Bulk Baggie Finds
Frank Mewes
- May 19, 2022
Chihuahua
- May 19, 2022
Chihuahua
- May 19, 2022
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SINGLE FIGURE MAILERS
– Palitoy Issued
– Clipper
– Toltoys
– Kenner
– Kenner Canada
– Poch/PBP
– Harbert
BULK BAGGIE FINDS
– Cinema Find
– Palitoy Emperor Mailer Shipper Find
– Palitoy Nien Nunb Shipper
– C-3P0 Shipper Find
– SWFUK Find
– Overstock Baggies
– 2020 UK Bin Bag Find
– Gary Borbidge Ex-Kenner Find
– Special Offer Darth Vader Collectors Case Find
– Sellersville Auction Multi-Packs
– NZ Logray Find
– Arcade Gift Shop Find
– Anakin Mailer Promotion
– C-3P0 Case Find
– Ex-Meccano Employee Find
– Meccano Find (B)
Cinema Find
Here is what the guy wrote about what he knows about his great find.
“It was 39 years ago so it’s hard to get the details right without finding it in writing somewhere. However I’m sure the film opened at the Westgate in May 1977, although I can’t say for certain that it was May 25.
Some theatres apparently opened a couple of days later. It was an exclusive run in the Portland, OR market, no other theatres in that market could play it as long as we were running it. I think that may be why we kept it running so long, to exclude other theatres from playing it. The owner, Tom Moyer had a brother Larry who also owned a theatre chain in Portland, and they were bitter, bitter competitors.
When I entered the scene I believe in September 1977, it was still very busy, selling out both shows on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday matinees. We also had two other auditoriums that were busy with other films.
I remember finding the box under the counter in the box office, and asked why we had these toys. The cashier said they were given away to ticket buyers in the opening days of the film. I don’t know, but it’s possible they ran newspaper ads with a coupon, and something like the first 50 customers each show got a toy.
That kind of promotion was not unusual in those days, but I have no proof. Maybe with a little more research.
Today is the first time I’ve ever emptied the box to see what was really in there, and must say I was a bit disappointed. Instead of being a bunch of sets of four, here is the inventory: 19 of R2-D2, all wrapped 15 of Luke, one unwrapped 6 of Chewbacca, one unwrapped 2 of Leia, both wrapped I also noticed that Luke’s lightsabre is extendable via a little mechanism in the back of his arm.
I am wondering if the figures in the Early Bird sets have this feature as well. The address on the box shows it didn’t come directly from Kenner, but from The Maple Plains Company, Inc., One Industrial Drive, Maple Plains, MN 55359. The box also has written in felt tip pen ‘150 pcs Luke’.
It’s possible each figure came in bulk in it’s own box, and the theatre just lumped them all into one at the end of the promotion.
Just from my knowledge of the movie theatre business in those days, I think it unlikely that Tom Moyer Luxury Theatres would buy toys for a promotion. It’s much more likely they came through the distributor, which was 20th Century Fox (or a company distributing for them). I know that when the film opened there was not any idea it would be so huge, and that’s why Kenner wasn’t geared up to make more toys quickly.”
Below are the images of what was found, it is worth nothing this is the only known SW era shipper for baggies, though it does not state “bagged” IE a specific baggies shipping case like later examples as you can see, but these are what the figures were sent in for the promotion.
The 3 Tri Logo miss cards I was lucky enough to pick up in the lot & boy did he make me haggle hard for that C-3p0, interesting thing is that although this is a well known combination for a miss carded Tri logo, it is the worlds only confirmed example to have the cargo net included, making it a little more special IMO.
Maybe something of little interest to most but I love this piece, it’s just the end section of a MOC shipping case for the Weequay figure, the interesting bit being how casually it had been just torn from the box to seemingly keep a tally of what figures the trader still had available & what had been sold.
This was about 6 or so years back circa 2015, I had been searching for an example of a Palitoy issued Emperor mailer for well over 2 years with not as much as a sniff at one, they were impossible to find back then like many of the Palitoy mailer still are today, then one popped up on eBay out of the blue, life being life I missed the end of the auction & was about to cry TBH when I noticed it had gone unsold, so I messaged the seller & asked if he was going to relist the item, he did, but I then noticed it was a “bulk listing” IE 10 available, so after much back & forth asking questions I agreed to make a long drive & everything fell nicely into place.
The backstory here being his father was a toy trader in the early 90’s & what he had was the remaining stock that had long since been as good as forgotten about in the father loft, the son was doing some work in the loft & mentioned the stuff he saw up there to his father, who in turn said to see if the son could sell it & make a few pounds for his help on the house.
Most of the stuff was pretty run of the mill ROTJ / Tri Logo era carded figures with some mini rigs & various bits & bobs, but he had a lot of Tri Logo miss carded figures (lots) he never let on just how many, but he had been selling them for weeks on eBay, just the 2 usual candidates (Weequay on Warok card & Weequay on Barada Card), I managed to make a fair deal with some extras to try to help cover my huge investment on the entire shipping case of Emperor mailers, as it was the shipper I was most interested in.
A 2nd find of these mailers turned up about 2 years late, no shipping case & I tried to replace the ones I had sold to fill the shipper (as it came 2 short when I bought it) it was only after buying up hundreds of pounds worth of them (maybe 30 to 40 examples) & then putting them in the shipper I discovered they were actually different in size (2mm wider to be exact), so the re-fill turned into a no go as they would not fit 
but that led to me inspecting them very carefully & noting they were not quite the same, one as said is 2mm wider, but the box outer white layer was also very different ( 1 being mat & the other glossy), this in mind it would indicate there were in fact different size shippers available for this mailer, likely 200 count like others, whereas mine is an odd 144 count shipper.
Another thing (nerd!) I found of interest is my 144 count had both Palitoy-a & Palitoy-n baggies all in the same shipper, so likely a box packed at a changeover time for the baggies within the mailers, most (about 90%) were Palitoy-a but the others were Palitoy-n baggies, there were also a few error baggies (1 with an unpainted hand & another with a cool font print error on the bag).
Right the 2nd find backstory – a guy had lots of overstock toys in his home, many of which (including the mailers) were tucked under the bed & had been for over 20 years, one day some cash was needed & one was opened to confirm what was in them, guy was a little shocked as he thought they were toy train parts, no idea how many were in this find, but there were a fair few.
Hence Palitoy Emperor mailers now being pretty common place, though still 100 times rarer than their Kenner counterparts, odly no shipping case for the Kenner issued Emperor mailers has ever surfaced, but I suspect they must be out there with the numbers seen.
A couple of non baggie images have been included to show what I got in the find.
Box side info, note this is the more regular 200 count type shipper.
Backstory is again toy trader related, but this time it came from Jim Stephenson (god rest his soul), I bought this direct from Jim’s son after a 18 month hard fought haggle / agreement along with a few other items including a Palitoy Fett Popy box, circa 2016, as the Emperor shipper got me really focused on baggie related shipping cases, hey who don’t love 40 year old smelly cardboard boxes right?
Above showing the state of play with my Palitoy mailers at one point circa 2016/17 – oh the good old days of actually having some trade bait.
My C-3p0 shipper find, got this after a tip off from a fellow collector & pounced, glad to be able to add another battered brown box to the shipper side focus, pic of a few of the 60+ 3p0 baggies that came with it, as I gather shippers for these were very common with dead stock toy traders in the early 90’s, mines in fairly rough shape with water damage, but I love it just the way it is.
A recent find that as it goes popped up on the SWFUK forum, lots of great Palitoy issued mailers, note the Dengars are not the regular ESB era issued ones but rather the end of the toy line ROTJ era as would have been sent out for the mailer slip offer (slimmer box & different baggie – Palitoy-a), see there are still cool finds to be unearthed even now.
The Astons final auction find, this was rather the insane find of a man who had passed away & left everything stored in his garage to his elderly neighbours, thankfully they met a fate more flattering than a skip & the lot ended up being auctioned off at Aston’s in their final sale, this included many great Palitoy single mailers shown above, the collector seemed to have been a major hoarder as he had mailers sent out to him in bulk lots, many of the carded figures in the auction (unopened) were missing name plates obviously removed for the mail in offers.
Note the 3 Dengars bundled together with a single postage mark & the lone ESB-d baggie example which confirmed these were also sometimes issued with an alternative baggie.
Close up of the triple packed one.
The 5 Palitoy Fett mailers from the find, sadly no sealed examples so we are still at the no sealed examples known stage, but this at least finally confirms 100% that the 1st issued ones Palitoy sent out were with the ESB-a (1st issue) baggie type, 4 as you can see where still sealed in their baggies & the 5th was opened, 1 flyer was also included in the auction lot.
The Survival kit mailers from the lot, thought to be the earlier issued ones Palitoy sent out due to the inclusion of the Kenner logo baggie, later examples have been found with the Palitoy baggie type (no Kenner logo just made in Hong Kong), I can’t remember exactly how many there were in total but a fair few with I think 2 lots having come in bundle form like the Dengars as you can see by the tape that held them together one bundle comprised 7 as you can see by the address label shown in the photo.
Gary Borbidge’s great find from an ex Kenner worker, his name was Denny Keeton and he worked in product integrity (product testing), the find in 2014 included a lot of baggies as well as many loose figures which had been used in the product integrity process at Kenner, all photos & info Courtesy of Gary Borbidge.
5 Jawas – 2 in SW-d’s & 3 in SW-f’s.
6 R2’s all in SW-f’s.
2 Pin head Han Solo’s in SW-f’s 1 Ben in SW-f & 1 Luke in SW-f.
3 Vaders in SW-d’s.
3 Leia’s in SW-f’s & 2 C3P0’s in SW-f’s.
4 Chewbacca’s all in SW’f’s.
4 Stormtoopers in SW-d’s & 1 DSD in SW-d.
One of the 5 Stormtroopers was an text error baggie (SW-d but no font), bag is an exact match in terms of material type with both heat seals corresponding to the others from the find, really makes you wonder how many un-texted have just been ripped open over the years assumed to be fakes due to no provenance like this find had.
4 Tusken Raiders 3 in SW-f’s & 1 in SW-d.
One of the Tusken’s was a weapons error baggie (no gaffi stick).
This line up of 4, 3 from the Cloud City set & the snag, Dengar/Lobot & Han Bespin all in ESB-d’s with the Snag in SW-c.
Lastly this DSD which came in an open ended baggie, looks like an ESB-d but I can’t see any text on it.
The Special Offer Darth Vader Collectors Case find, this is a very cool find, sadly these all ended up on eBay being split up a few years ago, 3 full set’s for the Vader/Luke/Yoda issue case & 4 set’s of for the Bounty hunter case, Note that this find 100% confirmed the fact that the Bounty hunter case was also issued with the IG88 in the ESB-a rather than ESB-b baggie, the case was the only time this baggie type was ever issued (ESB-b that is), so this baggie type is extremely rare for any of the 3 figures included as it’s one of the rarest of all known production items, but the IG88 infinitely more so due to not always being included in the set, the last example to pop up for sale went in excess of $2k 
it is worth noting that there were no actual cases offered for sale by the seller at the time & these are thought to have been excess overstock from the offer.
A bit of an obscure one next, a group of multi packs that turned up in one of the final Sellersville Auctions, possibly their final one, all were shall we say less than perfect as you can see, many had started to de-laminate & all had some serious water damage issues, luckily one of the nicest guys in the hobby picked them up & I know he has been doing good deed’s making gifts of these to collectors on a budget so huge big up to the ever gracious Shane carter, you sir are what makes this hobby what it should be!, our own Michael Sith is the proud custodian of a couple of them & has done a fantastic job of breathing new life in to tired cardboard, maybe not everyone’s idea of a grail find, but dang beaters need love to! & I think this is just an awesome find.
In the early 1990’s (I can’t remember the actual year) we would go to Fiiey and Scarborough in North Yorkshire during the summer holidays with our young daughter, The weather was often wet and foggy, so we’d be going around the arcades and gift shops to pass the time. It was then whilst looking through a gift/toy shop, that I spotted a basket full of what looked like Star Wars figures. I took a closer look and pulled out the top one – an Emperor in a baggie, next a Dangar &8D8 followed by another 5 Emperors and 4 Bib Fortunas. By now I was so excited that I got a basket and began to fill it with more Bibs,Rancor Keepers, 8D8s and finally 5 Rombas. I ended up with all the below in total –
10 x Emperor (Macau Euro-a)
6 x Bib Fortuna (Macau Euro-a)
5 x Romba (Palitoy-i)
5 x Dengar (Euro-b Dark Armor / pale face PBP figure)
4 x Rancor Keeper (Macau Euro-a)
3 x 8D8(Macau Euro-a)
A total of 33 baggies.
I didn’t know much about their value but knew that Romba was a last 17 which I did not have at the time.
The price label said £0.50 per figure and when I got to the till I asked if there was a deal to be had as I wanted to buy them all. We settled on £8.00 for the lot!
Eventually life got in the way and I had to store my collection from 1998 till 2023.
That year I joined Echo Base and started looking for figures I was still missing as well as getting values for what I had. I had sold off 3 of the Rombas on eBay a few years ago – not sure for how much, but seemed a good price at the time.
If anyone has any questions I can forward them on to Oliver who said he’d be happy to answer them.
Additional & very important information: This find really cements the fact that last 17 figures could be found in Palitoy baggies & also confirms that at least some of them came in the Palitoy-i baggies, this really is a nice bit of information & history.
Laurence Dyers incredible C3P0 Case find, Laurence certainly fell on his feet with this little lot, apparently a guy that’s had them as well as a lot of other Palitoy stuff buried in the depths of his loft since the 80’s, as I understand it he had a friend that worked at the Palitoy factory & would bring things round for him, which all ended up in long term storage, I assume the remainder is likely still sat there in the loft just waiting for the right time ( Hint hint Loz )
There were some insanely rare baggies in this find, so rare in fact that many are in fact the worlds only known/confirmed examples of the figure/baggie combo, now that’s about as rare as anything in the hobby I’d say, I was lucky to add a few to my own collection when Laurence finally decided to part with some, these included 3 Kenner examples which were never on general issue in the states, thought to be baggies intended for carding & never made it that far, this clearly demonstrates that many baggies we do not know/have not encountered may well still be out there even for Kenners which I find stupidly exciting, all 3 were in ROTJ-h baggies & although the figures were issued in multi packs, they were never offered in any in this baggie type.
I will have to add a link to the thread of the find for more info.
Individual baggie gallery is hidden on mobile devices
Insane find a few years back from a guy called Roland that worked at Meccano over in France, the below images are just a portion of the find that Franck picked up, there seem to be a couple of baggies in his lot with alternate bag types which I will get covered in the single baggies section, there were also a lot of other items in the find including carded/vehicles & plush toys, Photos Courtesy of Dorothée Drouin Franck Gada
Special thanks to these contributors for their knowledge and image contributions:
Laurence Dyer, Arnaud Heyser, Andrew Neo, AJ, Snaggletooth, Kevin Bletsoe, Brett Meyer, DEL, Gary Borbidge, Edd Grant, Chris Eddleman, Vince Hely, Nathan Maunder, Jamie Woollard, Niels Pit, Andrew MacLachlan, cantina_patron, Franck Gadal, Joe, Richard Temple, Sven Schneider, Steve Savory, Shane Carter, Chris Fawcett, Andy Clarke, psybertech, Jake Neilheisel, Alex Pardi, Marc Caraway, Spookedhippy, Frank Ferro, James Body, Jonathan Freeman, Grant Criddle, Chris Arbizzani, RobbieZombbie, Narayan S. Naik, Mark Yeo, SHAWN_K, Andy Raymond, MOMIKE, theguiltyone, Sublevel Studios, Mike Silver, Mr Palitoy, Ronny Anngren, Willem-Jan Bos, Robert Heron, Darren H, REBELALLIANCE, Uncle Ron, LandoSkiff (Dan), Mike Horn, Pat O’Brien, Benjamin, Samir Krim, Pete Fizke, Final Frontier, Mike Heel, MR KENNER, Chris Fawcett, John Kellerman, Paul Naylor, Matthieu Barthelemy, Stéphane Faucourt, Andy Clarke, Yogi, Chris Simmons, Stormtrooper37, Robert Heron, Thomas Derby, Todd G, Sheldon Wagstaffe, Derek Ho, Broc Walker, Adam Marks, James Gallo, Charles Jones, Darrell Johnson & Brendi Burton, Christian Somma, Johnpaul Ragusa, Jesse Cedar Soberman, Dorothée Drouin Franck Gada, Dennis Hall.
Photos in the guide galleries below are compiled from a number of photo sources. It’s not been possible to find credits for each one, however, if you own one of the featured images and want to have your credit added, or don’t wish to have your photo included, please let me know and I’ll arrange.
Thanks, Chihuahua.
