I promise these will be the last ones. People just keep on adding more pics and they keep getting better.
This first photo shows some of the first figures that were released that were changed early on, so therefore are quite valuable. Starting from left to right first is the vinyl cape Jawa. Early on Kenner decided that the plastic cape on the Jawa looked cheap and as the figure was priced as all the others they decided to change it to a cloth robe. This is one of the most commonly faked vintage Star Wars figures. I plan to add a loose one to my collection someday since they are a lot cheaper than the $6000-$8000 estimate for that graded carded example and luckily I know how to spot a fake one.
The next three in the picture are Luke, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader which at first glance just look like the normal figures. The part that makes these so special are the lightsabers. These are the early double telescoping versions. These lightsabers are two pieces where in which you slide the thicker piece through the arm and then the thinner piece also slides from the thicker piece. The Luke’s are much more common especially loose since many of them came in the early bird mailer kit which came with 4 figures before they were released in stores. The Vader and Obi-Wan are a lot more rarer with around 10 carded examples known to still exist and only a handful of loose versions. This lightsaber was deemed too costly to make, so shortly after they were changed. On the common version the smaller piece no longer slides into the larger piece, so the lightsaber was just one piece of plastic rather than two. Below is a pic of a Double Telescoping Luke next to my normal one. I hope to add a loose DT Luke someday to my collection. They still run a couple hundred dollars, but much more affordable compared to the other two. Sometimes they can also be found in lots on ebay from people who do not know about the variation. I’ve seen some collectors that have managed to get one for a few dollars because they took that gamble.
Okay finally on to the 2nd picture. This one shows some of the vehicles which were packaged with figures. The figures were usually in a kenner baggie instead of a carded figure. These special offer vehicles were only offered for a limited time and maybe even only to a few stores, so they are quite valuable among collectors.
The 3rd pic shows some of the last Power of the Force figures released. These last figures packaged with the coin were pretty much exclusive to Australia. The only one that wasn’t released in the U.S. is the Yak Face figure. Anakin was released here in the U.S. but only as a mail away promotion.
Finally the 4th pic shows some proofs of the cardbacks. Included in that lot is a Revenge of the Jedi card that was made up before the name change. No figures were ever actually packaged on the cardbacks with the Revenge logo. Following the Revenge cards are some unproduced Power of the Force cards. They feature older characters that were released for the movies originally but never made it to the Power of the Force card. Kenner’s plans were to originally release all 93 figures on the power of the force logo cards with all 62 coins, but before that happened the Star Wars line was cancelled. All of us kids had moved on to He-Man, Transformers, and G.I. Joe and were no longer interested in Star Wars, so it went into a slumber until the 90’s.
