Beyond Pixels: my vintage Star Wars collection, for net magazine.
How a stray Yak Face figure kick-started a mission to collect every vintage Star Wars figure.
From the archiveFirst published on our old journal on 11 October 2017. We’ve kept it as it was, so some details and links may be out of date.
This article was published in issue 297 of net magazine, in September 2017.
Nobody can ever forget the first time they watched Star Wars. Aged only six, I clearly remember going to the cinema with my older cousin Mike to watch The Empire Strikes Back. It blew my mind. I was hooked. Luckily, Mike already had a few Star Wars toys, so we could immediately re-enact those epic battle scenes.
Now I wanted my own collection of Star Wars toys. I used to regularly go to my local toy shop, Dentons in Witney, Oxfordshire, and pore over the wall of Star Wars figures on display. As you can imagine, top of my Christmas wish list was the iconic Millennium Falcon.
After Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, my cousin, who was quite a few years older than me, started to grow out of playing with toys, and I gladly inherited all of his Star Wars figures and ships.
At my parents’ house, there must be an army of yellowing figures buried under the patio, in the former sandpit/Sarlacc Pit where we used to play for hours and hours.
As a designer, Star Wars has always been a major influence on my aesthetic taste. The design of Star Wars is an infinitely deep rabbit hole of superbly designed characters, clothes, creatures, planets, buildings and ships, which never seem to date.
Some years later I also grew out of playing with toys, after discovering skateboarding, cycling and girls. I passed on some of my figures to my younger brother Nathan. But the memory of selling my beloved Millennium Falcon for £5 at the local car boot sale will haunt me forever.
A couple of years ago, my wife Helen came home with a bag full of old toy soldiers that somebody had given her. She asked me to have a quick look through it before she threw them away or gave them to the charity shop. I opened the bag and, staring right back at me from among the green plastic army figures, was Yak Face, a well-known rarer vintage Star Wars figure. What a find! This little old piece of vintage plastic was worth about £150.
We could have just sold it. But no, instead it kick-started the inner child in me and I decided to embark on a mission to buy every single vintage Star Wars figure released between 1977 and 1988. My adult brain reasoned that each purchase was a good investment, as prices were rising thanks to the popularity of the new Star Wars films and the upcoming 40th anniversary of the franchise.
I stumbled upon a very addictive Facebook group called Echo Base UK, with a great community spirit, which lets collectors trade vintage Star Wars toys while avoiding eBay fees and scams. Since then I’ve managed to collect the complete set of 96 loose vintage figures, a couple of ships and two MOC (mint on card) figures.
I’m now starting to collect all the major variants, which have minor detail differences and can be harder to find, and I’ve also developed a small R2-D2 focus. I can’t tell you how much happiness collecting these vintage figures has brought me. I now eagerly await the postman or postwoman with my next delivery of plastic crack.
