Rare EU Gems

The Star Wars Expanded Universe is one of the biggest and most in depth fictional universes but the community and the books themselves have deep lore and stories as well. I myself have quite a few stories of how I have come across rare books and really obscure things. That’s one of the best things about collecting is that everything has a story of how you came to acquire it.

When I was first buying the New Jedi Order books, I was dead set on getting a set with no legends banners. I love those shiny covers from back before the banner, so getting them meant that they were all scattered in places like infinity stones. One in particular was Edge of Victory 1. I had ordered it from Thriftbooks for a total of six dollars and once it arrived in the mail, it had a shiny sticker on the cover, declaring it as a signed copy! I was absolutely astounded, sure enough inside was a signature from Greg Keyes himself and I only paid six bucks for it.

I had this happen again from Thriftbooks with a Star Wars art book filled with the wonderful art of Dave Dorman, it showed up as a signed copy from Mr.Dorman as well as a little sketch from him of a scout trooper and I only paid 13 dollars for it, an absolute steal. One of my favorite instances of stumbling across a rare EU find was when I was first collecting the Fate of the Jedi series, once again, I was dead set on having no legends banners on my copies and book 6 called Vortex proved to be a particular pain in the exhaust port.

One night I was scouring the internet at 3am searching for the book when I came across an extremely obscure and small bookselling app called Pangbooks and therein lay my salvation. Someone had listed a no legends banner copy of Vortex for six dollars, immediately I bought it but when it arrived, I was surprised to see that on the inside of the copy printed in big red letters was “EMPLOYEE SAMPLE, NOT TO BE RESOLD”.

At first I had figured maybe it was a bookstore employee copy but upon asking my expert friend Brennan (Quinlan Vos on Youtube) about it, he informed me that it was in fact a Lucasfilm employee sample, which is absolutely insane. This poses questions though, who’s copy was it? What position did they have at Lucasfilm? And why sell this one of a kind copy? Questions that may never be answered but it is absolutely crazy that this kind of rarity ended up in my very own collection. Moral of the story is, find these small and obscure booksellers, perhaps you’ll find a book you’ve been dying to have in your collection or maybe you’ll get lucky and get a signed copy as I have, for instance, I had been desperately seeking the Unknown Regions sourcebook, especially after finishing Supernatural Encounters, I want every piece of weird lore out there. Now that book can go for well into hundreds of dollars but I found it for a STEAL of a price at 70 dollars on a website called AbeBooks. Always check your small retailers my friends, you never know what you’ll find!