The book that collectors have clamored for since the Star Wars phenomenon began over 30 years ago has finally arrived, courtesy of authors Gus Lopez and Duncan Jenkins: Gus and Duncan's Comprehensive Guide to Star Wars Collectibles.
Containing over 75,000 items listed over 984 pages with 36,000 full-color pictures, this is the ultimate guide that no Star Wars collector should be without. A decade's worth of research has gone into this 56-chapter tome, representing collectibles from 100 different countries, including lemon cola cans from South Africa and Darth Vader duvet covers from Sweden. It's all here, or at least pretty much every item known to the authors who have been collecting Star Wars for three decades.
We asked Gus and Duncan some questions about the Comprehensive Guide to Star Wars Collectibles, which is currently going to press:
For years, collectors have been able to browse over to The Star Wars Collectors Archive (maintained by Gus, Duncan, and others) for a pretty thorough listing of Star Wars collectibles. What makes the book different?
The Star Wars Collectors Archive is a virtual museum of unique, rare, and strange Star Wars collectibles, drawing from some of the top items in the top collections. We didn't cover unique items in our guide because we wanted to focus on items made in quantity (although sometimes extremely small quantities). Several years ago when we started on the book, we retrofitted the SWCA to be built on top of the database of items that formed the basis for this book. We hope that moving forward the two will build off of each other.
Also, the SWCA allows for much more information to be presented about any given item. The contributors to the Archive often provide anecdotal or personal opinions about their items. The book simply can not contain that type of information and still be useable as a reference guide. We wanted to make a useful tool collectors could physically take to toy shows or fan get-togethers. They can then use the online Archive to further explore details about the items in the book.
The title begs two questions -- just how comprehensive is "Comprehensive" and why "Guide" rather than "price guide"?
In our estimation, this is by far the most complete Star Wars guide ever assembled, containing about twice as many items as the next largest guide. The book covers over 75,000 unique items with over 36,000 full-color photos in 984 pages. Unlike some of the other resources previously available which primarily emphasized US items, particularly toys issued since 1997, we covered the full range: over 100 countries, many categories of collectibles, licensed and unlicensed, and thousands of vintage items along with extensive listings of contemporary collectibles. There is a great deal of commentary and background information in each of the 56 chapters, and every item is assigned an identifier that we will continue to use in future editions, an estimated price range, and each collectible is classified by category, company, country, and film (or era). Another great feature of the guide is our company index that will allow you to quickly find all items in the book from any given licensee.
No Star Wars guide is ever 100% comprehensive but our objective is to build the most complete guide ever made and continue making it better every few years with updates from new promotions like Clone Wars, Force Unleashed, and the upcoming live action television series. There are thousands of items in this book that have never been listed in a guide before now. We found that there were small pockets of localized knowledge. Sometimes limited to a particular country where the item was released and sometimes limited to a group of category-specific collectors. We have endeavored to bring together all those disparate bits of information into one place. To us, the ultimate value of the items listed is not monetary.
Although we did give price ranges for every item listed, we opted to leave "Price" out of the title so that it would not be over emphasized. In the Internet Age, price ranges in collectibles guides can lose their significance very quickly, however collectors do want to have an idea of the secondary market prices of items, so we opted to list those as a guideline. We tell readers that their mileage may vary and that they will find items today below and above the listed prices. On the balance, we found that price ranges were more helpful than distracting.
Besides, the title is long enough as it is.
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