally. But as the market changed and moved on to the dreaded world of retailer exclusives, limited editions and steelbooks, I found myself losing interest... again. I just couldn't keep up with the glut of new releases. Also, collecting the videos was getting lonely. Even by around 2010, collecting Star Wars videos was still not part of the collecting mainstream, and there seemed to be few people out there who focused on this. The value of sharing a hobby cannot be overstated, so I published this website and reached out to several Star Wars collecting forums in search of like-minded collectors. Mostly the reaction was one of indifference. If there were any people who shared my hobby they didn't seem to have a presence on the web. I kept buying the odd videos here and there, and kept up with the DVDs, but only intermittently updated my website. My Star Wars collecting days were once again on the back burner.
My Star Wars on Video site was dormant from 2014 onwards. I don't know how many, if any, visited the site over the years, but I didn't get the impression it was generating much traffic. I kept paying the ISP bill, but didn't update the site. In terms of design and technology it was hopelessly outdated, and I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to start from scratch. It remained a museum of a bygone era in my life, frozen in time. The associated email account was no longer being monitored, and many people found their messages unanswered. I hope they realise they weren't being ignored, just that I was unaware of their efforts to contact me.

ENTER YOUTUBE.

Nathan P. Butler's amazing "A Saga On Home Video".

Then, one day in 2024 an interesting video showed up in my YouTube feed. Here was a guy posting videos about the exact same collecting niche I had been interested in. His name was Nathan P. Butler, and he was collecting all things Star Wars video related. I checked out many of his in-depth videos, and discovered he'd also published a three volume book on Star Wars video collecting, "A Saga on Home Video". I naturally purchased the books right away from Amazon. Upon reading the foreword I noticed a shout out to my very site, and much to my surprise he mentioned it as one of his early inspirations for getting into collecting Star Wars videos. He also mentioned a Facebook group, "Star Wars Home Video", which I immediately joined. I discovered that in the past 10 years Nathan P. Butler had gathered around him a community of like-minded indviduals, numbering in the thousands as of 2025. Here was the community I had always been looking for. Other people collecting every Star Wars video known to man, exchanging finds and information. I'm still not a social media person, I don't interact much, but just knowing there are others out there...

This spurred me into action. I pulled out my Laserdiscs and tapes and started sorting through them again. I found many surprise acquisitions I had forgotten about. It was time to update the site, old-fashioned though it may be. Bolstered by my daughter ensuring me that it had a suitably retro "charm", I felt better about leaving the design as it always was, and just focused on adding more content. So I spent my days scanning artwork and making entries for the releases I hadn't added to the site over the years.

One thing became immediately apparent, I wasn't going to be able to catch up with the intense explosion of Blu-ray and 4K releases from the last ten years. I was better off focusing on the analog era of video. The landscape has changed so much in the 2010s, with the modern release patterns and aforementioned retailer exclusives creating a myriad of variations. Nathan Butler has been hanging in there, keeping track of all that, and his work will remain the definitive historic documentation of the modern age of Star Wars on video. This is not where my heart lies, I'm a nostalgia-driven guy, and the latest Steelbook release of a Star Wars TV show does not excite me (though I DO buy them, go figure).

THE STATE OF THINGS.

So where does this leave me and this site? As I write this it is March 2025. I will continue to keep this site operating for the foreseeable future, and try to patch the holes I still have in my vintage video collection. The site will remain mostly a static document of my personal collection, but hopefully be of use as a resource for new and old collectors.
It remains to be seen how long I will keep it up this time. If history has taught me anything, it is that my collecting enthusiasm comes and goes, but of this I'm certain: Now, almost 20 years on from going "Video exclusive" I can say that collecting the videos has been the most satisfying collecting experience I've had with Star Wars over the years. I hope I will continue to enjoy my collection, and collecting, for many years to come.... and I wish all of you out there will too.