Finding a Palitoy Death Star.

Just told this story on RS about a great find I had in 2003 so I thought I would share it here as well. Another great reason why I got back into Vintage collecting.

About 6 years ago my brother was dropping off a mate from work at their home when he noticed a Skip (similiar to a dumpster) at a house a few door up that had a box sticking out of it with a Star Wars Logo on it. He gave me a call and I told him to come and collect me and I would go take a look.

He arrived at my house about 15 minutes later and had this in the boot (trunk) of his car.

Battered Palitoy Death Star Box

As you can imagine, I got very excited and insisted that he take me to the Skip immediately to see if we could find the contents of the box. When we arrived at the scene it was a residental area and he told me he wasn’t going anywhere near it as it was too embarassing to be seen going through peoples rubbish! He parked the car about 50 metres away from the skip and told me I had to go the rest of the way myself. I wouldn’t usually stoop so low to gain an item for my collection but on this occasion I didn’t care  😀

The skip was mostly filled with rubble and broken furniture but after looking for a few seconds I  spotted the cardboard from the DeathStar and pulled it out and ran back to the car with it. I noticed most the accessories (base clips, canopy, X-Wing guns etc) were missing, so I ran back for another look and spotted a few of them scatter around the skip. Again, I lifted what I could but couldn’t reach a few pieces that had fallen to the bottom of the skip. I considering climbing inside it but my brother had already told me that if I did he was driving off and leaving me. I tried to imagine myself in his shoes, so I said “ok”, “fair enough” “lets go” and we left.

(Actual Tongs)

We drove to a local supermarket (Tescos) were he was collecting a few items that his wife had asked him to get. I was having a look around and I spotted these Barbeque Tongs.

I bought them staight away and made my brother take me back to the skip and used the barbeque tongs to reach the other bits at the bottom of the skip. It was a complete success and within about 5 minutes I had collected all the pieces that I could see and returned to the car. We took it home, put it together and this is what I had.

Like I said, I wouldn’t usually go through other peoples trash but on this occasion , I took a chance and it paid off 😉