Thursday, January 14, 2010

What We're Reading: Tracy

Star Wars: 1,000 Collectibles: Memorabilia and Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away, by Stephen J. Sansweet with Anne Neumann.

There are lots of Star Wars collectors out there, but none quite like Steve Sansweet, owner of the largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia in the world. The collection is so vast it outgrew a shed, a three-story house, and five self-storage lockers, and now fills the buildings of an entire ranch in California bought especially for the purpose.

There are also lots of Star Wars collectible guidebooks out there, but again, none like this one, topping out at 568 pages, written by Sansweet himself, and featuring 1,000 carefully selected items from his famed collection. But it isn't just the size and scope of this book that makes it stand out. What really sets it in a galaxy of its own is the fact that Sansweet has accompanied many of the objects in the book with the stories of how he found them. As any seasoned collector can attest, the process of finding a long-sought object is often just as exciting a part of collecting as actually attaining the piece itself.

Here's Sansweet's caption describing how he came to own his very first, and one of his most valuable, items of Star Wars memorabilia, the Star Wars Promotional Book sent to the media by 20th Century Fox in 1976:

"This is my very first Star Wars collectible, a colorful promotional brochure. It was sent to the reporter who covered the movie business in the Los Angeles news bureau of the Wall Street Journal, where I plied my trade as a journalist. I looked on covetously as my colleague skimmed the pages...and then tossed the booklet and its outer box into his wastebasket. A few hours later he left for the day, and I nonchalantly strolled over to his desk, reached into the basket, and pulled out my prize. I was thankful he hadn't had a messy lunch that day."

From this rather ignominious beginning, Sansweet went on over the years to claim some of the greatest Star Wars merchandise and memorabilia yet seen: a Darth Vader costume actually worn in the Empire Strikes Back; a life-size animatronic Cantina Band made for FAO Scharwz; original theater marquee letters from the 1977 premiere of Star Wars; unproduced prototype action figures; and much, much more.

Collectors of all sorts, and Star Wars fans in particular, will enjoy this look at a lifetime's worth of toy treasure hunting finds.

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