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"Indiana Jones."

That’s how Marion Ravenwood greets Indiana Jones when he walks through the door of her bar in Nepal in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s really all she needed to say to get the point across. Indy is a character that consistently ranks at the top or near the top of all-time favorite movie heroes. If a magazine or an organization conducts a list of favorite movie heroes, it’s almost a guarantee Indy is in the top 10. He always outranks any Star Wars character for favorite hero, but yet in the world of collecting, Indiana Jones lives in the shadow of his big brother.

With Star Wars, there is a sense of community among fans and collectors. There are Web sites dedicated to Star Wars collecting in general and Web sites that focus on collectors who collect one aspect of Star Wars, such as R2 D2 or Jawas. I’ve never felt that sense of “collector’s community” among Indiana Jones fans. There are some great fan sites out there that keep us up-to-date on current news with the franchise, whether it be new collectibles, games or new movies but never really an outlet that focused just on collecting Indiana Jones memorabilia.

That is why I created this Web site. Not only does it chronicle my collection but also acts as a resource for other Indiana Jones collectors to come together and share their collections with other fans, locate items and supplies to add and help preserve their collections, be able to write commentary about their favorite pieces of memorabilia, and talk about what drives their passion for collecting.

I don’t know if it’s fair to compare Indiana Jones to Star Wars but it’s hard to ignore their similarities. Besides being brand franchises for Lucasfilm, they both have special places in the history of cinema. However in the world of collecting, Star Wars can’t be beat. James Bond also gives Indy a run for his money when it comes to collectibles. One reason I can think of for the underrated collectible market is the Indiana Jones franchise just isn’t as “merchandise friendly- as Star Wars, but that doesn’t mean the Indiana Jones items aren’t there. In fact, there is quite a bit and it’s not just toys.

When I was a kid I had the original Indiana Jones action figure, both the regular version and the one of him in the German uniform. But when you’re a kid you really don’t think about collecting, you just want to play with them. Which is what I did and unfortunately the original Indiana Jones figures have vanished.

The movies have always been my favorite but I didn’t start officially collecting Indiana Jones memorabilia until my freshman year in college. I started college in the fall of 1988 and was the poster child for a dorm hermit. I came from a very small town and just wasn’t used to being in big areas. I didn’t go out much other than to class. During this time, news about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade started to surface. It was to be

released the following summer in 1989 and I started to crave news about the upcoming film. That got me out of my dorm room. There was a comic book store just off campus so I started going there looking for magazines that would have anything related to Last Crusade.

With each trip to the comic shop I would dig through the back issue boxes just for curiousity's sake. One day I found all three issues of the comic adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark and bought them for $1 each. That is when my collection took off. The comic shop had most of the Marvel Comic series of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones so I would buy them when funds allowed it. From that point on I was on the hunt for anything and everything Indiana Jones.