THERE’S NO DARK SIDE TO THE REMARKABLE TROVE OF ‘STAR WARS’ POSTERS AND ACTION FIGURES DOUG HOTT AMASSED OVER A LIFETIME
By Laura Kostelny | November 18, 2025
Much like the saga of Luke, Leia, and Han, our hero’s story began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away – Central Illinois in the late 1970s, to be exact. That’s when and where Doug Hott fell in love with Star Wars for the first time. His journey from movie fan to collector jumped to light speed almost as soon as the merch came out. “I asked for action figures from 1977 until I was much, much older,” he says. When he came across a framed Roger Kastel re-release poster for The Empire Strikes Back at a flea market near the National Sweetcorn Festival in Hoopeston, his focus quickly expanded from playthings to display pieces. “My grandparents bought it for me for less than $10,” he says. “It was pretty beat-up, but my grandpa made a new frame for it, and I had it hanging in my room for years.”
Hott spent the next four-plus decades amassing one of the most comprehensive collections of Star Wars movie posters and action figures on the planet, highlights of which will be offered in back-to-back Heritage auctions taking place December 6 and 7.
Doug Hott’s massive assemblage of ‘Star Wars’ movie posters includes international gems like this 1980 British quad for ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’ The piece is available in Heritage’s December 6-7 auction of The Doug Hott Collection.
Highlights of Hott’s ‘Star Wars’ action figure collection, available in a December 7 Heritage auction, include rare pieces like this first-run mail-away Early Bird pack featuring Princess Leia, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and Luke Skywalker holding the coveted double telescoping lightsaber that Kenner later abandoned.
Inspired in part by the Star Wars trilogy, Hott earned a degree in astrophysics from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, before heading to Cincinnati to study even more astrophysics in grad school. (“I was a nerd for a very long time,” he says with a laugh.) It turned out to be the perfect place for a budding collector because, as all Jed-heads know, Cincinnati just happened to be home to Kenner, maker of the film franchise’s original 96 action figures and starships from 1978 to 1985. “I got to know folks in the collecting world, and I was able to acquire stuff at flea markets as a poor graduate student,” Hott says. “I also got to see a lot of the posters that were out there. At the time, I knew about the U.S. ones, but I had no idea about the international editions.”
To kick off his “adult” collection, Hott saved his money and bought a stack of U.S.-release posters for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. “Then I thought, OK, I want one from each country that had released the films theatrically. That was a much bigger goal because there are quite a few of them,” he says. He went to work making bids via eBay and later found pieces from very pedigreed collectors, including Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (aka Princess Leia and Princess Leia’s mom) and Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz’s estate. “I acquired quite a few in a fairly short amount of time, which accelerated my goal of getting one for every film from every country.”
This original lobby card from Hott’s collection was issued to promote the Greek release of ‘Star Wars.’ Only a handful are known to exist.
In July 1983, Jedi Adventure Centers began appearing in malls across America, including posters and display panels featuring film art, concept sketches, and production stills from ‘Return of the Jedi.’ Hott’s collection includes what is believed to be the only surviving example of an original Jedi Adventure Center.
That’s when, Hott says, things got a little “out of control.” As his buying power grew – he went from astrophysics to the world of high finance in Los Angeles – he was able to work with a number of auction houses, including Heritage, and online communities in his pursuit of every poster from the films’ releases in Europe, Asia, and beyond. “There were some from Korea I missed a couple of times, but I got pretty much everything else, including some never-seen-before posters from Croatia,” he says. “I had thousands. I never liquidated anything, but I got to a point I wasn’t finding anything new. Posters got more and more expensive, and the volume of material was really light.”
While his poster collection grew at a steady rate, his stacks of toy boxes ebbed and flowed through the years. “My parents ordered the first Star Wars Early Bird kit that came out in 1977, and I’ve been collecting ever since then,” Hott says. Although he played with most of his original toys, by 1983, he began leaving the Boba Fetts in their boxes. “Once I got past the mid-1990s, I started buying my friends’ collections. They were all loose and played with, but they had some pieces I didn’t have. Later on, I got into prototypes, higher-end toys, and foreign things.” He sold his toy stashes twice – once in 1997 because he was a poor grad student who needed cash and again in 2002 to pay for his wife’s engagement ring.
Produced by Glasslite in Brazil in 1988, Vlix stands as one of the most sought-after action figures in ‘Star Wars’ collecting. Originally created for Kenner’s canceled Droids line, this example, graded and encapsulated by AFA, is one of the many standout items in Hott’s collection.
Due to its limited production and large format, this six-sheet poster for ‘Return of the Jedi’ is extremely scarce. By the time of the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, the format had largely fallen out of use, making this one of the most sought-after first-release American posters.
Still, he kept returning to the hunt, and by 2005, Hott was amassing toys from far-flung places like Turkey, Brazil, and Poland. “There was a massive expansion, and I had a really large figure collection,” he explains. “The same bug that had bitten me to get posters from other countries got me here, too.”
Then the fires happened in Los Angeles. Thankfully Hott and his family weren’t impacted, but he couldn’t help but wonder how he could safely store and protect such a huge collection from harm. “That’s when it hit me – it would be so much better to share it,” he says. “That’s what led me to where I am today with Heritage. I knew my collection would be displayed and cataloged in a way that I felt was really exciting, and it would finally allow me to see the whole collection at once. I’ve never seen it before, and it’s a good way to end the run.”
For the 1990 poster promoting the wide release of ‘Star Wars’ in the Soviet Union, Russian artist Aleksandr Kulov created a horseback-riding space cowboy built from mechanical components.
While Heritage has previously offered the Style A Hungarian ‘Star Wars’ poster, this is the debut presentation of the rare uncut printer’s proof. Created by celebrated artist Tibor Helényi, this highly sought-after design reimagines George Lucas’ space epic through a surreal, expressionistic lens.
The force was definitely strong with his collaborator, Charles Epting, Heritage Auctions’ Director of Consignments for Pop Culture and Historical. “I’m a huge Star Wars fan and a child of the prequel era,” Epting says. “Doug is a collector’s collector, one of the true giants in the hobby. He’s the kind of person who wants one of everything and will go to incredible lengths to track down the rarest of the rare. It has been a privilege to work with him to bring his collections to market.”
Epting notes that a collection this comprehensive and hyper-focused rarely comes up for sale and adds that its importance goes way beyond movie fandom. “It shows the universality of Star Wars – it transcends language, race, and culture. But it also provides a history of the marketing and regional spin that was happening at the time,” he says. “In Eastern Europe, they were working with incomplete information about what the films were about, so you would have no idea what the Star Wars movies were about from the posters. That’s what I think is so exciting about this collection of posters and toys. They bring the world together through these films that we all know and love so much today.”
