Week 1: Luke "Farmboy"

The Vintage "farmboy" Luke as some call it was one of the first 4 Star Wars figures ever produced in the highly sought after Early Bird set which included Vader, Leia and R2-D2. Luke as well as Vader and Ben were original designed to have double telescoping (DT) sabers meaning that the saber was in two pieces and would telescope to a length more accurate to length of a lightsaber. This was scratched by Kenner due to production costs I believe for a one piece saber, but many Lukes can be found with the DT saber in the early bird sets as well as carded versions. The Bens and Vaders are much more rare. With the excess of very good reproduction sabers out there on the market and the greed of too many Ebayers and other sellers, use extreme caution before making any DT purchase. I went the easy and cheaper route. I bought myself a reproduction, and if ever the day comes that I sell the figure it will be listed as a reproduction. 

This particular Luke figure was featured on many cardbacks. There were the 12, 20 and 21 back Star Wars cards as well as ESB, and ROTJ. All of these with a dozens of different cardback variations, offers, foriegn cards, etc. There is an alternate "gunner" pic on some ROTJ cards and this pic is also used on Tri-Logo cards. Farmboy Luke was not released on the POTF card.

As with most all vintage figures there are a multitude of variations. The ones I have pictured are the most common. Brown Hair vs. Blond Hair. There are several more especially once you consider foriegn variations which are of real interest to me of late. Some with really dark brown hair others with lighter brown. There are more loose variations for vintage loose figures than can ever be documented completely.

My DT Luke is a reproduction saber. The figure is interesting in that his face sculpt is obviously very different. His hands are very pink in color and he has almost a glossy look to him. The country of origin (COO) is Taiwan. If you will look closely at the pics, all of them have slightly different colored legs as well as faces. This Luke has creamy tan colored legs.

My Blonde haired example has a COO for Hong Kong. The legs are slight darker than the Taiwan figure and the face is different as well. I believe this is the most common of all of them.
 

My brown haired example is the most interesting of the loose variants. It has no COO. The COO looks to have been removed typical of foriegn releases. Considering I bought this figure from a seller in the UK, I am guessing it is either a Tri-logo or Palitoy release.

The moc figure I own is a pretty common ROTJ offerless 65-back B card. This is the original picture used on the first release 12-backs. Carded "farmboy" Lukes are fairly popular with collectors on any card. This one, although common and a strong C-9 still cost me about $125 if I recall. Nice 12-backs can cost $300+ (AFA graded much higher) and carded DT's (if real) will cost in the thousands.

 Thanks for reading!