A regularly updated blog about my vintage Kenner Star Wars toy collection. Some stuff that I've recently acquired; some stuff that I've had since I was a kid. Some rare, some common, but all sharing the warmth, charm and character of the "first generation" of Star Wars toys - the ones we played with as kids in the late '70s and early '80s.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Display Limelight

I wanted to post a few photos of my "Star Wars Corner" where I display my stuff. I know many collectors are interested in how others display their collections (I am) and it's fun to see what ideas people have for display. In the photo above, my loose figures are displayed in a glass case from JYSK that's similar to the IKEA "Detolf" case. From top shelf to bottom, I have the last wave of POTF figures (and boxed Landspeeder); the last nine SW figures along with the ESB wave; the ROTJ wave; and on the bottom, the boxed Cloud Car with my two MOCs (Toy Fair Leia and Leia
Endor) and some variants (matte grey IG-88, Taiwan Fett, one-stripe Death Squad Commander, smiling Lando, large head Han, cloth cape Jawa) and bootlegs (Mark Poon Rocket Fett and new Stormtrooper set). On the top is the box for my Palitoy Death Star, a recent acquisition that I'm very excited about!

Between the wall and the basement stairs, I've constructed a wall of three IKEA "Besta" shelf units. The doors at the bottom of the units conceal more storage - cases of loose figures, some loose vehicles (including two AT-ATs), etc. At lower left you can see the top of my Gentle Giant Vader, a present from my wife that re-sparked my vintage collecting hobby. Both the glass case and the Bestas are lit with LED strip lighting, which I really like. It's easy on the collectibles as well.
 
Opposite that on the far wall, there's another IKEA case with ships and models displayed on top. At centre there's a French copy of Stephane Faucourt's great new book, "La French Touch", which I helped him with. On the shelves at left are my other Star Wars reference books.
 
Upstairs in my office, behind the desk at which I'm typing this, I keep my ALIEN stuff. The curio cabinet I've had forever and I keep the modern stuff from Super7 in there. Below that there's the awesome original Kenner ALIEN figure, a copy of Giger's book, and two "eggs" from Super7 that a colleague picked up for me at SDCC 2014 (thanks Victor!)

The new vintage MOCs just fit in crosswise. I also have the "clear Alien" but he stays in the shipping case as there isn't room in the cabinet. On the lower shelf there's the "Early Bird Kit" and the two "salesman samples" from SDCC 2013, as well as two egg figures from this year's Comicon. I've written a lengthy blog post on the new vintage ALIEN stuff from Super7 - you can find it here.

I just love the Big Chap; if you want to read more about him click here. Giger's art books are frightening works of genius...

Well, there's the quick tour of my collection. The Star Wars stuff is in the basement with minimal natural light incursion so I'm not overly worried about degradation. The ALIEN stuff, however, is upstairs in my office with a large south-facing window. I've addressed this issue by having UV film professionally applied to the window. It looks great (that is to say, you don't notice it at all) and does the job - blocks almost all UV as well as reducing heat considerably. I recommend that everybody look into a solution like this if you have to store stuff where natural light abounds.

I hope it's inspirational!

3 comments:

  1. Very nice! Thanks for sharing. I have aspirations of setting up a nice display area for my stuff some day, but I don't have as much cool vintage stuff as you.

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  2. Thanks Edward! There's lots out there, it just takes patience and time. What you see in the pictures was accumulated starting back in 1978! Best wishes to you on your collecting journey! :-)

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