Rancho Obi-Wan has been officially recognized by GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® as housing the “Largest Collection of Star Wars Memorabilia” in the galaxy! Steve Sansweet has amassed more than 300,000 unique Star Wars items since 1977. The just-released GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® 2014 Edition features an amazing two-page photograph of part of the collection.
Steve started his Star Wars collection before the movie even premiered, plucking his first piece, a 20th Century Fox/Lucasfilm promotional booklet, from the wastebasket of a colleague at The Wall Street Journal. As a born collector who loves science fiction, he naturally picked up anything related to Star Wars, and over the course of time the collection grew to enormous proportions.
In 1998 Steve purchased a former chicken ranch on the outskirts of Petaluma, California with a large-enough space to store the collection, and named his new home Rancho Obi-Wan. Today Rancho Obi-Wan is a 9,000 square-foot non-profit museum. Star Wars fans can experience the magic of Rancho Obi-Wan first-hand by scheduling a tour, personally guided by Steve.
“I’m delighted with the recognition from GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS, which for years has been the authority in these matters,” Steve said. “We were really excited to work with the Guinness folks. Preparing the photo shoot set a record in my book for one of the most fun-filled days ever at the museum,” Steve added. “We were especially happy to have Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS in the U.K. and a huge Star Wars fan, with us to personally oversee the shoot. We kept adding so many great items that we don’t even know how many individual ones can be counted in the photo!”