Forming a Star Wars Collecting Club
By Gus Lopez
(Reprinted from an article appearing in The Star Collector.)

How would you like to have the opportunity to see some truly unique and scarce Star Wars collectibles each month? Or see videos of long-forgotten and rare video footage? Or have the chance to buy, sell, and trade collectibles without having to go to toy shows or look through issues of Toy Shop? Or meet other collectors in your area and learn about interesting places to shop locally or unique pieces to pursue? And what if I told you all this could be done for almost no cost?

All these things happen every month in the greater Seattle area since we've formed a Star Wars collecting club. Surprisingly, there is only a little amount of effort required to organize such a club in your area, and I will describe in detail our successes and alert you to some pitfalls we've encountered. Star Wars enthusiasts in our region are totally thrilled about this club, and we sometimes wonder why we didn't think of this of doing this long ago.

Any longtime collector will tell you that an important prerequisite for building an impressive collection is networking. By meeting other collectors, you increase your opportunities to find cool collectibles. For instance, at one of our first meetings, a collector brought in a box of seven carded walking R2-D2s that were stored away in an attic for years from trips to clearance stores in Vancouver in the early 1980s. As you might know, these are extremely difficult to find, and are perhaps sold only a couple of times a year in places like Toy Shop. These walking R2s were sold to other collectors at our meetings for terrific prices. Furthermore, collectors who have some stock of items they're looking to sell or trade have found that it is sometimes better to present this inventory to this audience of about a dozen to two dozen devoted collectors than to attempt to move inventory at a large toy show.

These meetings don't have to simply consist of buying, selling, and trading. At each of our meetings, people bring their prized collectibles to show others. These are the kinds of things that people only dream of seeing for sale. If items are two big or fragile to bring to the meeting, people bring photos. Photos also allow you to see different displays and large dioramas in people's homes without having to visit each member's house. Part of the experience is learning from other collectors and hearing opinions about price trends, what to look for, things/people to avoid, and places to shop. Knowledge about collecting is extremely important for building a nice collection, and many dealers exploit a lack of knowledge to increase their sales, so it's important to be informed.

The idea to start a club in our area actually originated with Anthony Woolley, a Star Wars collector from Australia. Anthony told me about a Star Wars collecting club that was formed in the Hobart area. While I was visiting Tasmania last year, I got to meet Anthony and some of the other collectors in his club. I was impressed by how all the Star Wars collectors in the Hobart area knew each other and were able to refer me to other people in the area with particular items for sale.

So, about nine months ago, I talked to some friends in Seattle about starting a similar thing locally. They loved the idea, but the one problem we faced was coming up with a location for these meetings. Holding the meetings in someone's house is always a possibility, but most of us were hesitant to bring possible strangers into our homes every month with rare collectibles all over the place. We finally solved this problem when someone offered to use a clubhouse room available at his apartment complex. Most large apartment complexes have common rooms that tenants can use for large events. This room was reserved for the second Wednesday of each month -- our regular meeting time. It doesn't really matter what time you pick, but I'd suggest having a regular time each month so that people can figure out the next meeting dates months in advance without having to call people to remind them of the next meeting. One of the club members recently opened a comic shop in Seattle, and we found this to be an even more convenient location to hold the meetings, so we eventually moved the meetings there. This new location had the added advantage of being equipped with several video monitors. These days, we're meeting in people's homes, rotating the location every few months, as we've gotten to know the collectors in the club and people are more at ease with bringing the others into their homes.

A small group of us got these meetings off the ground before we advertised in order to iron out any remaining details. Our plan was to make this cheap. The meetings would be absolutely free to attend. The only cost involved would be to take turns bringing food to share with other club members, which so far has consisted of things like a couple of bags of Doritos or a Darth Vader cake. Since our club has about 15 members, one's turn comes up every year or so, thus not making this too expensive for anyone.

From our experiences, I would like the submit the following suggestions for starting a club in your area. You need a Star Wars Club Ayatollah to keep the meetings organized. This doesn't have to be a formal position, but it is important to have at least one person make sure that things are getting done so that each meeting is successful. I have the dubious distinction having held this position in our Seattle club, but I tried to be a benevolent Ayatollah so that a violent coup did not overthrow me and bury me in a ditch filled with Star Wars pogs. Anyway, make sure you pick someone who has a goal of facilitating communication and making the meetings interesting. I would suggest that if you plan to organize a club in your area, that the person who decides to take charge should strike the appropriate balance between letting the club take the course its members desire and not allowing dominating dealers/collectors to set self-serving agendas. By and large, most Star Wars collectors are nice, easy-going people, but it's important to be prepared for handling potential personality conflicts -- they will occur.

Since our particular club has evolved to a format this is familiar and comfortable for most people, we no longer require any coordination by any one person as the meetings take on a life of their own. So in most cases, the club Ayatollah is one-time position until the club gets off the ground.

Another important component, which I've touched on already is to pick a place to hold the meetings and continue with this same location each month. A regular monthly time and location will make it easier on everyone. For added redundancy, I distribute rosters of the club members (with their phone numbers) at every meeting. These rosters also include future meeting dates in case there's any doubt about the next meeting time. The rosters are a testament to the success of our meetings, since there has been a tremendous growth in the amount of communication between club members outside of meetings.

The next component is having a critical mass in attendance. It is not necessary to have a large number of people for a successful meeting, but having a core group of regulars, especially if this group consists of rather knowledgeable collectors, will allow the meetings to run smoothly. It's important to welcome collectors covering the entire spectrum of experience in Star Wars collecting. Our club has members who are starting to piece together their loose figure collections and also some who have numerous prototypes, store displays, and movie props and have been collecting for years. Always be kind to beginners and don't forget that everyone is a novice collector at some point in their collecting.

Once the meetings have gotten off the ground, it's important to do a bit of advertising. Leaving flyers at local comic shops, antique malls, or toy shows has allowed us to expand our base. Word of mouth is also a great way to recruit new members. If the club is becoming a success, finding new members is never a problem.

Perhaps the most important issue that we faced is finding an appropriate structure for our meetings. We've tried numerous approachs from total anarchy to detailed meeting agendas. We encountered pitfalls with both extremes. Without going into details about what didn't work, I'll suggest a format that has worked for us. Some degree of structure is really needed or people will start getting bored, but obviously if there's no room for input from those who weren't privy to the plan, the meetings could easily turn boring for other reasons.

We start off each meeting with news of upcoming releases, shows, or buying opportunities. During this portion of the meeting we have a "show and tell" where people bring in some rare and interesting collectibles they'd like to show the other members. Sometimes people bring photos of their collectibles. These collectibles don't have to be $500+ pieces to impress people. For instance, some people have brought such items as custom outfits for large figures, replica prop lightsabers and blasters, and old newspaper clippings and advertisements. Some of the items that have been popular at our meetings included foreign packaged Star Wars toys, old Kenner Toy Fair catalogs (to see unreleased products), photos from the Art of Star Wars exhibit (for the benefit of those who couldn't attend), and the 1995 Toy Fair catalogs from Kenner and other companies (to see new upcoming products). Basically anything that is bound to interest someone should be considered -- the weirder the better!

After the show and tell period, we sit around in a circle and just have an open discussion about anything on people's minds. There's no structure to this part, but it doesn't hurt to have some canned ideas to bring up if the discussion dies. Some collectors tend to be reluctant to talk in large groups, but that's okay because they are still getting something out of hearing other people discuss topics. You'll also find that many collectors like nothing more than sitting around and talking about their finds, experiences, and general collecting information.

After this discussion seems to have ended or broken up into smaller discussions, we start showing videos and start the buying, selling, and trading portion of our meetings. The consensus has been that it is very important to leave dealing for last, since a meeting designed solely for sales will lose a lot of its appeal. There is plenty of time to strike deals after the discussion has broken up. Also, video has a tendency to detract from discussion and presentations, so we have found that this is also best left for the latter part of the meeting while deals are occurring. People who are not interested in buying items will be able to enjoy this part of the meeting by watching the monitors. The videos can consist of just about anything: Japanese Harrison Ford commercials, Droids TV Series episodes, the Wookie Holiday Special, the Star Wars Trilogy itself, fan-made movies, toy commercials, videos inventorying people's collections... the opportunities are endless when you pool the resources of several people who are nuts about Star Wars.

Of course, I don't want to make it sound like buying and selling should be discouraged at meetings. In fact, I've bought some wonderful stuff at our meetings, and I certainly don't mind looking through my wallet at the end of each meeting to find about $200 in checks and cash because I brought a box of loose action figures to sell to other collectors. The pitfall to avoid, however, is having the meeting get overrun by people who are looking at this as strictly a money-making venture. The primary goals are to share information and have a good time. Buying, selling, and trading is only one part of this goal.

Since we started this Star Wars collecting club in Seattle we've expanded our numbers significantly. Even some seasoned collectors have noted quite a large number of interesting discussions and opportunities to see unique items even after years of having the feeling that they've seen just about everything. We're happy with the way our club has developed, but that's not to say we don't have some longterm plans. Although each of our meetings end with a mini Star Wars flea market, we hope to eventually organize a well-publicized toy show that attracts all the Star Wars dealers in our area. These meetings have allowed us to meet and interact with just about every dealer and serious collector in our area. We would eventually like to invite guests to our meetings, and by guests I don't mean actors from the Star Wars movies (although we'd certainly welcome them if we had the chance to invite them), but people involved with Star Wars licensing or dealers and collectors who are well-known known nationally.

The bottom line is that there is no networking opportunity like forming a local collecting club. No matter how much time you spend on the phone or reading through collecting magazines, having the ability to network at a local level is a great opportunity for expanding your Star Wars collection. But, don't take my word for it, see for yourself.