Jabba’s Hutt Sign from Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Disney World (Star Wars Weekends)

This is a bit of an unusual piece. It was used to announce some people who would be signing autographs at Jabba’s Hutt (a store selling Star Wars merchandise at Disney World). It’s quite large, at 28″ tall by 22″ wide. It’s made of 1/8 inch acrylic and has the same design on both sides. I got it because it was cheap (the shipping was more than the cost of the item) and because it had a number of Jabba-themed aspects, like the tattoo design in the background behind “Jabba’s Hutt,” the silhouette of Jabba’s palace, and Jabba’s face, as you can see below.

I had hoped to win a different one that had been used to announce that Steve Sansweet was signing his book “1,000 Collectibles: Memorabilia and Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” which I like quite a bit. Steve is sort of my collecting hero, and that book was an inspiration in many ways for how I approach my own collection. But I was still jet-lagged from our trip to Japan and I slept through the auction’s end. Still, after this one arrived, I discovered that this sign had been used on the day that my daughter was born — June 12, 2011. So that’s kind of cool as well.