Welcome to the second installment of our regular segment, where a vintage collector is given 10 short questions to answer using only a sentence or two. The same questions will be given to the next collector appearing on the blog.

The current victim is Adolfo Martinez, known as Merlin(72) on the forums. If anyone has crossed paths with Adolfo they will know that not only is his collection outstanding but that he is equally humble and a very down to earth and friendly collector.

Here’s a photo of the handsome Adolfo with his awesome collection.

Adolfo is 41 and for the last 25 years he has lived in Cancun, Mexico (tough life huh), where he works as a travel agent. He is currently one of the admins of the largest SW FB groups in Spanish named Star Wars Collecionistas / Collectors. This forum has over 6500 members and was founded in 2010 by Adolfo’s good friend Moises Rodriguez. Adolfo is proud to say that he was the second member of that forum.

I’m a little bit disappointed by having Adolfo appear in this segment. Not that he isn’t interesting, quite the opposite – in fact he is too interesting to simply appear for 10 quick questions! I think we’ll try to get him back on the blog in the future in some capacity.

Anyway let’s get to the questions! Let’s go Adolfo!

1. How long have you been collecting?

I’ve been collecting since the early 2000s.

2. What do you collect?

I’m generally known for collecting Lili Ledy MOCs (and all the entire Kenner set before that) but recently I started collecting pre-production items. Some of my favourite pieces are: my Lili Ledy Mock up, (only seven Lili Ledy mock ups are known to exist and they are the grails of the LL line), Blond Luke Bespin with Lili Ledy Han Bespin blaster and LL lightsaber (Imperio Contraataca action figure production) on a “Retorno de Jedi” 12 Back (No guarantee inside or sticker, and a Yoda Master Jedi Variant) inside a hand glued Imperio Contraataca Bubble.

3. What’s your grail?

My Holy Grail would be any Lili ledy “Imperio Contraataca” MOC.

4. What collectors inspire you?

My good friend Oscar Didier (known as Oscar cases) inspired me to collect Lili Ledy MOCs

5. What is your most embarrassing moment as a collector?

It has to be every time that someone asks me about modern SW items (90s to present days) because I don’t have a clue what they are talking about lol!

6. What is your favourite Star Wars film?

ESB! Is there another one?

7. What would you change about the collecting community?

I would like collectors to take more time to research the SW collectibles they plan to buy.

8. Forums or Facebook groups?

Both are great, everyone needs to learn to get the most out of them. Facebook groups let me put faces to names and I’ve seen more interesting things in the Facebook groups than on the forums. But forums are the encyclopedias of SW, they maintain a lot of important information about collectibles, such as reference guides.

9. What Star Wars character do you most resemble?

Han Solo – because I’m a scummer like him!

10. Is there one thing that collectors may not know about you?

I’m also an avid coin collector and I really enjoy what I do for a living!

Thanks for the opportunity to share this info with my fellow SW collectors in this extraordinary place.