On a piece of wooded property not that far, far away from Seattle, a life-size C-3PO figure is visible through a front window of the house at the end of a long driveway.
The shiny gold droid hints at the geekiness inside, but a tour of the home and another nearby building truly reveals the depths of one couple’s Star Wars fandom.
Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz got into collecting Star Wars memorabilia as kids captivated by the original 1977 film in the long-running science-fiction series. Wertz liked action figures and trading cards. Stevens was into comic books and novels.
Forty-six years later, as we on Earth mark another May the 4th (be with you), Stevens and Wertz celebrate a collection that has grown to otherworldly proportions, consuming a fair amount of their daily lives and much of their living space.
“When Star Wars came out, it just blew me away,” Stevens said. “And when we first got together in the early 1990s, it was one of the things that we found we had in common.”
From the tiniest toys to the biggest installations, the collection now includes:
- Three rare and sought-after Boba Fett rocket-launching action figures.
- Blueprints for the first Star Wars toys ever made.
- Nearly all the arcade games tied to the franchise.
- Movie props from Yoda masks to lightsabers to blown-apart X-Wing fighters.
- A full-size replica of the cantina from the first movie.
- A movie theater fit for the Death Star.
It started with a gift
Stevens and Wertz are no strangers to fantasy worlds. They’re both veterans of the tabletop game industry and Stevens was the first full-time employee at Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast — makers of “Dungeons and Dragons” and “Magic the Gathering.”
Wizards sold to Hasbro in 1999. Stevens and Wertz left a few years later to start Paizo, their own Redmond, Wash.-based game publishing company. At first they took on magazines, including “Star Wars Insider,” “Dungeon” magazine, and “Dragon” magazine, that were formerly published in-house by Wizards. Today, Paizo is known for the popular fantasy role playing games “Pathfinder” and “Starfinder.”
The couple’s Star Wars collection was born around 1995. Stevens was in a Toys R Us, doing some game research for Wizards, when she spotted a Boba Fett action figure. She knew the Star Wars bounty hunter was Wertz’s favorite character, so she bought it on a lark.
“I came home that night and at dinnertime gave him the action figure, and he was like, ‘This is really cool,'” Stevens said.
That weekend they were back in Toys R Us, and Wertz bought every figure available. The weekend after that, at a convention in Atlanta featuring Star Wars actors, they bought more figures and got them autographed. Then they started hitting antique and thrift stores looking for classic memorabilia.
“Before you know it, we’re buying Star Wars stuff,” Stevens said. “It kind of just happened.”
The launch of online auction site eBay also happened. And a book called “Tomart’s Price Guide to Worldwide Star Wars Collectibles,” by Lucasfilm vet Stephen Sansweet, was also published in the mid-90s.
“It was like, ‘Oh my god, all this stuff exists in the world?” Stevens said. “I just used [the book] as my rabbit hole on eBay. Can I find this? Can I find this? This looks cool!”
With the rooms in their Renton house filling with toys and more collectibles, the couple decided to use money from the Hasbro acquisition of Wizards to build their dream house in North Bend, Wash., in 2002.
Collection with a house around it
Standing in the foyer of the home during a GeekWire visit, Stevens and Wertz — and Yoda, Princess Leia and other life-size characters — share the space with a pile of boxes. As we speak, a UPS driver arrives to leave more deliveries on the front step.
“She knows the routine,” Stevens said.
Most of the shopping they do these days is online. Now and again they’ll walk the aisles at Walmart to see stuff in person. “Everyone says Amazon has everything, but they kinda don’t,” Wertz said.
The house was designed with the collection top of mind, and the entryway goes in a few different directions: left, down the hall, is the X-Wing, where the Star Wars collection is displayed; to the right is the Y-Wing with the kitchen, bedrooms, and other non-Star Wars living space.
Straight ahead is the “Death Star Theater,” a state-of-the-art movie-going experience with THX audio and video, at least a dozen seats, twinkling starlights in the ceiling, a kitchenette at the back, and a replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite attached to one wall. The theater was designed by Doug Chiang, VP and executive creative director at Lucasfilm.
The hallway to the X-Wing is decorated with rare Star Wars movie posters, including one of the franchise’s first collectibles: a poster by comic artist Howard Chaykin created in 1976 as a promotion for the upcoming movie. They were signed at the time by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) at San Diego Comic Con and sold for a couple bucks. Today they fetch several thousand dollars on auction sites.
While the original movie was the impetus for getting into collecting, Wertz and Stevens are not as obsessive about the many directions the franchise has taken over the years.
“It’s far beyond the movies,” Wertz said. “I’m not watching the movies every week. But I am engaged with collectibles every day.”
Off the hallway is an arcade that would impress any game lover. Filled with pinball machines, the collection also includes rarities such as a sit-down version of the 1980 Atari Star Wars arcade game.
“We used to have every Star Wars arcade game that existed, but there’s been a few that have come out that we don’t have yet,” Stevens said, admitting they don’t play as much as they used to. “When we first got the games we just played them to death and mastered them.”
Toys, props, drawings and more
At the end of the hallway is the main collection room. It has the look and feel of a private museum. There’s a maze of glass cases displaying neatly organized lineups of action figures, toy spaceships, blasters, lightsabers, masks, film-used props, promotional items and so much more.
On the walls are an endless collection of framed memorabilia including film artwork, early blueprints for toys, packaging concepts for action figures, and a mostly blown apart X-Wing fighter model that was used in “A New Hope” alongside the hand-drawn storyboard from its film scene.
In a case featuring small figurines and highly detailed collectibles from Japan, everything stands in its well-lit place, as if at attention. But a small figure is tipped over.
“It was probably a minor earthquake or something,” Stevens said, as she and Wertz appeared to take a mental note to return and reposition the fallen figure.
Stevens — who shows up in the documentary “Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys” — and Wertz are experts in every facet of the Star Wars franchise. They can recite the history behind how Kenner got involved in making the toys and the timeline associated with every item they’ve ever laid their hands on.
While their collection is huge, there are others who have collected more. But they do have one of the most complete collections of unproduced Star Wars figures. The process of making the toys — the molds, the materials, the hand painting, the original prototypes that were photographed for packaging — is clearly Wertz’s biggest joy.
A prototype of a Boba Fett action figure is perhaps the collection’s pièce de résistance. The toy is said to have “mythic, unicorn-like status in the galaxy of Star Wars collectibles,” and features a rocket meant to fire off the character’s spring-loaded backpack. But legend says fears of a choking hazard spooked Kenner and the figure was recalled before it ever hit store shelves.
An online bidder paid more than $200,000 for one such figure last year.
“We have three of them,” Stevens said. “The first one I paid $2,000, the second I paid $5,000, the third I paid $10,000. I thought that was crazy.”
Room to grow — for now
You have to leave the house to see where Stevens and Wertz have found more room for their collection. A short walk back up the driveway is a nondescript warehouse that they had completed in 2019, just before the pandemic.
The inside looks like a Kenner toy warehouse where kids — or adults who are young at heart — have been let loose to play. The building is two stories and 10,000 square feet and it’s quickly filing with years and years of Star Wars toys and memorabilia.
The top floor features a recreation of the Mos Eisley Cantina, the rollicking bar from “A New Hope.” Stevens and Wertz rescued it from storage years after it had been used at a Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, Calif. Their builder cut a large hole in the building to get the pieces in and reassembled it as a centerpiece of the growing display.
Acting like the everyday owner of some random establishment, Wertz busied himself with a lightbulb that had gone out in one alcove. Nearby was a version of the booth where Han Solo famously blasted Greedo.
Downstairs there are racks and racks of shelves featuring toys and other newer merchandise. Walls are completely covered with action figures, and a ledge that wraps the room features every Lego set since 1999. Wertz assembled all of them himself during the pandemic.
There are thousands upon thousands of pieces of memorabilia across the entire collection. Asked what it all might be worth, Stevens wouldn’t put a price tag on it.
“A lot,” she said.
“We didn’t buy this stuff to flip it, but it has been a good investment,” Wertz added.
They’re in the process now of photographing and cataloging every single item. They spend about three hours a day working on that, assembling cases, rearranging, or putting a group of items on final display. They have no interest in hiring help, because they enjoy the process and say one aspect of collecting is “doing the work.”
The couple has no children and the hope is that someday there will be a Star Wars museum somewhere that they can donate everything to.
“That’s kind of my whole goal in life,” Stevens said. “You turn 60 you start thinking, ‘what’s going to happen with everything you’ve built up over life?'”
As the seemingly nonstop collection of figures and Legos eventually does come to an end and the display wall turns blank, Wertz and Stevens are asked where the items are for the remaining space.
“They haven’t made that stuff yet,” Wertz said, adding that the toy industry has moved to a pre-order process and he’s already pre-ordered the next 100 action figures.
So there are no plans to stop?
“No,” Stevens said. “And eventually we’re going to run out of space.”
Keep scrolling for more images from GeekWire’s tour of the collection:
