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Interpretation of a yardsale find
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 8:47 am    Post subject: Interpretation of a yardsale find Reply with quote

So this is a pretty good yardsale find from the 1990's. It's been in storage ever since, but now I am putting it up on here. What I love about it is, it's a discreet enough find, kept in constant isolation, that it can tell it's own story.

This kid apparently outgrew toys before Kenner's Return of the Jedi line hit shelves. All the figures are drawn from the ANH and early ESB releases, and the case is an early model. The first wave of ROTJ figures was in 1983. A lot of kids outgrow toys by 13 at the latest, so, this gives us a birth year for the original owner of circa 1970. Probably a solid 10 years older than myself, maybe even more. This kid could have been clinging to childhood things well into junior high, putting them at what, a maximum of age 14, during the 1980 ESB wave. If the condition of the figures is any indication, this collector was a young child during the ANH runs, and kept better care of their figures during ESB. Since none of the ESB 2nd wave figures are present, it seems likely that they were already starting to get too old for toys when ESB was out.

Also, I assume these were owned by a child and not an adult fan who put them up on his desk or something, due to the playwear and missing accessories. The characters that naturally lend themselves to storytelling suffer from the most missing accessories. Luke(s), Leia, and Chewbacca got hit pretty hard in the accessory department. Yoda(s) and Obi-Wan are complete. There would have originally been an awful lot of E-11's and DL-44's present from the various heroes and the cantina aliens, so even if they lost theirs, Han, Luke and Boba could be easily re-armed.

There are 5 duplicates in the collection, none of which make any sense from a kid collecting standpoint: R2-D2, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, Luke in Bespin Fatigues, and Yoda. Both Yoda's have all their accessories so it seems unlikely that this child acquired duplicates in order to secure replacement parts. None of the duplicates are supernumeraries. Thus these seem, in the way of childhood, to be birthday presents and the like.

All in all this is a quaint little loose collection with a large number of original accessories present.

Probably the "best in show" is the Obi-Wan Kenobi with his accessories intact, and presumably from the early ANH runs. Runner up would be tied between the nearly pristine original R2, or the FX-7 with no broken limbs.

https://imgur.com/wD6HHkb

https://imgur.com/49wEbfe

https://imgur.com/S40F6oS

https://imgur.com/vGbVYQc

https://imgur.com/pCnUQbx
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)


Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10435
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy

PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wait. You've had these vintage toys in storage since the 90s? Wow!

Those toys look to be in great shape of their age. I wish my Blue Snaggletooth and 79 Boba Fett were in that good of condition.

I decided I was too old for toys right before RotJ and gave almost all of them to my younger brother who subsequently lost or damaged all of them (he was very rough with toys). I regret giving them to him.

The duplicates could have been from gifts, or maybe the kid was a klepto. I knew a klepto in school who had two identical used copies of the Milli Vanilli album on cassette. Kleptomania isn't logical. It is not just the removal of the inhibition not to steal. He would steal things he didn't even need, just for the sake of stealing them. He always used to say he "found" stuff all the time.
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TauntaunScout
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Joined: 20 Apr 2015
Posts: 981

PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Wait. You've had these vintage toys in storage since the 90s? Wow!


Yes. Everything we acquired from childhood, plus adolescent collecting in the 90's, was entombed in an abandoned house. In 1999, the inhabitants of the house left, but didn't move out. This summer, I made a trip to the house and got everything out. Some stuff had to be left because time had ruined it.

But the haul was huge.

And you're never too old for toys.

We had lots of duplicate SW guys, we weren't kleptos but we'd get random gifts. And towards the end, we'd snag anything, because it was getting harder and harder to find SW toys. The last time I saw SW toys "in the wild" was two Lobots on a pegboard in a tourist shop Tionesta, PA circa 1991 and we left them there. In retrospect I cannot imagine why we didn't' buy them as investments. We (my mom and I) understood the monetary value of such things.

But yeah if anyone's looking for a vintage SW thing... there's decent odds it's in my basement... or recently was... so hurry cause I'm cashing stuff in for credit at gaming stores and such. Or giving it to friends who need it to complete a collection.
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MrNexx
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Joined: 25 Mar 2016
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Location: San Antonio

PostPosted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good lord, the COLORS on those pieces. I don't think I saw that bright of color on the toys I had in the 80s.
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 8:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:
Good lord, the COLORS on those pieces. I don't think I saw that bright of color on the toys I had in the 80s.


It's amazing how well the color is preserved by plain old simple darkness. These figures haven't seen any light in decades.
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