Why I Don’t Collect Star Wars
05.25.06 By Derek DahlsadI was born around the right time, I have an affinity for science fiction, I’ve got an eBay account — but why don’t I collect Star Wars?
The first Star Wars toy I got was a sandspeeder, circa 1978, and nearly every birthday or Christmas after that point included Star Wars of some sort. I still have the sandspeeder around here someplace. My parents, the source of my packrat mentality, stored my and my siblings’ toys for decades, waiting for the eventual day that we come and pick up our stuff and take it to our own basements. A year or two ago, I did exactly that.
I’ve gone through all of it, sorted the broken from the intact, the bad from the good, and figured out which weapons go with which figures. Much to most action-figure collectors’ dismay, they’re not lined up on a shelf. I’ve got a couple boxes in the basement, loosely organized by type.
I sold a bunch of them on eBay. There was even a nice Weequay, still in its original package, that went on auction. A couple of the complete figures went under glass in our antique booth. My wife took all the Ewoks and claimed them for herself; they guard her computer monitor. The rest are lying around in boxes, waiting to be sold.
A lot of the recent interest in 80s artifacts is an attempt by those of us in our late 20s to early 30s who miss the items from their childhood and now have the money to buy them. GI Joe, Rainbow Brite, He Man, My Little Pony, Transformers: besides still being in production, they all have a new following for their old incarnations. People all over, in the US 
and overseas, and competing with their dollars to buy back their childhood, collect the toys that they broke or lost so long ago.
I admit, I’m a big packrat - I keep darn near everything. I have boxes of receipts, piles of computer junk, boxes of stuff I don’t know what it is but can’t part with. The toys, however, don’t even hold as much value as the box of PC power cords. Those I might have a use for. The toys, not nearly so.
My real collection is up on bookshelves, old leatherbound tomes; it’s the century-old oil paintings on the wall. It’s bits and pieces of ephemera, one-of-a-kind works of human art. The items in my collection may be old, but there’s no replacing them. Age and uniqueness has given the items a value, maybe not priceless, but worthy of being on a shelf for display.
The leftover toys, the rare ones that actually survived, are deserving of a garage sale. I played with them for years, I had my fun, I don’t need to buy that back again. Why do I need them now? I can’t even play with them like I did in my childhood; that’d ruin the value. A new-old toy, like a genuine tin windup from the 50s or a composite doll from the 1910s, is old in a good way. The toys from the 80s, mass-produced by the thousands and marketed with half-hour cartoons, are meant to be tossed out, disposable items in a fast-moving market.
A lot of my Star Wars toys aren’t really collector quality, so I probably won’t find buyers for them. I don’t particularly need to keep them, but if I hold onto them long enough they may find their way into a young collector’s hands years from now. The day will come when they will be revered as antiques, not as leftovers from a person’s forgotten youth. Until then, I won’t be displaying them. My Star Wars figures will be unceremoniously dumped into a box and stacked in the basement. I don’t need them; it’s not what I’m into right now.
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Article Tags: 80's, artifacts, sandspeeder, Star Wars, Weequay================
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