Home to the world's largest Star Wars collection
In 2008, still many years before the thought of forming a nonprofit museum, Steve was giving tours to school kids on a regular basis. It's always given Steve great joy to share the items from his collection. Seeing the emotion on people's faces or hearing their gasps as the door opens to the museum is life-affirming.
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Every day is Star Wars day at Rancho Obi-Wan! We hope you all find joy in immersing yourselves in Star Wars.
Guinness World Records has created a special treat for you today with a 17 minute walk-though of the museum with Steve Sansweet.
And at 2pm PST today Steve Sansweet will show off his “art figure” collection on the Scum & Villainy 24 hour live stream.
From Steve, Anne, and all the docents and volunteers at Rancho Obi-Wan, have a fantastic day!
In February 2006 I arrived at Rancho Obi-Wan with my computer, a trunk full of clothes and my cat Claire. It was my intention to stay for 6 months, do a complete catalog, and return home to Texas. That was now 14 years ago. The catalog is no anywhere done, but looking back, I can see the museum is now a lot cleaner.
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Star Wars Celebration III took place from April 21 to 24, 2005 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, the site of Celebration II. The guest of honor was George Lucas himself, making his first fan convention appearance since the Star Wars 10th Anniversary con in 1987. Despite the date, there was a snowstorm overnight and the thousands of fans waiting in line outside to catch one of the three Lucas Q&A panels were ushered into the center to stay dry and warm.
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In early 2007 Abrams approached Lucasfilm for Steve to write a "365 days of collectibles" type book. Using the photos taken by Alex Ivanov as a foundation talks began on how the book would look. Eventually the project was to mimic the book Rolling Stone 1,000 Covers: A History of the Most Influential Magazine in Pop Culture.
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Steve starts this special series talking about his overall journey from growing up in Philadelphia to Montreal to Los Angeles to Petaluma, California. In future episodes he'll talk about his three careers: as a newspaper journalist, Head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm and finally, CEO of Rancho Obi-Wan.
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What is the Rancho Obi-Wan Experience? It's more a feeling. It's nostalgia, excitement, joy, fun, unique. When you come to Rancho Obi-Wan we welcome you to our home. We introduce you to our animal-friends. We walk to the back barn and look at the rolling hills; and a few outdoor Star Wars things like a full-sized Jawa Sandcrawler tread. But it really hasn't changed over the years. Steve set the tone from the very beginning.
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In the beginning—July 1998 when I bought the property—Rancho Obi-Wan was 2 1/4 acres with an updated farmhouse, three large former hen houses and overgrown fields with a junked car, part of a truck and half-buried containers of who-knew what. The first order of business after moving in was to clear the fields, find temporary housing for the collection and figure out next steps.
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