Presented by Mike Mensinger, Bill Cable and Chris Fawcett.

Chris:
“Hello? Okay we have microphones. Welcome to day 2 of the Collector Panels. We’re just going to jump in today; the first panel is Character Collecting which is going to be by myself Chris Fawcett, Bill Cable and Mike Mensinger. So, we’re going to just jump right in.”

Bill:
“Okay, this is on Character Collecting, so the first obvious question is “What is Character Collecting?” Character Collecting, as the name implies involves centering your collection on one character for the trilogy. Well, from the Trilogy or anywhere in the Saga. You can focus on an obscure character which would result in a small collection; you could focus on a main character which would lead to a much larger collection. You can collect anything from the…..your collection can run the gambit from anything from action figures to ceramics to kitchen collectibles. Kitchenware, that’s the word I was thinking of.”

Chris:
“Like the Darth Vader cake pan for example.”

Bill:
“Yeah. They can include exclusively vintage figures, exclusively modern collectibles or a combination of both. Some people get real deep into prototypes; others stick with mostly production items. The only thing that is critical is that the collection focus on a single character. So, you might wonder why you’d want to do your collection based one character, and to answer that question we will go to Mike.”

Mike:
“Basically, there are a couple different reasons. As you guys probably all know from collecting, there’s a huge amount of Star Wars stuff that you can collect, its almost….and you’re just not going to be able to collect everything because of space, money or do to other reasons. If your name’s Steve Sansweet, you might be able to swing it, but I don’t think anybody in here is Sansweet.”

Chris:
“Or Duncan Jenkins.”

Mike:
“Yeah. So, basic economics make it kinda necessary to limit and tighten a collection down. There’s definitely a lot of different ways you can do it. It’s a nice way of collecting because it lets you delve into a wide variety of product without a huge amount of just unlimited stuff. It also gives you a pretty tight cohesive collection. You know, the Jar Jar toilet paper has more meaning when it’s with all the Jar Jars. So, it helps with that.”

Chris:
(Laughing) “I’m not sure you’re right about that.”

(Everyone laughs)

“But I think we understand your point.”

Bill:
“So, when you decide to be a character collector, what would be the benefits of doing that? For that, we’ll go to Chris Fawcett.”

Chris:
“One of the things I really like about it, is that you can get into a wide variety of products. One of the advantages there, is that a lot of people just focus on toys, and don’t really realize a lot of the other things that Star Wars has out there. A character collection can really make you go and look into other realms and not only do you get some neat pieces for your own collection, but you see a wider variety of what’s out there, even if it’s not something you’re looking for. You just get much more knowledgeable about the hobby, and sometimes you discover things that you never even knew existed. Maybe it’s not for your collection, but sometimes it's just very interesting to delve into the esoteric type realms of collecting. A lot of times people wonder, like you know, how can you spend this much on this high end piece? If you’re trying to complete a complete set of carded figures, you know, there’s a lot of top dollar pieces in that set. With character collecting, you can maybe get one or 2 really killer pieces, whether they’re expensive or just really, really rare pieces. So, you don’t have to necessarily say “I want to start a carded figure collection, so I’m going to have to spend a lot of money on that.” You can do a character focus, you can say “I’ve got just these 2 pieces that are really expensive, and I’ve got all these other things, lower price things that I could get, so I can kinda pick and choose there and not get corralled into having to get these certain pieces. So, you can add some really great pieces to your collection and not go overboard with having to want to complete a series and have a lot of really expensive stuff. Interesting conversations are, this can go both ways on the spectrum, for example you can have a great prototype piece, that everyone would wonder what it is if they're not familiar with the prototypes, or if they are familiar with it they’ll “oh and awe” over it. So, that could be a great starter piece. Also, those kind of pieces often have a great story, “well, you know I got this piece from this guy, or that guy” or “I was searching for that piece for 5 years and I was finally able to get one.” So, just from a personal standpoint, they can have some great stories. On the flip side, you can have all sorts of weird crazy things in your collection that people have never seen before, for example, one of the things I always get razzed about is I’ve got, everybody calls it an eraser, but it’s not an eraser, it’s a pencil topper, for my [character] collection [which] is Han Hoth. So, it looks like an eraser, but you can’t actually erase anything it just goes on your pencil but it won’t actually erase anything. I have that in my collection, and I don’t know how it got started, but some people saw pictures of it, and I get constantly teased about my Han Hoth pencil eraser. So, that kind of thing can be a starter piece, when you see something strange like that.”

Bill:
“Okay, so um, as Chris was saying, having a character focus gives you the opportunity to get a wide variety of various different collectibles. To demonstrate that, we’re going to go through and show some examples of our own character collections to just give you an idea of how broad and unusual some of the things you end up picking up just because you’re searching for C-3PO stuff all the time and it catches your fancy. So, we’re going to go a slide at a time, and each person will describe their own stuff. Mike is the Hoth Trooper so he’s going to do this one.”

Mike:
“This is just a basic little carded set here. Actually, if you look at the pictures closely there’s some writing on them. They’re quality control/Quality Assurance Samples. They’re kinda a little bit different than your standard production carded figure, so I kinda went with something a little different. It’s just a series of Empire Strikes Back, 31 back, 41 Back and a 45 back. The trooper was released on some other card backs too, Jedi, Trilogo.

Chris:
"I want to say something else too while we're kinda talking about this, you'd think that maybe a Hoth Trooper, [is] kinda minor character, [and that there's] not much to collect. (To Mike) I don't know if you were thinking that when you started it (laughing)."

Mike:
"(Laughing) Nah, no"

Chris:
"There are a LOT of Hoth Trooper collectibles."

Mike:
"Yeah. Yeah there definitely is."

Chris:
"So, be careful what you're picking. Kinda do some research on 3 or 4 characters. You might be thinking you’re going for a small focus and end up with a big focus. So, a minor character does not always mean that there’s very little product available for them.”

John Alvarez (From Audience):
“Bill “Shameless Plug” Cable!”

(Everyone laughs)

Mike:
"Also aside from those domestic figures, there’s a wide variety of International figures figures. And Hoth Stormtrooper was actually released on a wide variety of international cards. That was one of the things I liked about it, I could kinda extend out of domestic carded. In this picture here, up on the top left there’s a Spanish PBP carded one. There’s also an Empire Kenner Canada card there. On the bottom left there’s an Ips, I call it an “I P S”, but it was pronounced “Ips”. It was a comic produced in Germany, and it actually had a Hoth Stormtrooper figure included with it as a premium. So that was kinda a nice little piece to have. And the small boxed one is a Japanese Popy, and that’s all for those. For my international.”

Bill:
“This is my international carded set. I have a couple from the UK, 1 or 2 from Japan. The ones on the bottom row, the Glasslite Power of the Force, that’s the one that’s gold colored. That was manufactured in Brazil. The one on the other side, the yellow one, is a cartoon Brazilian Glasslite. Based on the Droids cartoon, and that one’s particularly rare cardback, one of the center pieces of my collection. The center thing there, is a three pack that was released in Ireland which is kind of unusual. They just put three random figures in there so you can get all sorts of odd combinations. They’re really tough to get in any kind of decent condition. Mine’s actually just held together by paperclips, it’s falling apart. The other ones are pretty self explanatory. The top one, I don’t know how you pronounce it, but it’s a Harbert C-3PO from.....(looks to Chris) where is that from again?”

Chris:
“From Italy, I think.”

Bill:
“Ah, yeah from Italy. That’s in really nice condition. Here are some of my loose international figures. Again, the two gold ones, the painted gold one is a Glasslite Power of the Force. The yellow one is a Glasslite Droids one, if anyone has a right leg for a Droids Glasslite C-3PO, come up and talk to me after the (panel)."

(Everyone laughs)

"The next 2, the Takara is a really cool variant head sculpt of the C-3PO that was made in Japan. Pretty tough to find loose and whenever you see it compared to a regular C-3PO, the first time you see it you’ll remember it forever because it’s just completely different. Looking on eBay, small pictures all the time you think you’ll see it, because it’s really distinctive to see them in person. The last one is a Lili Ledy, which I have backwards because the only thing different about it really is that it’s held together by a screw instead of a rivet. (Next slide) This again is some Japanese exclusive figures. The plush thing, that was a toy they had in claw machines over in Japan. A kubrick on the bottom. The large one is actually a Takara thing that actually shoots a plastic rocket out of his chest. To attack all C-3POs...(inaudible).”

Chris:
(Interrupting) “I’m sure that will be in Episode 3.”

(Laughter)

Chris:
“These are some of my carded figures, on the left is just a standard trilogo, the middle is a Canadian like Mike showed, on the right, some interesting things that you can get into is miscards. You can see this one’s on a Han Bespin card, and a lot of the trilogos have miscards like that. So, you can get some really weird variants, looking for strange things like this. It really is just a factory mistake, but it just goes to a complete other realm of collecting, you know? [The fact that you can] Work somethings like a factory mistake into your focus, is pretty interesting.

"Here’s some more, on the left is a sign off sample, much like Mike showed earlier. You can see the writing in the upper left-hand corner of the card. In the middle, is an ESB Meccano, which is from France. The Empire Strikes Back Meccanos are pretty tough [to find]. I only know of 2 examples of this particular figure, and mine’s a reseal. It’s the only way I could really get it. Another thing you can do that is kind of fun if you’re creative. Is you can actually do some custom things. On the right I have a custom Power of the Force carded Han, that I just put together from bits and pieces. You know, on my printer, things like that. I also have a custom…..this was before the LEGOs started coming out, I had a custom Han Hoth LEGO guy. So, you can use that as a fun way to, you know, get your artistic skills into practice, and also help your collection.”

Bill:
“One thing I would advise on that, don’t post on your website that the custom you make is real because then people think there’s this weird prototype out there and you can get in a lot of trouble.”

Mike:
“Another thing you can focus on is ah....John Alvarez’s out there, his favorite type of figures, the bootleg ones. The unlicensed figures. I got a couple different ones. I knew when I was starting this focus that there was quite a few Hoth Stormtrooper bootlegs. So that was kind of an area that I wanted to touch on a little bit in my collection. Up on the left with the brown card is a Hungarian carded figure. On the right there, is an Uzay. It’s called “Bluestars”. It’s just a Blue version of [the] Hoth Stormtrooper. Comes with a white gun. It’s one of the tougher ones of the Uzay line to locate. They’re all fairly difficult to locate. On the bottom left there, there’s a loose Hungarian, and there’s also a 2 Mexican/South American ones. The arms on those are movable, but the legs aren’t.”

Chris:
“For everyone who didn’t know, bootlegs are just unlicensed figures. So, these were not licensed by Lucasfilm. They’re usually made in smaller countries, so they can get pretty strange sometimes.”

Bill:
“Here you can see some photos of some of my loose bootlegs. 2 in particular that I really like are the Hungarian, which is on the bottom left. Which is kinda silver colored, it was again……the same one Mike has made in Hungary. The other one is a Brazilian lead figure, which they made these figures obviously out of lead. In Brazil, they sold them to little children. So, you have to think about all these little kids who sucking and chewing on all their lead Star Wars figures in Brazil.”

Chris:
“Throwing them at their brothers.”

Bill:
(laughing) “Yeah. These things are huge!”

Chris:
“Very heavy.”

Bill:
“They could do some real damage to somebody. Not a very safe collectable down in Brazil.”

Chris:
“This is just an example……this is the Brazilian figure for Han Hoth. You can see it’s kinda…..not real clean looking. On the right, is the box that they came in, which is just a little red box. These…..I believe what they did in Brazil, is that they just took Kenner figures and they just molded them, and they just poured lead into the molds. So, that’s how these were made. So, that’s why they’re kinda goofy, and don’t really look real nice. [They’re] good conversation starter pieces.“

Mike:
“Next we’re move on to some prototype items. Actually the prototypes were some of the reasons I kind of started my character focus. And I’ve tried to get packaging prototypes, figural prototypes, Micro prototypes. You’ll see some of those in a bit. Here’s an…..this is a good example, of the range of stuff that you can get. I’ve got a couple proof cards up there. The one on the top left is a Revenge of the Jedi, obviously that’s an unreleased one. I’ve got a Jedi proof, and also a Power of the Force cromalin. Which they used to do, basically packaging tests. [To] make sure the printing process was correct on those. There’s also a QA/QC (quality assurance/ quality control) signed sample down there. Some of the loose ones (prototypes), I have a hardcopy, and a first shot. The one with the bag and the index card there, is another kind of QA/QC piece. Then there’s also a production figure. It makes a nice series of prototypes, when you can really see the development of all aspect of it. Oh, for those of you who aren’t familiar with this stuff, the hardcopies are basically they’re hand cast, using…it’s called a silicon mold or an RTV mold. They’re hand cast off of the original sculpting for the figure. So, they sculpt the figure, make a mold from it, and then they hand cast these pieces that are called “Hardcopies”. There’s no unpainted one (Hoth Stormtrooper hardcopy) yet that I’ve seen. I’m definitely looking for that if anybody comes across one. This one would have been painted for photography samples, or catalog samples. The first shots are basically used to debug the production molds…the steel production molds. They usually don’t have copyrights on the back, and some early ones might be hand glued or hand painted.”

Chris:
“Just in general, I know a lot of collectors…..sort of get….it seems scary sometimes when you start getting into the prototype realm because there’s a perception that it’s all vastly expensive and hard to find. That’s one of the great things about character collecting, is because you can kind of get a focus. You can go, “Okay, well, there’s only a certain realm of prototypes.”. And really, there are prototype items everywhere from $20, I had one for sale last night, that I was trying to sell, it was $15. It was a 3PO piece, but unfortunately Bill already had it. All the way up to…..well there are some very expensive ones. The great thing about a character focus, is that you’re just not out there looking for random kinds of prototypes, and spending crazy money on things. You really have a focus, and a lot of times, they don’t come up for sale that often, so you can usually take some time to save up some money, and when something does become available it’s not like you’ve [haven’t] had a chance to prepare for it. You can get some really killer pieces that way."

Bill:
“And whenever people know about your character focus, whenever they hear that these prototypes come up, your one of the first ones to get wind of it, so you have a better chance of getting it than if you were just going for random prototypes.”

Mike:
“Snowtrooper also had a Power of the Force coin, it was one of the mail away ones. You can see an actual picture of the coin down there on the left. All the coins were actually sculpted at a 6 to 1 ratio, so there a lot larger than the production coin. I’ve put together here is just a series of prototypes. I should have this left to right, but I have it right to left because there’s a chip on the sculpt. If you look on the right hand side, the kinda green and white one, that’s the original sculpting for the coin. It's hand sculpted in plaster. The green material on it is actually a mold release agent. Next on the left to that is a soft….that’s a stage one hardcopy. So, that’s a negative image, it’s cast off the sculpt. Then they would make a softer one, which is called a softcopy.”

Chris:
“It’s like a rubber Frisbee almost, it’s very flexible.”

Mike:
“Yeah.”

Bill:
“Is that latex?”

Mike:
“It’s silicon. It’s similar to the mold. (Continuing describing slide) Then there’s a stage 2 hardcopy. It’s called a tooling master. That’s actually what they are going to use to make the production molds. The production molds are called dies. They’re like a little stamping mechanism, they would stamp [the image] on those blanks. The last piece on the left is just a plaster positive. It was used for a backup in case anything happened to the tooling master.”

Bill:
“These are some of my figure prototypes. Most of the ones I have are more modern figures than vintage ones. I have a line of the Galactic Heroes C-3PO’s at various stages of production. In the back the gold and blue colored one, that’s a test paint that they did for the Brazilian POTF figure. It was a presentation piece within the company, they were trying to decide what kind of color scheme they wanted because I guess in Brazil they didn’t have the capacity to chrome plate the figures for the production process. So they had various ideas, and that was one of the ideas, to paint it gold, and that was the idea they went with. In the center is an Epic Forces first shot. I believe it’s also a chrome test. If you look at it there little crosshatching where they had to test the quality of the chrome to make sure it would pass safety standards and stay stuck to the figure.

"This is another chrome test, it’s a 12” 3PO. I got it…..it’s unconfirmed to be a prototype, but I got it from a guy who bought a lot of……I don’t want to say a lot, but he bought several prototypes from one former Kenner employee. The former employee could confirm a lot of them, that they were used in the production process, but this is one of them, and it had the chrome test markings on it, but they couldn’t say it was absolutely a prototype, because they didn’t have the history to back it up. It’s uh…..pretty conclusive based on the cross hatching pattern that they used to test whether the Chrome was [up to] quality.”

Chris:
“And you can see Bill there in the reflection with his camera if you look real close…”

Bill:
“Oh, geez.”

Chris:
“The Micro line also has……um, if you don’t know what the Micro line is, it a line of about one inch high lead…..well, not lead but casted metal figures. That were painted with some little playsets in the 80’s. There’s a lot of prototypes for that. In that line, there are three Han Hoth figures that I collect; the one on top is the Han on TaunTaun, there’s the bottom left is the standing pose, the bottom right is the crouching pose. These are just some prototypes of that, the gold ones were test a test they were doing. They were thinking about releasing [a set of] gold ones but they never did. Some of the other ones are paint tests. In the upper left there, is a concept piece before the Micro line started."

"These are called 4ups, the Micro line was actually sculpted in 4 to 1 scale. So that the sculptors could get more detail, they were shrunk down for the process. You see on the middle on the left, top left there, that’s the standard one inch size figure. So, these things (4ups) are 5 to 6 inches tall. They were be used for photography because the production pieces weren’t ready when they needed to get the box photography going. That’s why they painted these. So, I’ve got one of each of the painted ones, in a run.

"There are some more for the Micro, these pieces are also the size of the 4ups, even though I don’t have anything there for scale. These are about 4 inches high. On the top right, is the original sculpting for the piece, that the sculptor….”

Bill:
“Made out of wax?”

Chris:
“Which is made out of wax. And then that sculpt would go into this mold you see on the bottom, and what they would do is, they would….this red material is like liquidy, they would pour it in and put the wax figure inside and let it harden, and then cut it open. They used that to make the hardcopy which is on the upper left. So, this is a nice run I have going for a character….my Hoth focus. That’s one thing I like about character collecting, you can get some nice runs, and show all kinds of different stages of the process.”

Guy in Audience:
“I have a question.”

Chris:
“Yes?”

Guy in Audience:
(Question is mostly inaudible, I’ll do the best I can in trying to decipher it.) [Is the green material on the mold, the same material as the 4up?]

Chris:
“It could be. I might also be mold release material. What they do is that they want the mold to come off the resin easily, so they spray this stuff on the inside. That allows it to peel off. You know, kinda like putting Teflon on your pans before you cook with them.”

Bill:
“You could also get into packaging prototypes. One of the more common [types of] prototype packaging is proof cards. These were used inside the Kenner company to either sign off, or see what the packaging would look like before they went into full production. To test print quality and other things. (Referring to slide) This is as far as I know, a complete run of all the C-3PO proofs available. The upper left hand corner is that’s a display arena C-3PO. To date, there haven’t been any confirmed examples of a production display arena C-3PO that have turned up. The only one I’ve ever seen photos of is a Bassa, what’s that Chile? No, a Peruvian figure. Which looked like the production figure, but it had a little sticker on it. There have been no figures to have turned up in the US that I know of.”

Chris:
“Proofs cards are a great way for character collecting to start into prototypes, because a lot of them are fairly inexpensive.”

Bill:
“And another stage of packaging prototypes, is as Mike mentioned earlier, is Cromalins. That was a process developed by Du Pont, so that they could make a single example for proofing, rather than starting up the printing press and do a bunch of them like that. The 3 I have here, the 2 on the ends are one of a kind examples, the center one they did a series of three of them. Of particular note, on the 21 back, that is the only known example of any kind of the Boba Fett offer on the Star Wars C-3PO card. They haven’t showed up in proof cards, no production examples. We assume there were mock up’s because they have shown up in Kenner photography. This was the only way I was able to get a cardback with the Fett offer on it for my run.”

Chris:
“These are just some more proofs, it’s nice to get kind of a run. You can see I have an Empire, in the middle on the top, the right top is actually a Revenge of the Jedi card. Most people know it was originally titled Revenge, Kenner made up a whole bunch of packaging for the Revenge [title], and they had to change it at the last minute. So, that’s a Revenge proof, that’s a nice topic starter to have in your collection. Then the bottom two, that’s a Return of the Jedi and Power of the Force.”

Mike:
“Okay, Cj showed some of his Micro prototypes. The Hoth Stormtrooper, there was eight different poses for the Micro line. The first five were included with the Hoth Generator Attack Playset, it’s a pretty neat playset.

"What you see here is a complete set of unpainted and painted 4ups. Cj mentioned what those were. All the painted ones came from a single find, but I didn’t buy any of them from the original find. I had to go back down the road and track down where they had went to. [I was] actually able to reassemble them [into a full set].

"Here’s just close up view of the painted ones, the paint masters with a few little 1-1’s just for a good comparison shot."

"They were also included in the Micro Build Your Armies, it was a mail away set, you could send out for it. It came with three Hoth Stormtroopers and three Rebel Soldiers.

"What this here it’s actually the original artwork, it’s an oil based rendering, with probably a little chalk in part too. With the original art seen here [though], it’s all laid out straight, where as it three figures in a row, and then three figures on the bottom when they actually released the offer on the packaging. So, it’s neat that the art was laid out a little different."

"This is a fairly comprehensive run, it starts with the wax sculpting, its got the silicon mold, an unpainted 4up, a painted 4up and then on the bottom are a couple of 1-1 pieces. The two on the left hand side are what are called squeezings. The way they get their name squeezings, is they basically get the production dies, and they basically squeeze them together with resin in there. That’s how you get a squeezing.”

Bill:
(Inaudible)

Mike:
“Yeah, on all the Snowtroopers, they actually cast some of the pieces on them, the armor pieces and the gun, so that they didn’t have to resculpt them over and over again. So, they’re kind of a Hardcopy in that regard.”

Bill:
“Okay, another one of the lines that I’ve kind of fallen into a focus on C-3PO, is the Screamin’ model kits. There was this collector guy, who went to the old Screamin’ factory, (to Chris) I guess it was in Canada…..”

Chris:
“I don’t know, I never went there. I’ll tell it later.”

Bill:
“Yeah, you tell the story later. Anyway, I ended up getting a proof sheet for the box of C-3PO Screamin’ model kit. That C-3PO sitting next to it is about 18” tall. It was assembled and painted by the workers at the Screamin’ factory. They sent a bunch of their samples out with the Testers company, the little paint company. They had a traveling show that went all around Canada to various modeling conventions. So, it’s a phenomenal piece because it was actually painted and constructed by the people who built the original mold from it."

"I also got some of the instruction sheets, and some of the proofing materials that were used for that. The two larger drawings are actually hand drawn artwork that was photocopied and used in the instruction sheets. The one is in ink and the other is in penciled. They’re really pretty nice to have the original artwork."

"Another thing you can get into is food promotions. This is my C-3PO’s Standee, if you look on his head, there is a mail away Canadian Kellogg’s C-3PO’s Power of the Force hat. So, I would never in my wildest dreams have hoped to look for a Kellogg’s Canadian mail away C-3PO’s hat, had I not started in the character collecting.”

Bill:
“Now, this is what you may call a conversation piece. It’s a ceramic tape dispenser that the Sigma Corporation came out with. Just for show, I put some yellow electrical tape on there. That’s one of the things that people immediately gravitate to whenever they come into my room. It’s like, “What were there thinking?” when ever they came out with this item. It’s again, another special piece in my collection. That’s what everybody wants to take a look at, you have all these prototypes in there some of them worth hundreds of dollars, and they go to the little ceramic tape dispenser. They focus on that thing.”

Chris:
“This is an unproduced doll, for Han Hoth that was never made. Actually, the jacket and the doll are original, but some of the other pieces are not, because they’re the only things I could find.”

Bill:
“Okay, now that you’ve seen what you can do with character collecting, you might want to know some of the secrets to being a successful character collector. We’re going to share some of our tips with you. Whenever you’re on ebay, you have to have exceptional search skills. You want to be able to turn up the things that the average person is not going to come across just doing the little type in the name thing. I've been developing my search string for C-3PO for a couple years now, adding and subtracting from it. As you can see, it’s pretty extensive there. It turns up just about anything that you might be looking for.”

Chris:
“And don’t limit yourself to certain categories, a lot of times you can find some weird things in strange categories. This is where I’ll tell my story about the Screamin’ model items that Bill showed earlier. I was just doing a….actually I was searching one day for a friend of mine [who] had some Star Trek models that he wanted to sell. He wasn’t really into Ebay, so I said, “hey, let me go and see what they’re worth”. So I was just tooling around ebay, looking for those things to see how much they were selling for. So, I was in the model kit section of ebay, and I don’t remember how I found it, but I turned up this search, something about model artwork or something. I looked it up, and this guy had some artwork listed for the Screamin’ model kits, so I emailed him, and I said, “Hey, where’d you get this and do you have any more of it?” and it turns out that this guy had purchased, the Screamin’ model Company had shut down, and this guy had purchased the old warehouse or factory that they were using. He had found all this stuff in a back room somewhere and threw it up on Ebay. He had a whole lot more than what he had listed on ebay, and I ended up making a deal with him for the whole lot of stuff he had. It was a lot of original artwork, and layout boards, and proof sheets for, I think it was 5 of the different model kits. I got a really good deal on that. Sometimes, just doing weird searches can turn up all kind of crazy stuff. You know, just get into Ebay and look around and find some interesting places, and maybe you’ll find a collectable that a lot of people wouldn’t think of. You’ve got to almost think like someone who doesn’t know collecting. You’ve almost got to think like that, “Well, I’ve got a C-3PO coin, where would I go?” Well, they’re not going to go to toys, they’re going to go “It’s a coin.” Well, I’ll go to somewhere for coins. So, if you try to think like someone who is ignorant to collecting, who doesn’t know about collecting, then a lot of times you may get categories that they might list things in.”

Mike:
“Ebay is definitely a good spot, but there’s a lot of different……some of the best pieces and some of the greatest deals are made totally off Ebay. So it’s good, you guys here, so you’re taking part active in the community. There’s a number of different ways you can participate. One of those is online forums, Rebelscum and Galactic Hunter are two great forums that you can go on.”

Bill:
“And Jedi Defender.”

Mike:
"Jedi Defender too. You can also try to advertise in newspapers, that sometimes works. If people have childhood collections that they want to get rid of, you might be able to score a few pieces out of that. You can also join regional collecting clubs. Bill’s involved with a club.”

Bill:
“I’m in the Pennsylvania Star Wars Collecting Society. If you go over to the fan fair room, they have collecting clubs from a couple different areas. From Ohio, from DC, Indianapolis. If you’re from any of those regions, you can join those clubs, get some networking going, let them know what your character collection is. If you’re in a region that doesn’t have one, you can always form one yourself. I was main people who helped form the Pennsylvania club. Chris (Cj) was one of the founding members of the Ohio club.”

Chris:
“Also collecting clubs are great, to help get…. especially the modern toys that you’re trying to find. Because the networking there, you know, you’re not just going to the Target , the Walmart or Toys R Us, in you local area, you have people, like in the Ohio club all over the state, going to stores all over the state. So, if you’re looking for one particular piece that’s on the store shelves a lot of times that can really help you find it, with a lot less legwork. Not having to go to Ebay to get it on the secondary market.”

Bill:
“Yeah, I actually ended up with the Revenge of the Sith C-3PO about a month ahead of time because one of the guys in my collecting club went to Target and they had all the new stuff out by mistake. He grabbed one and gave it to me.”

Mike:
“Also, I had mentioned getting on the forums and being active. One of the things you can do there is post Wanted to Buy threads in there. Let people know what you’re looking for. Tell them if there’s a specific piece you’re looking for, if you’re just looking for general items. It’s good. People can’t help you if you don’t let them know what you’re looking for.”

Bill:
“You also want to be sure that you share the stuff you find. If you find a really cool piece, say “ Hey, I got this Snowtrooper piece, I’m a Snowtrooper collector check it out.” Everybody’s going to go on and see your pictures, and whenever they see something cool with Snowtrooper they might send you a line to let you know about it. Also, you can post it on…….if you have something really cool, you can send it to the Star Wars Collectors Archive, which is Toysrgus.com. They might post it on there, and you can get some excellent publicly that way.”

Chris:
“And publicizing what you’re looking for also really helps with Ebay. Because I get email regularly from my friends who are doing their own searches on ebay, that might happen to turn up something that they think that I might like, and I send Bill things all the time when I’m doing searches, [and I say] “Bill, you have this 3PO thing? I found it in some strange category mislabeled.” So, that can even help your ebay seaches by letting your friends know. So, now it’s not just you searching for stuff, you have a whole network that’s on ebay looking for things and sometimes you get some really great pieces that your friends will find for you.”

Man in audience:
(Inaudible question that related to online forums)

Chris:
“Yeah, Rebelscum.com, and Galactichunter. What’s the other one? Jedi Defender.”

Bill:
“And if all else fails, throw around a lot of money! If you pay a dealer a few thousand dollars a couple of times, you’re going to be on the top of their list whenever they find new stuff, because they’ll know they can just go right to you, and you’re just going to spill out a lot of money at them. Those are the people that the dealers like the most.”

Chris:
“And with character collecting you can do that sometimes, because like I said earlier, you’ll get into a place where you’ll have a dry spell. When your not finding a lot of pieces for your collection. You can use that to save up some cash, so when a really great piece comes along, you can pull the trigger on it. All right, we have a slideshow that we’re just going to be running up on the screen, of different character collections from all over the country and all over the world. While that’s running, we’re going to answer questions. So, watch this and if you have any questions……”

Man in Audience:
(Mostly Inaudible) [How hard is it, (inaudible) develop to levels (inaudible) different series.]

Chris:
“It depends a lot on the line. Some of the later Power of the Force figures are really tough to find with good bubbles. Because, I don’t know if they used a different plastic. The Star Wars figures generally seem to yellow a lot less than the Empire and Jedi ones. So, it’s definitely going to get harder and harder over time. The other things you’re dealing with, is with people constantly selling things, and shipping them across the country, things get damaged. The more time goes on, the most damage things incur. Just because they’re traveling, and people are dropping them, or dogs are chewing on them or whatever.”

Bill:
“Questions?”

Chris:
“All right, we’re just going to let this slide show…”