SWC19 Celebration Chicago Appearances and Signings

I'm glad your experience was as wonderful as you could have hoped! Have a safe travel home! Your photo op turned out great!

 

Thank you. I am actually home already. 3 hour drive. I still have off the next days from work. let’s me just bask in this joy and start reading the 4 books I bought.

 

Yeah, I waited in that line for Ray Park for two-and-a-half hours. They ended up giving us the option to either come back later (which I couldn’t do with the available time they had) or have him sign our stuff without getting to meet him. I knew I had a photo op with him directly after, so I just gave them the photo I wanted him to sign, as did about three other fans behind me too. Immediately after, we watched people behind us sneak into the line up at the table to meet Ray. We brought it to the Topps employees’ attention, and they did absolutely nothing about it and told us there was nothing they could do. I was REALLY bummed because I sat there for two-and-a-half hours watching Ray chat with every other person in the line, and then got robbed of that experience myself while people that were BEHIND me got it by cutting. I emailed Topps about it. It would be really nice if they allowed me to go into the autograph session he’s got tomorrow, but I highly doubt they’ll do anything to fix the issue.

(Don’t misunderstand me — I’m BEYOND grateful because I did still get to meet him during my photo op. But it was really brief and I had been counting on getting to talk to him after standing in line and realized he was taking the time to talk to everyone else that was there. I was really disappointed just because I’m a pretty big fan of his.)

 

Wow that’s terrible


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I got an auto with Daniel Logan, which was amazing. Had to stand in line for probably over an hour, but it was totally worth it because i met a few awesome people and Daniel was taking his time with all of the fans. He was being a bit of a rebel too, letting fans take selfies with him and signing more than one item He was making a point to personally connect with everyone and it didn't feel rushed at all - it was towards the end of the day, so maybe that was why. At one point, Timothy Zahn even came and hung out at Daniel's table Suffice to say I was deeply impressed and touched by the whole thing and even though I'm broke now lol I would do it again in a heartbeat. Way beyond all my expectations

 

Sad that Celebration 2019 is over for me. Hopefully this wasn't my last Star Wars Celebration. Ended up with 32 autographs and 10 photos ops. Topps and Epic ran things pretty well in my opinion. I was able to roam the show floor a bunch all days and caught the end of the Episode 9 panel.

 

Ray was super late today for his photo op so they ended up making his team up with Ian go first. Waited 1h30 for him and they told us no touching, no hugging, no handshakes etc. He was nice though and actually reached out to shake my hand. I’ll post pics in a bit


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I have a question. Assuming that they are able to book Ridley, Boyega, and Isaac for Anaheim 2020, anybody have a ballpark figure as to what their prices would be?

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Boyega was $200 at Awesome Con last year, so probably a little higher than that. I'd guess Oscar in the same range. I don't see Daisy signing, but I could see her being $300 if she did.

 

Well, Those are 2 people I would like to meet, so I will budget appropriately for them

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No way Daisy signs for under 300 after charging that much since TFA came out for both private signings and the Topps Authentic site. I'd assume near 400 for in-person.

 

LOL Peter photo bomb!

 

I'm going to try and get my Hayden pic signed next time. I got tongue tied during the photo op - said some nice things but not exactly what I wanted - and I really want to tell him how much his performance means to me.

 

As I mentioned, I had some hiccups with my Ray Park autograph session, but overall, my autograph and photo op sessions were really awesome. In spite of everything that went wrong with Ray Park, the brief moment I got to chat with him during our photo op was one of the best of my life. He was SO cool and one of the few people I’d pay to meet again in a heartbeat.

Billy Dee Williams was REALLY quiet and reserved. He pretty much didn’t say anything during my autograph session (but on the bright side, I didn’t have to wait at all, which was nice). The photo op was really weird, though. We were specifically told not to shake his hand or touch him or anything. He was sitting down, and it was basically a snap-and-go (which is what I expected, but most people would at least acknowledge you were there and he didn’t). Not sure if that was him being a diva or just being quiet. But again, the 5 seconds I got with Ray Park 100% made up for that.

I also managed to buy Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver and Mark Hamill’s autographs for decent prices. The first two were planned, but I ended up buying them from a booth that had WAY better prices than Topps. Mark’s was kind of an impulse buy. I was really bummed about him not being there and they initially told me his would all be $275, but then they were like, “We have some framed ones for $250.” I initially said no but immediately went back and changed my mind. I have no regrets.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this, though, it’s that you should definitely try to avoid scheduling photo ops/autographs with more than one person per day. The Ray Park situation would’ve worked out just fine if I didn’t have the Billy Dee Williams photo op, too, so... I’d like to avoid that in the future. Not sure I’ll be able to attend Anaheim (I’d LOVE to, but I’m really going to have to save my money for that to happen), but I’d love to meet Daisy, Mark and Ray (again) for the next go. Adam Driver, too, but I highly doubt he’d ever do something like this.

 

That's just how he is.

 

Well, at least it wasn’t just me! I figured that was the case. I guess it was just weird because my experience with him was SO different from my experience with Ray Park. My friends met Ian McDiarmid, who they said was one of the nicest people EVER, and they also met Alan Tudyk and Paul Bettany, who they both said were really nice. So, I was starting to wonder why Billy Dee appeared to be the only guest (from the major ones that have been mentioned) that was not overly friendly.

 

Yeah, Park, McDiarmid, Bettany and Tudyk are all friendly. Billy Dee's panels are usually pretty weak too, although I thought he seemed reinvigorated by the IX panel. I guess that didn't carry over to the autograph booth though.

 

I told Ian McDiarmid that I look forward to seeing him in the new movie and he made my-lips-are-sealed gesture.

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Yeah, I noticed! I was at the Episode IX panel and Billy Dee was a lot more lively there for the five minutes he spoke than he was at the autograph and photograph sessions I had with him. At the end of the day, I’m still super happy I got to meet Billy Dee — he’s 82, and by the way he acted in my interactions with him, who knows how long he’ll be willing to do this kind of thing? But I also love the interactive experience you get with the actors, even if it is brief, and if you’re looking for that, he is definitely not the person to meet.

 

Billy was SUPER active and friendly Thursday, but I think 9 and all the signing took it out of him. He got a lot more quiet as the weekend went on.

 

This sounds about right. Pretty sure he told me to have a great day when he signed my stuff, but that was about all I got out of him. He was really quiet — which is fine — but it was a bit surprising because he was the exact opposite of what I expected? (I guess a lot of that is based on the charm and charisma of Lando rather than Billy, though.) But meeting him was still super cool. And my photo with him turned out great!