If you’re attending Star Wars Celebration, be sure to visit the Rancho Obi-Wan booth and see Saga Museum member panels at Star Wars Celebration Japan!
Visit the Rancho Obi-Wan booth to draw your own Star Wars Sketch Card and see select items from our collection, and collections of The Saga Museum collector’s Duncan Jenkins and Gus Lopez.
Duncan Jenkins will be a presenter for the Star Wars Around the House Panel on Sunday, April 20th 1:00pm–2:00pm on the Collector’s Stage. This fun panel will cover household and kitchen products from a galaxy far, far away!
Bonus! Gus Lopez will be hosting all the panels at the Collector’s Stage at Star Wars Celebration Japan!
We hope everyone has a wonderful time celebrating Star Wars together at Star Wars Celebration Japan 2025!
Let’s take a look at the colorful world of Keshigomu Star Wars Characters and Vehicles first released from Japan in 1978!
Keshigomu means “rubber eraser” and they have been a very popular area of collecting in Japan since the 1970s.There are countless lines from almost every imaginable franchise.So, it’s no wonder that there were multiple series keshi (as the word is usually shortened colloquially) of Star Wars characters and vehicles when the film was first released in Japan in 1978.
We will only discuss one series now, but later installments will deal with the others.If you can’t wait that long, there is still time to book a flight an attend Star Wars Celebration Japan in Tokyo where I will be on a panel entitled “The Colorful World of Keshigomu” on April 19 from 12:30 to 1pm.Also, the Rancho Obi-Wan booth at Celebration Japan will showcase some of these interesting and fun collectibles so stop by to see them.
People (especially kids) love loopholes in the rules and that, I have been told, is the impetuous for the rise in popularity of Keshigomu.An obvious rule is you can’t bring toys to school.But what if you were only bringing an eraser to class?No problem.What if that eraser just happened to look like your favorite cartoon character or a starship?Now you’ve managed to fight the system and have a fun way to escape the tedium of preparing for the rest of your life.Don’t be fooled that any actual erasing took place with these toys [err..] legitimate school supplies.
Keshi are inexpensive and can be purchased in many ways from capsule machines (what we would call gumball machines) to kiosks and even premiums in food promotions.The first line we will discuss is from a company called Maruka Toy Company.These small size erasers (not toys) were sold in 50-piece bags.I don’t know about you but I don’t think I have used up 50 erasers in my entire life.These bags were filled with random Star Wars vehicles and characters roughly an inch and a half tall in a rainbow of colors.Each color was available in opaque and translucent.So, you can see that completing a full set can be quite a challenge.And we all know collectors like a challenge.The small Maruka series consists of the Millennium Falcon, Landspeeder, X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter, the Escape Pod (looking more like a Soyuz Capsule), and the intrepid droid duo C-3PO & R2-D2 providing the only actual characters in the bags.
If a 50-piece bag wasn’t in a young kid’s budget or they were a budding gambler, they could instead choose to purchase the keshi in sealed paper bags that each contained five random erasers (not toys) from the line.Interestingly, it seems that a Star Destroyer was available only in these blind bags.In addition to the five colorful vehicles or droids, there was a piece of paper letting the buyer know if they were a winner or loser.If they were a loser, all the young student could do was hang their head in shame and exit the store.But if they were a winner they were treated to a free exclusive keshi of either Darth Vader or R2-D2 (slightly different than the plain Artoo found in regular packs).Four different images can be found on the paper blind bags: Darth Vader or the Droids (shown here) plus the Space Battle photo and the Japanese version of the Hildebrandt art.
You might think surely that is enough keshi for one movie, but, as they say in Japan “Au contraire mon frère.”This is just the beginning.But you will have to wait patiently for the next installment.
As a postscript, when Gus Lopez and I wrote our eponymous price guide “Gus and Duncan’s Comprehensive Guide to Star Wars Collectibles”, we listed the 50-piece bag of the small Maruka keshi in the Toy chapter.But don’t tell any Japanese teachers or the jig will be up and the loophole will be closed.
This is not just an average Star Wars poster now hanging in the expansion at Rancho Obi-Wan. This is a 1977 Factors Hildebrandt Star Wars poster that was recently rediscovered amongst other framed art pieces here in storage!
And it’s not just a 1977 Factors Hildebrandt Star Wars poster… it’s a printer proof sheet copy! (note the color bar on the left hand side). Printer proof sheets are rare, but what makes this piece really unique is that it’s a proof sheet on mylar that has been permanently mounted to a backer board. Normal proofs would be on regular white poster paper. When a photo of this poster was shown to Star Wars poster collectors group, they agreed that none of them has seen one like it before.
Rancho Obi-Wan Board member and Senior Writer at Lucasfilm, Pete Vilmer said, though none like this one have surfaced before, he has Lucasfilm documentation dated June 1977 requesting a mylar poster be made . So this poster proves at the very least an attempt was made to fulfill that request. Why it was never mass produced is still a mystery. Pete suggested the mounting of this poster may have be done as presentation piece to Lucasfilm or within the Factors company, but there’s no confirmation of that.
Perhaps more information will come to light on this piece, and if it does we will update this post. For now, We are just excited to be able to now share this special Star Wars poster in the museum for all to enjoy!
Special Thanks to our docent, Dwayne Smith, for looking into the history of this Star Wars poster.
This is an item that fans of vintage Star Wars Kenner action figures will immediately recognize: it’s the original art for the Star Wars Collector’s Action Stand (or Action Collector’s Stand, or Action Display Stand, depending on where you saw it). It was painted by an unknown artist, probably in the last quarter of 1977 or the early weeks of 1978.
When we acquired the painting in 2001, it had been stored away in darkness for a few decades, so the colors remained vivid, and the board that it’s painted on remained dry and flat. Unfortunately, when it was created, it was almost certainly thought of as an ephemeral object, intended to be photographed and then likely forgotten, so the materials and techniques that were used to craft it would have been selected for efficiency rather than longevity. As a result, some of the paint in one area—the Death Star—was literally falling off in flakes. We needed to act quickly to stabilize it. We called the Seattle Art Museum for advice, and they connected us with a professional art conservation expert who we then contracted to restore the painting and help us preserve it for the future.
This is a page from the conservator’s report showing the state of the painting shortly after we acquired it.
The art conservator determined that the paint that was flaking was most likely formulated for painting plastic models rather than art board, and the board hadn’t been primed to accept that type of paint. Over the course of several weeks, he spent many hours painstakingly gluing down each and every flake of paint that was lifting, as well as replacing a bag full of tiny flakes that had already fallen away, using a needle to apply a tiny droplet of archival adhesive under each one. Next, he carefully filled in the missing areas and blended away the cracks, and finally he applied a coating intended to prevent further paint shedding.
This is a closeup of the restored painting. (The image is presented upside-down to match the image in the conservator’s report above.)
It’s easy to think of a collection as a window into the past, but collectors also think a lot about the future, spending time, money, and effort to ensure that the items in our collections will be around well after we ourselves have passed. We ended up spending as much on the restoration work as we did on the painting itself, but we’re glad that we did. We hope that one day you can enjoy it in person in The Saga Museum of Star Wars Memorabilia.
Mardi Gras is probably not something that comes to mind when you think about Star Wars. In fact, I don’t know of any official Star Wars products created for the parade that takes place on the holiday to celebrate the last day before Lent. But that hasn’t stopped the making of some interesting unofficial items.
Each year Krewes, clubs that create a float for the Mardi Gras parades held all over the world (most notably in New Orleans), pick a theme and create trinkets like beads and doubloons to throw to the parade spectators. Some of these themes have centered around motion pictures or Science Fiction which have Star Wars elements and some have been completely Star Wars-centric. Yoda, R2-D2, and X-Wings have featured prominently in these themes as seen by the doubloons pictured from the 1980’s. These are just a sampling of fun Star Wars-related items celebrating “Fat Tuesday.”
Another interesting item with Star Wars iconography is the drinking glass for Movie Night at the 40th Annual Ball of the Mystic Stipers Society (not to be confused with the Mystic Strippers) for Mardi Gras in 1979. In addition to the X-Wing and King Kong, seen in the photo, the glass also depicts Steamboat Willie and Elvis.
So, if you ever have the chance to attend a Mardi Gras parade, be sure to check out the items being dispersed by the Krewes. You never know when you might end up with a unique Star Wars collectible.
For May the 4th in 2024, the Dairy Farmers of America brands did a nationwide milk promotion in the US. The most prominent item offered was “Blue Milk” under the TruMoo brand which was sold across most of the country, like the blue milk seen in the original Star Wars in 1977. For the completist collector, there is nothing more nerve-wracking than a regional promotion. It’s hard enough to track down international items, but finding variations within a country are a whole other level of madness.
The promotion went far beyond one national brand with Star Wars-themed 1% lowfat, 2% reduced fat, fat free, and whole milk across 22 regional brands with labels featuring Chewbacca, Yoda, Leia, and Luke, respectively. There were also some size variations, the blue milk appeared on some regional brands, and there was even a nuanced 1.5% Fat Milk for those milk connoisseurs who need that precise balance between lowfat and reduced fat milk! Some of these brands were in only available in one or two states such as Alta Dena in California, Cass Clay in North Dakota, Country Fresh in Illinois and Michigan, Creamland in New Mexico, Gandy’s in Texas, Hygenia, in Texas, Oak Farms in Louisiana and Texas, Oakhurst in Maine and New Hampshire, Price’s in New Mexico and Texas, and Tuscan in New Jersey and New York.
We documented 97 different milk containers across this promotion. Because it was so daunting to assemble a complete set, I only went after them opportunistically where I knew friends who might be able to find them for me, since it was impossible to find them all on my own. This photo shows 44 of the known 97 milk containers from the promotion, and since taking the photo I have increased my count to 49 different milk jugs, which is just over half of the set. Also, two of these pictured here (the Turner’s blue Bantha milk containers in the bottom right) are from a promotion in Pennsylvania from a couple years ago.
In museum design, there is a concept known as the Design Object. This is the largest object in your collection that cannot readily be broken down into smaller objects. Since you need to be able to move your Design Object into and through your building, its dimensions drive things like the width of dock roll-up doors, the capacity of freight elevators, hallway sizing (widths and turn radiuses) and gallery entrance dimensions. This 6-foot-long, 6-foot wide X-wing fighter—roughly one-sixth scale—is the Design Object at the Imperial Archives.
The Design Object at Imperial Archives
(It is not the Design Object for The Saga Museum—that’s a 15-foot by 8-foot painting at Rancho Obi-Wan. We’re also not counting the two large permanent installations at the Archives—the theater designed by Doug Chiang and the nearly full-size replica of the cantina from A New Hope that many of you saw while it was installed at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2015.)
This X-wing was formerly on display at FAO Schwarz in Orlando, Florida. (That location had an even larger model up for a while; if you remember a huge X-wing hanging upside down above you, that was the other one.)
We added this to our collection after FAO closed the Orlando store in 2004, and for the next 15 years, it waited patiently in a crate that took up an entire bay of our garage. In 2019, when we opened a 10,000-square-foot addition to the Imperial Archives, we were finally able to hang the X-wing in a place of honor, greeting visitors as they come through the door. It’s not a static model: the S-foils open and close, and the rear engines light up. (Sorry for the backlighting in the photo—it looks more dramatic in real life!)
Imperial Archives is the collection of Vic Wertz and Lisa Stevens, and is part of The Saga Museum Initiative
As the 2024-2025 Holiday Season comes to a close, we’d like to share images of the Lucas Company holiday cards from 1977 to present. Although this is not a complete set, it’s really close. These cards were sent by employees of Lucasfilm, Lucas Arts, Lucas Digital, ILM, Lucas Learning, Lucas Licensing, JAK, Skywalker Ranch, and other companies to friends and colleagues. They are unbelievably hard to track down, but collectors have made it their mission to hunt these down over the years. Not all of them are Star Wars themed, but many are.
1977
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1981 (Blue)
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unknown year
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If you have any of the few Lucas company holiday cards not pictured here, we’d love to hear from you! Just use the contact form to submit your photos and info!
Over the next two years we need to raise $2 million to begin the formal stages of bringing The Saga Museum from a grand idea into the galaxy’s most innovative museum for Star Wars fans like you.
As we bring 2024 to a close, we’re inviting you to join us in making these bold dreams come true. A gift to support The Saga Museum today at any amount meaningful to you will make a tremendous impact towards reaching our goal.
To learn more about our exciting plans, please watch the heartfelt video below with the official announcement of The Saga Museum of Star Wars Memorabilia:
Messages of thanks from The Saga Museum Group:
I want to thank Star Wars fans and collectors worldwide for their enthusiastic response to our October announcement of our intention to merge three other collections with mine at Rancho Obi-Wan to create The Saga Museum of Star Wars Memorabilia. We have a lot of work ahead of us and we continue to run weekly tours of Rancho in the meantime. We truly appreciate your continuing support. – Steve Sansweet
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support of Rancho Obi-Wan and for joining us on the voyage to make The Saga Museum a reality. I wish you the happiest of holidays, with good food, time with family and friends, and much laughter. – Melissa Hillman
As we come to the end of 2024, I want to say thanks to all of you who have supported Rancho Obi-Wan. Many of you have been members for years and some of you are supporting us for the first time. I really appreciate all of you and want you to know we could not do what we do without you! The coming years look to be even more exciting with the progress on The Saga Museum project and we’re glad you have chosen to join us on this adventure. Have a great new year! – Duncan Jenkins
Thank you for supporting Rancho Obi-Wan as we take our first steps into a larger world with The Saga Museum. The new year is going to be very exciting! – Vic Wertz
I would like to express my sincere thanks to all ROW members, donors, and volunteers for your continued support. It has been an amazing year for all of us, and we have some exciting and ambitious goals ahead for ROW and Saga. We could not do it without all of you, and it takes a community of enthusiastic and supportive people like you to make this possible. We look forward to continuing to share how your contributions are helping to deliver on our audacious goals! – Gus Lopez
A Happy Holidays to the Rancho Obi-Wan community! You helped us make 2024 amazing with the launch of The Saga Museum project and I can’t wait to share the coming years with you as we chart a path to our new public museum! – Lisa Stevens
Dear friends, every single day the love you feel for Star Wars, Rancho Obi-Wan, and the future Saga Museum fuels the world with enthusiasm, smiles, and good energy. As Stew says in the video, “it turns the light on”. I hope the new year brings this light to your heart. We’re super excited to build something grand just for you – stay tuned! – Anne Neumann
A galaxy-sized thank you to our Rancho Obi-Wan community! Your passion, support, and generosity have made 2024 a remarkable year as we launched The Saga Museum initiative. This is just the beginning of something extraordinary, and we couldn’t do it without you. Together, we’re ensuring the magic of Star Wars—and its legacy—shines bright for generations to come. May the Force be with you all this holiday season and beyond! – Michael J. Wistock
To our incredible community, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your support of Rancho Obi-Wan and The Saga Museum initiative. As I reflect on the amazing year we had and think about the exciting path ahead, I realize that inspiration is a funny thing. Our mission may be to inspire others by preserving and sharing the rich history of Star Wars, but it is your passion for the Star Wars universe, your enthusiasm, and your belief in our work that truly inspires us.
Thank you for being a part of our journey. May the new year bring you hope and light. – Rich Smolen
The Rancho Obi-Wan Giving Tuesday Online Fundraiser Auction is now LIVE!
Over 125 items are up for bid; including Star Wars collectibles from Hallmark, LEGO, Action Figures, Bobbleheads, ILM Crew Gear, Mini-Busts,Hasbro Legacy Collection, Star Tots, Kenner, Droids, Commemorative Figures and Posters, MIB Large Size Action Figures, George Lucas Super Live Adventure, Disney and more.
Here are just a few of the unique items up for bid:
Kenner Power of the Force EV-9D9 Action Figure
2023 D23 Gold Member Collector Set” Silver Mickey Mouse statue
LEGO Ultimate Collector Series “Slave I”
“Timeless Series: Leia” by Jerry VanderStelt
Droids Jann Tosh Action Figure
“Original Ewok fur for “Wicket” from Return of the Jedi by Prop Store
Heroes & Villians Princess Leia backpack handbag
Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia original sketch trading card
Lucasfilm “Ahsoka ILM VFX Crew ’23” t-shirt
Gentle Giant Darth Malak Mini-Bust
Lucasfilm paper cutout holiday tree greeting card
Star Wars Celebration II “Star Collector” Lucite Star
BONUS: You’ll receive one entry in the door prize drawings for each unique item on which you bid. If you Bid on 10 different items you’ll get 10 entries (10 bids on the same item only equals 1 door prize entry).
We know you have a lot of choices when it comes to Giving Tuesday donations and we appreciate your consideration of supporting our mission to inspire. Thank you!
