Golden C-3P0

We had a garage sale yesterday, and today my daughter and I headed to Toys-R-Us to spend a little of the proceeds.

I had in mind Jabba’s Sail Barge (set 6210) , which would have covered a lot of the minifig characters my daughter would like to see in our collection.

When we got there, it was no longer in stock. I saw it there a couple of weeks back, but put off the purchase.

Oh well.

My daughter decided that the Hoth Rebel Base (set 7666) might be an acceptable substitute. One of the characters that she really wanted was C-3P0, and while the Hoth set does not have him, it does have a white droid of the same type called K-3P0.

So we purchased the Hoth set and headed home to spend the afternoon building and playing with our LEGOs.

I set up one of our folding tables in the play room (a 11′ x 33′ addition to our house we call “the bowling alley”) and we sat down to begin the building process.

But when I opened the box, something extra came out!

gold02.jpg

A Star Wars 30th Anniversary Golden LEGO C-3P0! Only 10,000 of them were made, and they were dropped randomly in LEGO Star Wars sets!

And we got one! I guess that makes up for missing Jabba!

Of course, having watched the LEGO prices on eBay, I knew we had a $200 item on our hands here.

$200, if we left it in the bag.

But how could we leave it in the bag? I could barely keep my daughter from opening it until we got some pictures and showed the bag to my wife.

So, sorry collectors, the bag was opened. I am going to save the bag, but the golden C-3P0 is on the loose now.

Here he is with an old friend.

gold02.png

And with some of the rest of our cast of characters, including K-3P0.

gold04.png

Actually, collectors should be happy. I just made those still sealed in their bags just that much more valuable.

12 thoughts on “Golden C-3P0”

  3. Kilanna

    Even now I fondly remember my Dad and I having fun times when I was about your daughters age. We used to read books and watch cartoons together. I was never into leggo but we used to play card games and board games.

    Your daughter will thank you for such fun times in years to come :)

    Like

  4. dmosbon

    I agree with Kilanna…my oldest brother use to wake up most mornings before me & the youngest brother did. He would then spend sometime before going to work making huge structures out of LEGO. When we awoke we use to rush downstairs to see what he had created…we then would marvel at it for a few minutes & then break it down only to find we couldn’t replicate what he had done! Those mornings are still vivid after 20 years…

    LEGO seems to have advanced from then & I’ll know I will be building some of these things when I have children, for sure!

    Like

  5. *vlad*

    You made the right choice; toys are for playing with, not for saving up for some possible monetary reward, at some unknown date in the future. Would $200 change your life? No.

    Like

  6. Keystone

    I would have sold it for $200 bucks, and bought a can of gold spray paint from the hardware store with the proceeds. I would then spray paint the K-3PO white model gold and my daughter would have never known the difference.

    …Ok, I say that now, but I would have probably done the same thing you did! =)

    Like

  7. Wilhelm2451 Post author

    I did try to have the “sell vs. keep” discussion with my daughter.

    My thought was, of course, that we could take any profits and buy MORE LEGO kits!

    The bags that contain the golden C-3P0s have a small hole at the bottom so you can see a little of the minifig. It actually looks like LEGO used a standard hole punch (are there metric hole punches?) on one of the lower corners of the bags. You can see the hole in the picture of the bag.

    So while I was explaining to my daughter about collectors and the value of an unopened C-3P0, I kept moving C-3P0’s face to the little hole. Then I would say, in my best imitation of his voice, things like, “Oh, do let me out of here!” and “No, don’t sell me to a collector! They will never let me out of here!”

    The likelihood of the bag remaining unopened was very small indeed.

    I did manage to keep from running over to our neighbors house, where one of the kids is a 13-year old who has a big LEGO Star Wars collection, and waving the bag in his face to make him jealous. (He has the sail barge, the sand crawler, and the TIE fighter set.)

    I am, however, going to lord it over Cyanbane should I ever meet him.

    Like

  11. PD

    Had to open one also – a question – if you move C-3PO’s arms, is the gold effect missing on the sides??

    Like

  12. Wilhelm2451 Post author

    No, the only place that the shiny gold is not visible is the prong onto which is head attaches, and that is only visible if you remove his head.

    (Kids around, so his head has been removed more that a few times.)

    Like

Comments are closed.