By day, local “Star Wars” collector Duncan Jenkins works as a molecular biologist. But in his free time, he scours the internet looking for new items to add to his personal intergalactic museum.
And Jenkins doesn’t keep his encyclopedic hoard of "Star Wars" memorabilia in a galaxy far, far away — it’s in a 5,000-square-foot building next to his Northland home.
“Over a hundred different countries are represented, and just every category you can imagine, from art to clothing to household goods to posters and store displays, food, collectibles,” he says. “Just the things that you would think nobody would even save all the way up to the action figures that everybody remembers.”
Jenkins was 10 when "Star Wars" hit the movie screens in 1977. He saw it for the first time with his uncle and cousin the first summer it came out.
Glenwood Theater, now demolished, was at the time an old-school movie palace in Overland Park, Kansas, that was one of 32 theaters in the U.S. that screened the film on opening weekend. No one knew it would become a colossal hit, grossing $410 million worldwide during its initial run.
Soon afterwards, Jenkins collected his first item in what would become a burgeoning collection: A trading card of Darth Vader’s spaceship, a TIE fighter.
“It's a trading card from Wonder Bread,” Jenkins says. “It still has my initials where I wrote on it so it wouldn't get lost when I took it to school.”
Now Jenkins has the whole set of 16 cards, all in mint condition. Each card was once tucked into a specially-marked loaf of Wonder Bread.
Since then, Jenkins’ collection has grown into the 2nd-most complete in the world, he says. (And since the museum is private, Jenkins requested KCUR not reveal its location.)
“I don't have an exact number, but I'm somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 different items that I've been collecting since the beginning,” Jenkins says.
He admits what started as a hobby slowly became an obsession. To help organize the growing collection, Jenkins and his wife, Anne, built their museum in 2008. At the time, they were out of room in their original house, and the two wanted to find a way to display the collection.
“There were entire rooms that were just storage of 'Star Wars,' so it was a lot of stuff in boxes and no room to walk,” Jenkins says.
Many of his friends doubted they could fill the new space.
“Of course, we filled it very quickly and have gone on beyond,” Jenkins says. “It just was fun to start putting things together and having that come to life was very exciting.”
All three levels of Jenkins' museum are covered floor to ceiling with memorabilia. Jenkins calls it “The Sithsonian.”
“The Smithsonian is multiple, multiple museums and covers the gamut of everything that's out there,” Jenkins says. “As a completist, I'm interested in everything that is out there for ‘Star Wars.’”
“Star Wars” was the first film to successfully license toys to consumers on a large scale. According to the Guinness World Records, the largest collection of "Star Wars" memorabilia is Rancho Obi-Wan, a nonprofit museum in Petaluma, California, that’s open to the public.
An interstellar wedding gift
Jenkins’ most cherished item is an IG-88 assassin droid turned bounty hunter, introduced in “The Empire Strikes Back.” The 15-inch-tall action figure, still in the original box, was a wedding gift from his mother and his wife.
“It was an item that he had been looking for for years and didn't think he would ever find, so it was really special to surprise him,” his wife, Anne Jenkins, says. “We had a friend who was also a 'Star Wars' collector and I heard through the grapevine that he owned this action figure.”
“I put out some feelers to see if he would be interested in parting with it, and persuaded him that it was going to a good home,” she says.
Among super fans, Jenkins has found fame as an expert of all things Jedi-related. He gives presentations at conventions and he’s co-authored four books on "Star Wars" collectibles. In Kansas City, Jenkins will be a featured lecturer during “The Nostalgia Awakens: Retro Kenner Star Wars Action Figure Toys” exhibit, which opens May 2 at the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures.
Fans from as far away as Australia and Korea have come to see his collection of X-wing starfighters, Millennium Falcons and Death Stars.
Jenkins has an entire vintage section of action figures in their original packaging set around three walls, organized chronologically and alphabetically by country — starting with toys from Australia and ending with Ewoks cartoon figures, a Saturday morning series from 1985.
The museum looks much like a vintage toy store but nothing is for sale, which occasionally confuses younger visitors.
“We had an open house and a family was getting ready to leave,” Jenkins says. “They asked their little kid if he was ready to go and he said he hadn't decided what to buy.”
The parents had to explain it was a museum, he says, not a store.
“He was very disappointed,” Jenkins remembers.
The saga of collecting continues
Jenkins is always on the hunt for the items he’s missed along the way.
“It's a lot of searching,” he says. “I'm searching through eBay, I'm searching through Facebook and I'm searching through different, other collecting groups.”
One item he covets is the so-called “Holy Grail” of action figures — the 1979 Kenner Boba Fett, which broke auction records last August, selling for $1.34 million.
The bounty hunter figure featured a plastic rocket launcher that would fire missiles from its backpack. When a similar toy from the “Battlestar Galactica” franchise caused a child to choke and die, the Boba Fett toy was quickly taken off shelves.
As for Jenkins’ success acquiring such an enviable collection, he stays humble.
“When ‘Star Wars’ first came out, everybody was collecting everything because there just wasn't as much,” he explains, “but as it became just this overwhelming behemoth of stuff, people began to focus.”
“I'm just the only one that stuck with it, and I guess I was crazy enough to keep at it,” he says, admitting nostalgia is a big part of his motivation for collecting. “Sometimes I'll get a piece and it just instantly takes me back to being 10 years old and just having that awe of the movie again.”
