Inside the Nexu's Den

The story of my Star Wars collection, and the start of The Prides of Nexu Museum

[June 1983-1992]

My Star Wars collection was started sometime in mid-1983. I was three and a half years old when Return of the Jedi hit theaters that year, and it was the first movie I saw on the big screen. That's all it took to convert me into a life-long Star Wars fan. It's impossible to say what my first Star Wars piece was or when I acquired it, although my best guess is sometime in June of '83. Obvious early memories are of Kenner 3-3/4" action figures and vehicles. And of course the staples of 80's kids products; books, weapons, coloring books, pajamas, puzzles, t-shirts, and school supplies. Everything I received early on was opened and played with, used, or worn. However I did have the foresight to save certain things like action figure cardbacks and instruction booklets. Because I was just a kid my collection was at the mercy of Christmas and birthday presents, special occasions, and the traditional trip to Toys R Us every time my Grandma was in town. Thus, through age eleven I accumulated anything and everything I could. By the later elementary school years I was mowing lawns, so money from that helped as well. Sadly though, between childhood usage, and three out of state moves, not everything survived. However, roughly 75% of the pieces from that time period are in my collection today. And in my adult years I've replaced a few of the pieces that were lost. 

[1993-April 2005]

Age three was when I fell in love with Star Wars, but also when I formed life-long relationships with sports and music, followed a few years later by Hip Hop. The "off years" of my Star Wars collecting covered middle school, high school, college, and my early twenties. My Star Wars fandom during this time period never wavered, but collecting definitely took a back seat. Expendable income during this time, especially the high school and college years, went to the typical teenage spending list (i.e. gas, clothes, CDs, alcohol, weed, partying, girls, eating out, travel, etc.). And in the early years of my music career, before we were making good money performing, expenses such as studio time, merch, CD pressing, etc., were all out of pocket. However, I still managed to add a few pieces to the collection most years. It was never anything major, just a figure here, a book there type of deal. So the collection grew, but not by much. And everything in the collection (from childhood and this time period), was stored away in boxes.

[May 2005-2018]

I had been watching a ton of Star Wars (movies and Clone Wars micro series), in preparation for the release of Revenge of the Sith in May of 2005. Shortly after the movie hit theaters I was in a store and came across a shelf display of Master Replicas Force FX Lightsabers. I almost lost my mind. I had never before seen such a realistic and movie accurate-looking lightsaber. It was the type of lightsaber I always wanted and wished someone made when I was a kid. So I bought two, a Vader and an Anakin. Because I had never really dove into the modern collecting world, I had no idea there were products like this on the market. But it got me thinking about what else was out there? I was inspired. I began doing a ton of research and exploring, learning and absorbing as much as I could about Star Wars collecting, and familiarizing myself with brands, products, and trends. And I pulled out the boxes of what I had accumulated during childhood to see exactly what I had. So while my collection technically started in June of 1983, it really didn’t start in earnest until May of 2005.

By this point in life I was in my first corporate office job, and the music was pretty self-sustaining, so I was able to begin hardcover collecting. And collect I did. While the collection had a strong focus on Hasbro 3-3/4” lines, I collected a little bit of everything. I always gravitated towards Vader/Anakin, Stormtroopers, and Clone Troopers, but generally speaking the collection was unfocused. The system I used to catalog my collection, as well as my hunt lists, were both rather rudimentary. But I did catalog by “as packaged pieces” and “individual pieces” in terms of how I tracked my piece count. I wanted both sets of numbers, but always felt that using the total overall pieces was like cheating. If I bought a figure pack with six figures in it, that would be one “as packaged” piece, but six individual pieces. In early November of 2007 my collection reached 1,000 “as packaged” pieces. The house my then fiancée (now wife), and I lived in was rather small, so at that point I moved the collection to my parent’s house. My old room was just sitting empty so I was able to store everything there, and even display some of it, for a few months in 2008. When my parents decided it was time to sell their house and downsize, I moved the entire collection to a secure, climate controlled storage unit facility. Sadly, that would be the collection's home for the next eleven years.

Changes in the collecting and retail worlds, and the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, between 2012 and 2014 prompted me to re-evaluate how and what I collected. In 2014 I devised a 3-tier collecting system. What I hunted was now character focused, or specific item/collection focused, and prioritized into three tiers. Since her debut in 2008, I had started a rather large Ahsoka Tano collection. By April of 2015 I had completely filled the storage unit and had to begin storing new additions to the collection in bins in my basement. In July of 2015 I developed an insanely detailed spreadsheet for cataloging my collection. The master catalog tab consisted of over fifteen data point fields, assigned unique collection, piece, and category numbers to each item, then fed the data to an itemized piece-count tab and multiple category tabs. The initial crossover was extremely labor intensive and time consuming. But new additions going forward would be a breeze, and I now had a ton of collection data that could easily be filtered and sorted. I knew this cataloging system would also serve me well once the time came to have the collection appraised and insured. To have a collection insured it has to be appraised, and to have it appraised it has to be displayed. So until my collection could be moved out of storage my hands were tied on that front.

[2019]

In January of 2019 my wife and I sold our house, put 99% of our possessions in a POD, and moved into an apartment until we could find a new house. One of the main criteria for the new house was a designated Star Wars room for the collection. While we were house hunting I put a lot of thought into how I wanted to eventually display the collection. Although the collection would only be in one room, I envisioned it sectioned off into galleries, like a museum. Then one day in June I had the idea to name and brand the collection, like a museum, instead of simply always having to refer to it as “my collection”, or “Mike’s collection”. The name/brand would then represent both the collection itself and the space it was housed in. Obviously the only person who would really care would be me, but it sounded fun. And hey, what’s like without whimsy? I wanted a Star Wars-themed name that was unique and hadn’t/wasn’t being used anywhere else. I decided to name it The Prides of Nexu Museum. I thought the name sounded dope, and not only was the Nexu one of my favorite Star Wars creatures, but it would make for a great logo and theme. I then created a Prides of Nexu Museum logo, started a Twitter account, and converted my Dr. Mickel’s Archives Instagram account (an account I had started in 2018 to share photos from all my current and past collections), into the Prides of Nexu account. I was close to being able to share photos and pieces from my collection with other Star Wars collectors.

We closed on our new house in late September, and by mid-October both the POD and the storage unit had been moved in. It was the first time since childhood that my entire collection and I were living under the same roof. It was a great feeling! I’d spent years amassing and cataloging this collection which I’d never been able to display or enjoy. It was the reality of the situation, but it always stung to acquire new pieces just to put them in a bin and drive them over to the storage unit. I longed for the day when I could view and enjoy my collection. However, because my collection had never been displayed I had absolutely nothing to display it on. Because this was a house my wife and I planned to stay in for at least a decade, and because I really wanted the museum look and feel, I didn’t want to just run out and buy a bunch of cheap plastic shelving units. I wanted a planned out and uniform set of display furniture, even though I knew that would push the time table back. But I’d waited so many decades to display it, what was another handful of months? At my wife’s suggestion I unpacked everything to see exactly what I had in order to gauge how to best display all of it, and what type of display furniture to purchase. I then took measurements, selected furniture, and designed a blueprint of what The Prides of Nexu Museum will eventually look like. To make this happen I understood fully well that in the coming months the majority of the collecting budget would have to go towards display furniture and display accessories instead of adding new pieces. That thought prompted me to re-evaluate my 3-Tier collecting system. Not only was I facing the budget shift, but in recent months I realized I would often purchase items of lesser priority simply because I ran across them at a store or swap meet. So in December I switched over to a “Top 100” collecting system. I made a list of the hundred pieces I wanted most and began only hunting off of that list. Not only would it curb impulse purchases, but every new piece I acquired would be one I truly wanted and/or needed to complete a specific collection or series. In December I also started a complete re-cataloging of the entire collection. Not only did I make some minor updates to my cataloging system, but since the initial one was done over time, there were some inconsistencies that were bugging me. I’m quite anal when it comes to organization, and I wanted everything listed and formatted identically.

[2020]

My Star Wars collection began when I was three and a half years old. My hardcover collecting days started when I was twenty five. And in 2020, at age forty, for the first time ever my entire collection will be completely cataloged and permanently on full display. It’s been a long journey to this point. But shit, we here! As I write this today I’m currently 80% of the way through the re-cataloging process, have acquired six of the seventeen pieces of display furniture needed, and have purchased the first handful of display accessories. The collection itself stands at over 3,000 "as packaged" pieces, and over 5,000 individual pieces. Once all has been completed I’d like to do one of those collection tour videos to showcase the collection and display as a whole. It will be dope! Stay tuned.

The Prides of Nexu Museum

Twitter: @PridesOfNexu

Instagram: @pridesofnexu