TikTok Users Are Obsessed With This Star Wars Fan's Ultra-Rare Merch Collection

Everyone's got to have at least one hobby. If you remain laser-focused on your job day in and day out, that way lies fatigue, if not worse. In our age of endless screens, hopefully one of those hobbies requires you to get out into the great outdoors or, at the least, out of your house. You could go bowling. Build a shed. Shoot wild boars with a semi-automatic rifle from a helicopter. The world is full of wondrous distractions.

One popular hobby the world over is collecting. You could become a philatelist (that's fancy talk for stamp collecting). Acquire reams of comic books that will generally not increase in value. Or you could succumb to the wild, weird pursuit of acquiring more "Star Wars" merch than you could fit in the Hughes Aircraft Hangar in Playa Vista, Los Angeles (where Marvel Studios shot "Iron Man"). "Star Wars" collectors are a lot like Pokémon fanatics: they've gotta have it all. In most cases, this involves the purchase of wildly expensive replicas; in one case, it involved stealing $200,000 worth of memorabilia from former head of Lucasfilm fan relations Steve Sansweet. In any event, however you've procured your merch, it should all be stored in your least tastefully decorated room — because it's kind of gauche to have your dinner party guests peering across the table at an encased wall display of an Admiral Akbar bust. Quite frankly, this stuff belongs in your basement.

So, credit must be given where it's due to the father of TikTok-er Maddie Doherty, who convinced her "Star Wars" obsessed dad to give a tour of his spacious and Force-filled array of all things memorializing that galaxy far, far away. If you're a hardcore collector, prepare to be jealous.

Mr. Doherty kicks off by showing a rather thorough and meticulously arranged assortment of Kenner action figures he bought between 1977 and 1984. I wonder if he was as determined as I was to acquire as many Jawas and stormtroopers as possible to best replicate their ubiquitousness in George Lucas' "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope."

He then walks us down into his screening room; there, he has framed posters for every "Star Wars" movie from the original trilogy, including, of course, the rare "Revenge of the Jedi" one-sheet that was released before the title was changed. Finally, he brings us into a display room in which he flashes his Burger King tie-in glass featuring Luke Skywalker on Dagobah from "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back." (I owned that for decades before my dishwasher gave it a fatal, final rinse.) He's also got a Jabba the Hutt popcorn bucket, and, his pieces de resistance, full-scale models of Han Solo frozen in carbonite alongside a stormtrooper and Darth Vader.

What in the heck did this cost him financially? It's none of my business, but that doesn't mean you can't be jealous as hell at him. TikTok commenters, who tend to get pretty surly, mostly expressed a mixture of jealousy and adoration. A couple of folks thought he was cute. Hey, good for him!

But since I've a competition in me, I have to know: Does he also have an ILM VFX team T-shirt from 1998 that was printed and handed out to the creatives working on "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" before its title had been revealed? My T-shirt simply says "Star Wars: Episode I" on the back. I still have it, but it's not in the best of shape because I over-wore it like a clown. That's the extent of my "Star Wars" swag.