Massive Star Wars collection being auctioned

That sounds pretty sweet. If anyone ends up going, make sure to take lots of pics!

 

Not sure what the auction has to do with all the negativity. For one thing, I am willing to guess that, as this claims to be from one of the largest Star Wars collections, from someone who was featured in 1990, that it is heavily (if not all) weighted towards vintage merchandise.

There is no question that the hobby has changed, especially in this new internet era, but that is just the way of life. For myself, I can only stay that my Star Wars collecting has trickled to virtually nothing, which is why I have focused now on my kaiju. But this is a combined effect of the nature of the beast now (people flipping SW on fleabay, trying to make a buck with everything GL touched) and also reaching a not completion point, but asymptote to purchasing.

As for new stuff, though I have a large amount of it, I just never got into it. If the line does reach it's demise, I won't be mourning too long. There are several reasons for this. One is that I would say it is only in the last couple years that they have produced anthing even remotely decent, and I would point out that the reason for this is largely linked to going back to the roots of the franchise and figures. I think people forget too quickly the garbage that Hasbro brought out when they revived the POTF line. Seriously, those first waves of figures were some of the worst crimes in toy franchises I can think of.

The second reason I would bring up, speaking from the point of view of a collector in Canada, though this could equally apply to other non-US countries, is that the release of Star Wars figures internationally has been extremely poorly handled. Of the sum total of the 3 3/4" line that was released, I would say only 25% ever made it to shelves in Canada. Why this was, I have no idea. Combine this with all the TRU/KB/Target/etc. store exclusives we could never get a hold of, makes it extremely discouraging to try to buy. But as a result, I saw a lot of what I call 'Madine'-syndrome, i.e. certain action figures doomed to hang the shelves in mass quantities for years. Retailers are not stupid. They noticed these hordes of action figures no one cared about trying up their valuable shelf space. At first perhaps nostalgia and awareness of the fanbase allowed them to cut it some slack, but since then any Star Wars section has been extremely limited, if you were lucky enough to even find any. This leads me into my next point.

Another principle reason the franchise is wasting is, let's face it, the dissapointed that is the prequel trilogy. Sure, people went to see it, and yes, loads of toys were sold off of them. But this is due to two main factors: adults buying for thier children (of course) and collectors/fans. In the case of the former, I challenge anyone reading this to walk into the action figure aisle in watever their local toy store is and count the number of lines related to a movie/TV franchise. That's not to say this hasn't always existed, but just to point out that the youth today has innumerable options to it, and never mind the banality of the MTV generation, children today are as fickle as they have ever been. Combine that with decrease in toy appeal across the board, as children are turning to video games/electronics younger and younger and you have a recipe for the death of SW toys. And even now, the prequels are fading from memory, and those children have moved on. I would argue that it is sustained for the most part now by collectors, hence why we are seeing a resurgence in vintage-like packaging, re-issues, and attention to detail with sculpting. Sure, the Clone Wars has revived it a bit, but those fans can make no connection to the original SW (and I have seen this in person).

Anyways, sorry for the rant, but I would write a book on where Hasbro and Lucas have gone wrong with this, and maybe I might, but I don't want to pollute the bookstores with more inane crap.