The collector strikes back

Doug Citizen buys Star Wars figures. Then he--gasp!--opens and plays with them

It's a Friday morning in the northwest suburbs, and Doug Citizen--with nothing more than the Force and a green lightsaber likely made in Taiwan--is trying to fend off an attack from a Sith probe droid. From its plastic stand, the thing that looks like an S&M basketball tracks his movements, whirring and rotating as it draws a bead on the would-be Jedi.

"The Sith probe droid is what Darth Maul used to hunt Jedi in Episode One," Citizen explains as the ball aims and fires a decidedly nonlethal "laser" at him. "This one spits out foam discs." Plonk, plonk. "Um, I think I blocked that one." He searches the carpet.

The probe droid is just one of Citizen's toys that has turned his bedroom into a shrine to Star Wars. There are action-figure dioramas: On this shelf, you can see young Anakin Skywalker slaying baddies with his weapon of choice, the lightsaber. On that shelf, a re-creation of the speeder bike chase from Return of the Jedi. On another, an AT-AT (remember those warhorses that marched on the Rebel base in The Empire Strikes Back?) is frozen in lumbering midstep. Here, a plush ewok. There, a Chewbacca jigsaw puzzle.

"The AT-AT is the only original piece left from my childhood," Citizen says. "As a kid, I would destroy my Star Wars toys [by playing with them so hard]. I lost the AT-AT in a poker game once, but luckily I got it back."

Wagering prized items from a toy collection? It might strike more serious collectors as the actions of a man unhinged--a man flirting with the Dark Side. But the 31-year-old Citizen is a different breed of collector. While his obsession with Star Wars is not to be denied--he's seen Episode One nine times, Episode Two 10 times--Citizen amasses Star Wars toys and memorabilia in a decidedly different spirit. His room is not some dust-free collector's crypt with action figures encased in the sarcophagi of their all-important original packaging. Rather, pieces in his 1,000-plus collection line the walls naked, ready for any curious, grasping hand to take and play with. It's due partly to love of the toys, partly to collector wisdom.

The museum approach is "not for me," says Citizen. "A lot of people are fooling themselves when they assume certain pieces are going to be worth lots of money. Some of them turn out to be not worth anything."

Sure, a 1983 series Jawa action figure with the vinyl cape (not cloth) might net you $3,000, but that's an exception to the rule. A 1995 Princess Leia figure in the orange package? About as valuable as an ewok turd. Despite a gold-rush fever that often strikes with the release of a new item, many toys don't meet ultimate muster in the marketplace.

"On eBay, probably the best judge of how things like this are worth, I saw an orange [package] Leia selling for $10, with no bids," Citizen says. "Basically, the toy market snatches things up when they first come out--`I gotta have it!'--and they pay high prices for it. Six months later, you can find the toy all over the place."

Nonetheless, Citizen's love for the Star Wars mythos is glaring. His room is done up in a vague yin-yang style, with a painted depiction of desert planet Tattooine on the south wall, Hoth the ice planet on the north wall. His most prized Star Wars possession, however, isn't an action figure or ship model. It's a flash tube for a Graflex camera from the '40s--the exact same prop hardware George Lucas used for his lightsabers. Citizen says his would fetch about $200--not that he'd ever part with it. Citizen loves lightsabers.

In fact, there's one lightsaber Citizen carries with him at all times--the green one tattooed along his spine.

"Lightsabers--they're just so bad-ass," Citizen says as he shows off his body art. "It's like the deadliest thing in the universe. And even if for some reason I start to hate Star Wars--unlikely, since I'm 31--a lightsaber will always look cool."--Andrew Kiraly