Steve Sansweet

Steve Sansweet
Steve Sansweet, August 2012
Born	June 14, 1945 (1945-06-14) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Author Collector Star Wars "ambassador"
Website	http://ranchoobiwan.org

Stephen J. Sansweet (born June 14, 1945) is the chairman and president of Rancho Obi-Wan, a nonprofit museum that houses the world's largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia.

Prior to his retirement in April 2011, he was Director of Content Management and head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm Ltd. for 15 years, and remains Fan Relations Advisor for the company. He is author or co-author of eighteen books, sixteen of them about Star Wars.

After Sansweet relocated to Northern California to be closer to his new office at Skywalker Ranch, he bought a former chicken ranch and refurbished its barns to house his collection. The property was renamed Rancho Obi-Wan. In September 2013, his collection of an estimated 300,000 items was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as being the largest of its kind in the world.

Sansweet was born in 1945 and raised in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia. He says he knew he wanted to be a writer from age six, when he hand-printed a newsletter and sold copies to neighbors for three cents. School newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks followed, and he became a journalism major at Temple University.

Sansweet says that he got a lot out of his classes, many taught by working journalists. But he got as much out of a unique community of fellow students who put out the four-times-a-week Temple News. There was no better training, from reporting and writing to photography and editing — and even "paste-up" in the composing room to get the offset daily ready for the printer, he adds. He worked on the special issue reporting the assassination of John F. Kennedy; as two-term editor-in-chief a few years later, he called in late-night instructions to hand-print a banner headline announcing a next-day visit to campus of President Lyndon Johnson.

Between his junior and senior years, Sansweet got a then-rare summer internship at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked the night police beat; he graduated magna cum laude and was named an Outstanding Journalism Graduate at Temple. In 2009, he was inducted into Temple's Media Hall of Excellence. Immediately after graduating, he went to work full-time for the Inquirer. During this time, Sansweet served a six-year stint in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, transferring to the Air National Guard.