I recently posted some photos on our Facebook page of my trip to Tunisia with my wife. I’m always excited to visit Tunisia because it’s a great place, is always sunny, great food and I love seeing my wife’s family there. This time I was a little bit more excited than usual though as not only we were visiting some Star Wars filming locations on the beautiful island of Djerba (look out for our article about this trip in the very near future!) but I was also going to finally pick up a Luke Jedi MOC that I purchased from my good mate Ross B in Ohio, U.S last June.

This Luke was also special because it was a particularly well-travelled little fella. Instead of having Ross send it straight to me here in The Netherlands, I thought I’d skip the custom taxes and have it shipped to my wife’s sister who lives in Washington D.C. She would then bring it over and hand over the package to my wife in Paris on July. However, things started poorly straight off the bat as my wife had given me the wrong address for her sister’s residence in D.C. So Ross had to send it again after the post had returned it to him. Bad omen? Nah, what else could go wrong…

Well guess what? My wife did go to Paris to meet her but unfortunately her sister missed her flight! Long story that I won’t get into right now. So my wife missed seeing her and also missed out on picking up the plastic contraband. She did bring me a nice sweater from Paris though!

My sister-in-law, her boyfriend and Luke did manage getting to Paris the next day but my wife had left by then. She then took him to Tunisia, where she left him there for me to pick up in September.

So Luke Jedi had travelled from the U.S to Paris (via Canada and Finland), then onto Tunisia and then I would eventually take him back to The Netherlands. That’s gonna be one jet-lagged Luke!

Rewind a little bit to the moment when I had just arrived in Tunisia a couple of weeks ago, where I stormed into my in-laws house and marched upstairs to our bedroom. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that Luke, another worthwhile addition to my Luke Skywalker focus. I knew the bubble was going to be a bit yellow (it was a Kenner ROTJ after all) but I knew the card was in decent shape. Well I was horrified when I found him! Before leaving Washington,  my wife’s sister had asked her if she could “rip the plastic off’  so that it could more easily fit into her overstuffed suitcase. Of course my wife said no and at this point my wife was thinking that her sister was talking about the box and wrapping the MOC had come in, rather than the bubble of the MOC itself. Anyway lucky for me I have a SW vintage savvy wife. Well that was that. Or so I thought! I wasn’t exactly prepared for what happened next! Look for yourselves! Something’s not right huh?

My sister-in-law had folded the card neatly into quarters so she could squeeze it into her bag! She thought I only collected the loose figures and believed the cards were worthless. Of course I was mortified at first but at least it was not an expensive MOC and it gave me inspiration for a blog post! My sister-in-law felt pretty bad about it so I let it slide. None of us want to see an MOC ruined but I guess it could be worse…..Now just to confirm, not only is she my sister-in-law but we are also close friends so I hope the Star Wars vintage mafia doesn’t put out a contract on her. I mean it’s not like she’s a u grader…

I threw the damaged MOC into one of Christian’s and Iain’s acrylic cases (photo below) but even these fantastic cases couldn’t scrub the MOC back to standard. Oh well live and learn I guess….