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Week 19: Luke X-Wing
Luke X-Wing Pilot: I have very a very distinct memory of my very first Luke X-Wing when I was 6 or 7 years old. It was found under my pillow from the “tooth fairy” aka: my Grandmother…hell of a lot better than the quarter I usually got!! I loved this figure as a kid because I finally had a figure for my X-Wing Fighter because up until then I only had my farmboy Luke to pilot the ship. Kinda shows how spoiled we have become today as vehicles often times includes a figure or pilot. The Luke X-Wing Pilot figure is still pretty popular today among collectors as I have seen many people with a Luke X-Wing focus. And why not? Great figure on a really great looking card back.
The Luke X-Wing was first released on the 20-back card. And unlike the cantina aliens I have been talking about the last few weeks, the Luke Pilot figure also was released in the Power Of The Force series.
Here are the known card back releases according to Kellerman's book Star Wars Vintage Action Figures: A Guide for Collectors:
SW 20-Back E w/Fett offer
SW 21-Back A
ESB 21-Back G w/”Secret Figure” offer
ESB 31-Back A
ESB 32-Back B
ESB 41-Back A w/Survival Kit offer
ESB 41-Back D
ESB 47-Back A w/4-LOM offer
ESB 48-Back B w/Revenge Ackbar offer
ROTJ 48-Back D w/Nien Nunb offer
ROTJ 65-Back B
ROTJ 77-Back A
POTF 92-Back A
And of course, I found some foreign moc pictures for your viewing pleasures. (all carded images from www.12back.com, www.toysrgus.com, www.brianstoys.com) as well as a few Google searches:
Canadian ROTJ Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Palitoy (UK) SW 20-Back Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Tri-Logo (Europe) ROTJ Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Clipper (Netherlands) ROTJ Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Harbert (Italy) SW 20 Back Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Meccano (France) 20 back Luke X-Wing Pilot (Luc Pilote) square card:
Popy (Japan) boxed Luke X-Wing Pilot:
Loose Variations: Pictured below are the 3 variations I have.
Pictured from left to right are a standard Kenner with Hong Kong coo, China on bar coo, and Tri-variant Luke X-Wing. Notice that they get darker orange in color going from left to right. The Hong Kong coo is very common as I have had at least a half dozen in the last few years. Trying to find a loose Luke Pilot can be a bit of a challenge as this figure was very commonly played with and suffers from many trips in and out of X-Wing fighters. Mine “mint” example ultimately came from a cut card and it still has some wear to it. I believe the China coo is fairly common but not nearly as common as the Hong Kong version.
The Tri-variant is not common and is actually one of the harder Tri-variants to find. This figure is plagued with very fragile insignias on the helmet and are often time partially or completely rubbed off. As you can see from the pic, the insignias are damaged but luckily present. Also this figure like all Tri variant figures has the coo cut off the figure and is darker orange in color and the paint applications appear kinda think and sloppy in places and has a bad tendency for paint rubs.
I thought I would also take some close up pics of the coo’s just to give the readers a better idea of what I’m talking about when I say coo or Country of Origin. The country of origin is typically on one leg or the other. Also the coo is not always present with the other text (GMGFI and/or date). For example, there can be the GMGFI and/or date on one leg and say Taiwan, etc on the other. It can be 3 lines of text or less and on some figures they show up in different places like Yoda for example…it’s on his back. There can also be examples in which no coo present either having been removed from the mold, or a blank bar, or simply cut out of the figure leaving a scar (like the tri-variants). The coo text can also be in different sizes on like figures. If one was to try and collect all the little nuances and variants within the coo markings of the figures, the number of figures would be easily in the thousands.
Kinda hard to see in the above picture (sorry about that), but this coo is Hong Kong. There are 3 lines of text. First line is G.M.G.F.I. Second is the date: 1978, and then lastly is the coo: Hong Kong. The coo is on the left calf of this particular figure.
The above picture shows the China coo. Like the Hong Kong coo figure the location is the same, the number of lines of text is the same, date is the same (1978), but the coo is different. Instead of Hong Kong, there is a slightly raised bar with the word “China” on it.
Above is the picture of the coo for the Tri-variant Luke X-Wing. As you can see the coo is actually cut out of the figure leaving a scar. With this picture too, you get a better look at the “thick” paint job this figure has.
Check your loose figures out, especially any duplicates you might have and see what you got. I had quite a few loose vintage figures that were not part of my loose figure collection that I used for play sets and vehicles back when I collected these things. One evening, I got to looking through the figures I found that I had several coo variants in my collection already which I thought was really cool. This was about the time I got heavily interested in loose variations over other items (play set, vehicles, even mocs).
Luke X-Wing Pilot Prices: Although fairly common, like I said earlier this figure has a tendency to be rather worn when loose. Therefore the price of a very mint loose example can be slightly higher than some loose figures. Looking at Ebay, there are a lot of loose Luke Pilots that have sold for under $10 and some nicer looking ones selling for just over $10. For carded, looks like $150++ for SW carded and less for ESB and ROTJ. Again, it just depends on condition, grade, rarity, etc when dealing with mocs.
Thanks for reading, and as always there is a thread in our vintage section of our forums for discussion of each TOTW feature. Please feel free to sign up and share any info, pictures, or stories about any or all of the figures/toys covered thus far. Hope to see some new faces! J
Thanks for reading!