QuoteA short time ago, on a chicken ranch not so far away, Lucasfilm's biggest in-house Star Wars fan began to turn his private collection of Star Wars stuff into a nonprofit museum.
His name was Steve Sansweet, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose life was changed forever when he saw a press preview of the original Star Wars — now known as Episode IV — in May 1977. An inveterate collector of robot toys, baseball cards and swizzle sticks, Sansweet soon channeled all of his passion into corralling as many Star Wars-related items as he could.
After writing the first edition of the Star Wars Encyclopedia, Sansweet was offered a job at Lucasfilm as Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations in 1996. He organized the first annual global gathering of the faithful, known as Celebration, in 1999. By the time Sansweet stepped down from his full-time role in 2011, George Lucas himself had dubbed Sansweet "the ultimate fan."
It's not hard to see why; Sansweet's collection contains much that even Lucas doesn't own. It's a riotous melange of bootleg merchandise, fan-built labors of love, movie-set memorabilia (Sansweet rushed in to get the remnants of Qui-Gon Jinn after the Jedi master's corpose was burned in Phantom Menace, to take one small example) and just about every commercial Star Wars item known to man, woman and (especially) children.
Sansweet bought a former chicken ranch in Petaluma, Calif., a short drive from Skywalker Ranch. Its long barn was perfect for housing his increasingly unwieldy collection. At first, he would just show friends around — but fans were clamoring to get in, and it was expensive to maintain.
"I made the plunge and decided to invest a good deal of my money," Sansweet says. "It would be not just a warehouse for my stuff, but a real look at Star Wars through the prism of merchandising." Two good friends, Anne Neumann and Consetta Parker, helped convince him to form a nonprofit and now help him run it.
http://mashable.com/2013/02/02/rancho-obi-wan/#113389An-Expanded-Universe
Make sure and check out the gallery in the article. You owe it to yourself to look at all 98 pictures. There is awesome stuff along side of some very unusual stuff.
My stopped displaying at 82 :(
Quote from: LongBlade on February 02, 2013, 08:55:34 PM
My stopped displaying at 82 :(
I had to reload the page a couple of times to finish viewing them all.
Quote from: LongBlade on February 02, 2013, 08:55:34 PM
My stopped displaying at 82 :(
82 is like the new 52 but for men.
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on February 03, 2013, 10:46:39 AM
Quote from: LongBlade on February 02, 2013, 08:55:34 PM
My stopped displaying at 82 :(
82 is like the new 52 but for men.
Fine.
Smuck? You're fired.
Congratulations, Star. You're the new Aqualad.
Silence, Aqualad.
George Lucas was right. Sansweet is "the ultimate fan."
Quote from: LongBlade on February 03, 2013, 10:51:09 AM
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on February 03, 2013, 10:46:39 AM
Quote from: LongBlade on February 02, 2013, 08:55:34 PM
My stopped displaying at 82 :(
82 is like the new 52 but for men.
Fine.
Smuck? You're fired.
Congratulations, Star. You're the new Aqualad.
Silence, Aqualad.
thats not how it works.
Too bad.
Now silence, Aqualad, or you'll find a new avatar welcoming you.