I’m happy to start off the day on a positive note. Collecting vintage can be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster sometimes – dealing with scammers, repros, aggressive behaviour on the forums/Facebook but on the other hand witnessing generosity and the friendship of our collecting buddies.

My collecting weekend started off poorly after I received several repro weapons in two small figure lots I bought (plus the seller did not bother to respond to my emails after I found the weapons were repro). It’s not nice feeling ripped off, whether it was intentional or not. Australia also lost their first game in the World Cup so it really was a bad start!

But then yesterday I had a touch of good luck, well not luck really – more like friendship. I’m thinning down some of my collection so I decided to sell one of my three Luke X-Wing Pilot PBPs (both COO types in Wolff’s COO guide). I advertised one of them that was in great condition – extremely good wear which is rare for these variants. I thought the blaster I was selling was just a normal Kenner one. I priced it to sell and I did get several immediate offers for it but luckily for me one of my friends messaged me to let me know that I was actually selling off a very hard to find PBP version of the blaster. Really great pick up for them to notice the feature that distinguished it as a PBP. If you look closely you can see a small notch under the blaster barrel. Well now I know I guess…

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So I pulled the sale. Not because I could have gotten more for it but because I actually collect Luke variants myself so there is no way I would knowingly sell such a hard to find blaster. So the little fella is now back in my display cabinet and I had to apologise for taking down the sale. I did feel pretty silly but I guess it shows I have  so much more to learn.

I always make sure to check the TIG weapon guide for repros but I know now that I should also check the guide for variants before selling. If you have not seen the excellent guide, check it out. My respect for the guys at TIG continues to grow and grow.

http://www.imperialgunnery.com/

I know this is really only a relatively minor example of one of the great things collectors do for each other, but it really made my night.

Thanks again to all of my collector friends out there. You make the hobby more enjoyable for all of us and it’s nice to know someone’s got our backs.

Christian