Back in April 1999, the very first Star Wars Celebration spent three rainy days at the Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado and kickstarted a tradition that will be taking us to Japan for the 17th time in April 2025. That first show featured an X-Wing fighter that has been on display at Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum for a number of years that also includes a working R2-D2 and Kevin Christley, the man who helped bring the X-Wing home, is now behind a project to reunite Artoo with his golden counterpart C-3PO – and there’s just 30 days to do it.
Hey Star Wars fans! My name is Kevin Christley and I’m the fan restoration lead for the Star Wars Celebration One X-Wing Fighter, leased from Lucasfilm/Disney and housed at The Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado since 1999. The X-Wing was discovered in a storage hangar in severe disrepair and a very talented group of fans banded together to restore it to it’s former glory. It’s now one of the most popular displays at the museum. While the X-Wing has a working R2-D2 behind the cockpit in the Astromech slot, we’ve always known he misses his good friend C-3PO.
As it turns out, a very talented costumer and creator, Stephen Mathis, spent literally years perfecting his 1:1 scale wearable C-3PO suit. It’s been spray chromed, features electronic LED eyes, and real machined brass parts. It looks like it just walked off the set and is fit to be permanently displayed in a museum for everyone to enjoy.
That’s where we come in. He’s willing to sell it to us, the X-Wing Maintenance Crew for use at the X-Wing display at the museum. Our idea is to have C-3PO interact with the museum patrons and his buddy R2-D2. Our team is willing to fund the conversion process, electronics, coding, blood, sweat and tears and procure a mannequin to display the suit on. But there’s no way we as a small group can scrape together the $6000 quickly that Stephen wants for the suit.
That’s where you come in. Stephen has permitted us to open a crowdfunding campaign for a month to see if we can collect enough to buy the suit from him. In order for this to happen and C-3PO to become a permanent thing at the museum, we’ll need your help.
One dollar from 6,000 fans, ten dollars from 600 fans, $20 from 300 fans, $100 from 60 fans gets us to this seemingly easy goal. Stephen gets paid fairly what he put into the suit and the museum gets a very cool, interactive display to go along with the X-Wing fighter! All money raised will go directly and ONLY to Stephen to purchase his movie accurate C-3PO suit if we can hit the $6000 fundraising goal in 30 days. If we don’t hit the goal, no harm/no foul. You get your donation back in full. But as you can see above, when I ran the numbers, this goal, while lofty, is very doable if a few Star Wars fans can find it in their heart (and pocketbook) to spare a few dollars to contribute towards a museum-worthy C-3PO suit.
Let’s help bring Threepio home to Denver and throw some datarees, Republic credits and Calamari flan into the fundraiser.
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