AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
May the 4th be with you. Yes, on this fourth day of May, the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City will showcase a massive collection of "Star Wars" memorabilia. The man behind it all says he's been creating his own private museum for years. Reporter Julie Denesha of member station KCUR has more.
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JULIE DENESHA, BYLINE: Collector Duncan Jenkins doesn't keep his encyclopedic hoard of "Star Wars" memorabilia in a galaxy far, far away. It's in a 5,000-square-foot building next to his Northland home.
DUNCAN JENKINS: I don't have an exact number, but I'm somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 different items that I've been collecting since the beginning in 1977.
DENESHA: By day, Jenkins works as a molecular biologist. But in his free time, he scours the internet, looking for new items to add to his private intergalactic museum.
D JENKINS: Over a hundred different countries are represented, just every category you can imagine, from art to clothing to household goods to posters and store displays, food collectibles, just things that you would think nobody would even save, all the way up to the action figures that everybody remembers.
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DENESHA: There are three levels, covered floor to ceiling with memorabilia. Jenkins calls it the Sithsonian, combining the names of the characters who use the dark side of the Force with the Smithsonian Museum.
D JENKINS: As far as numbers go, I would say it's probably the second-largest collection in the world.
DENESHA: The largest is in California. Jenkins was just 10 years old when the first "Star Wars" movie premiered in theaters 48 years ago this month. The first item he collected was a trading card with a photograph of Darth Vader's ship, a TIE fighter.
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D JENKINS: So I actually have it right here in this display case, and it's a trading card from Wonder Bread. It still has my initials on it, where I wrote on it so it wouldn't get lost when I took it to school.
DENESHA: Now Jenkins has a whole set of those cards, all of them in mint condition. He says what started out as a hobby slowly became an obsession.
D JENKINS: So back here, this is the vintage toy room.
DENESHA: Action figures in their original packaging cover three walls of the room. They're organized chronologically and alphabetically by country, starting with toys from Australia. His wife Anne Jenkins says it's been a fun journey, seeing the collection grow so large.
ANNE JENKINS: I probably say whoa a lot, but yeah, it's a little overwhelming sometimes. You know, you collect for 40 years, and you're just amazed at what has been accumulated and occurred in that time frame.
DENESHA: In 2008, they decided to build their museum.
D JENKINS: Yeah, we were totally out of room in our original house. There were entire rooms that were just storage of "Star Wars," and so it was a lot of stuff in boxes and no room to walk.
DENESHA: Now, all the memorabilia is out of the house and solely in the museum. Among "Star Wars" superfans, Jenkins has found fame as an expert of all things Jedi-related. He gives presentations at conventions, and he's co-authored four books on "Star Wars" collectibles. Fans from as far away as Australia and Korea have come to see his collection of X-wings, Millennium Falcons and Death Stars.
D JENKINS: Most people aren't trying to collect everything. When "Star Wars" first came out, everybody was collecting everything because there just wasn't as much, but as it became just this overwhelming behemoth of stuff, people began to focus. It's not like, you know, I did this amazing thing by out-getting everything. I'm just the only one that stuck with it, I guess, was crazy enough to keep at it.
DENESHA: Crazy or not, Jenkins' dedication has made his collection the envy of the universe. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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