Welcome to Secret Compass Collectibles! Many of you have transacted with our company before, through our mail order catalogue, and our 8+ years on Ebay (user ID: secretcompass). We are proud to present our new comprehensive website, featuring many of the product lines you’re currently collecting from, as well as some new ones you may be unfamiliar with. I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you to our website, and to give you a brief history of our company…

Our company, Lifeboat LLC., has been in business since 2004. We are based out of Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. We deal primarily in limited edition movie merchandise such as prop replicas, statues, maquettes, busts , and other collectibles, but we also deal in one-of-a-kind pieces of art, and just about anything else we think would enhance today’s home theaters and hobby rooms. We are Direct Dealers of just about every movie merchandise manufacturer in the industry, to include Sideshow Collectibles, HCG, Quantum Mechanix, Atlanta Cutlery, eFX Collectibles, Factory Entertainment, ARH Studios, Triforce, WETA, Kotobuikya, AutoArt, Abbyshot, and Museum Replicas. We also partner with the best distributors in the business, and can acquire just about anything from the limited edition collectibles world. Secret Compass has 8+ years of domestic and international shipping experience, to include 8+ years of experience with International Customs. Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding international shipping and Customs in your country. We have shipped with USPS (Express and Priority), Fedex, UPS, and DHL, and we have freight forwarders standing by to handle our larger shipments. In the 8+ years we have spent building our company, we have gained the trust of international collectors around the world. There’s a reason why Secret Compass is considered to be one of the most trusted sources of limited edition collectibles: We are an honest and dependable company. If you’re going to place an order for, let’s say, the 1:1 Terminator Combat Endoskeleton – that’s a $6,000 commitment! We have shipped over 20 of them to 6 different countries and can provide references from the customers that ordered them. It comes down to trust, and for expensive products like these, you want to be in the hands of a shop you can trust, someone with a proven track record, that will go the extra distance to assure that you will get what you paid for. We deal in quality products, not quantity, which gives us the time to answer emails accordingly and provide personal reassurance that your order has been processed according to your exact specifications.

We pride ourselves on customer service. If you have any questions before/after your order, please feel free to email us at info@secretcompasscollectibles.com during normal business hours- 8 am to 4 pm (Mountain Standard Time USA) Monday-Friday, and occasionally, on weekends. WE ANSWER ALL EMAILS. If you do not hear back from us within a reasonable time frame, we did not receive your e-mail or you did not receive our answer. This sometimes happens, especially with today’s junk filters, spam control, and ISP/server issues. Please e-mail us from a different e-mail account or feel free to call us. We speak German and some French, and we’re willing to use online translators to communicate with any of our customers in most other languages. We’re willing to go the extra distance to assure your order arrives safe and sound. We’re collectors and artists ourselves, and that means we care about each and every transaction that we process. We strive to be your one-stop source for high end movie merchandise and collectibles!

Shane’s Story

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, watching many of the same movies as our customers: Star Wars, The Terminator, Alien/Aliens, Mad Max, Indiana Jones, The Goonies, ect. and like many of you, I collected action figures as a kid. I can still remember how excited I was to see the snow come down, winter 1981, just so I could go outside and set up my Hoth action figures. I still have some of those action figures, but then in 2002, my whole world got turned upside down the day I bought the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD box set. I was after the extended version of the movie, and it came with (2) Argonath polystone bookends made by Sideshow Collectibles. I was impressed with the detail and the weight of these 2 pieces, but I had never heard of Sideshow Collectibles. After a little research, low and behold… a whole new world! Now, I’m not going to knock the action figures I collected as a kid because honestly, that’s about all you could get at the time and I was happy to be collecting what little I could get my hands on, from the movies I loved. But, as I quickly realized, in the years that had passed since my childhood… wow, had the world of collecting changed! Icons, Sideshow Collectibles, and Master Replicas were turning out some of the coolest products I’d ever seen, even by today’s standards. MR’s FX lightsabers still amaze me… I look back on the broom handles, flashlights, paper towel rolls, gift wrapping paper tubes, and fluorescent light bulbs (???) I tried to make into lightsabers as a kid, and I still can’t believe the FX sabers are what they are. Needless to say, I jumped in head first. I began collecting as a retail customer, and then soon after, my partners and I formed Lifeboat,LLC. in 2004. We began advertising movie merchandise in our existing mail order catalogue and then that quickly spread to our SecretCompass store on Ebay. Today, we are Direct Dealers of many of the movie merchandise manufacturers in the industry, with more companies being brought on every week.

I have continued collecting the things that appeal to me, all along the way. I personally have an extensive collection of prop replicas, etc. manufactured by Sideshow Collectibles, Master Replicas, Gentle Giant, HCG, etc. etc. etc. and to this day, this is what keeps me excited about the new movies coming out, and the new products being made in celebration of them. Today’s industry leaders in the collectibles world are turning out some of the most sophisticated pieces we’ve ever seen, and in many instances (when I can afford it), I am waiting right alongside all our customers, for the one I have on hold, for my own personal collection. I’m also a fan and a writer myself, so when I’m not answering emails & phone calls/processing orders or reading up on the latest installments coming over the horizon, I spend every extra minute working on my own saga, “AKTIYA.” The first of 3 books (AKTIYA: The Ignition Sequence) is done, and I’m working hard on the second story right now. More news soon!

All in all… I am grateful to be running this company, and grateful to spend most of my day immersed in these worlds we have grown to love. We bring our experience to each and every transaction, and we want our customers to know that we know the difference between the products we sell because we’re collectors ourselves, and we care about what we sell. We’d like to thank you, our existing customers, and our new customers, for supporting Secret Compass!

-Shane
October 2011

About Erwin

Ever since I was short science fiction and fantasy had me in their clutches. I remember sitting in front of the TV on saturday mornings with a bowl of cereal anticipating the weeks' installment of the original Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets), Robotech, Starblazers. When my parents traveled to visit my relatives in Taiwan I didn't want to go out sightseeing, I wanted to watch Japan's version of Iron Man (literally translated, it was one of the first giant robot cartoons, his fists shot out of his arms!), Astroboy and Captain Harlock. Taiwan's toy stores were full of gleaming metal transforming robots, it took all of my parents power to drag their wide eyed, salivating child away from those brightly lit display cases.

Now that I'm less short, nothing much has changed, except now I'm sitting in front of the TV on Sunday nights with a bowl of cereal anticipating the weeks' installment of Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. Instead of going to the toy store, now I'm part of the store filled with gleaming statues and replicas with brightly lit webpages. I'm still wide eyed and salivating.

-Erwin, October 2011

About Bradley

My name is Bradley, and I am a geek.

There I said it...a bit harder to admit than I thought. But there it is, out of the closet for all to see. I was weaned on early 80's cartoons, basked in the warm glow of Sci-fi and comic books, cut my teeth on obscure British comedies and drank from the fountain of video games as though my thirst would never be sated.

Looking back, I would say that one of my earliest memories of being “different” from most people occurred in third grade. I had recently made a trip to Halley's Comics in Old Town Fort Collins, and discovered a rare gem. It was a light blue t-shirt that featured the Fantastic 4 (it was a Jack Kirby illustration and featured the original 'Four' in all their glory, riding in the Fantasticar). As you and I now know, the Fantastic 4 are fucking awesome. I already knew this in 1988, and as such was under the impression that most people knew it too. Hell, I figured that wearing this t-shirt to school would surely be a big hit, right? WRONG. Not only did no one care, but it turns out that that kind of thing wasn't “cool”. Unfortunately, and even though I knew better, I began to hide my nerdy flame from most of the outside world. I would secretly modify action figures in the basement. I would read comics out of a brown paper bag in the backyard. I would hide my love of Classic Star Trek and Richard Matheson under a bushel because when it came to the “normal folks”, that kind of thing wasn't “cool”.

I was born in 1980, and since my first viewing of Return Of the Jedi in the theatre at the age of 3, to the conversation about Alienware computers I had with the kid at the Diablo 3 release party this week, I have been consciously (and subconsciously) soaking up geeky facts like a sponge. I have immersed myself in geek culture. I can't for the life of me remember what I had for breakfast, or the name of the next door neighbor who mere seconds ago introduced himself to me. But by God, I could tell you what John Constantine's favorite brand of cigarettes are (Silk Cut), and quote lines from Dune with you all day long. I used to view this as no more than an embarrassing and somewhat shameful talent. It was a party trick that I would hide at parties at the risk of outing myself amongst the “normal people”...

..but that was before I accepted who I am. And now it's my job. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that all of this “useless knowledge” and all of the nerdy things I love would not only be accepted, but be put to use. I have The Compass to thank for that. And as I have grown towards my own acceptance, much to my amazement, the things that I love have also become accepted. Geek culture is now the new mainstream. 

So if you're living a lie, if you're ashamed to be open about your love of tabletop gaming, LARPing or even fantasy football, give it up. Be who you are, I promise that you'll be happy you did. And if you're worried about whether or not you're getting the Modern version of the Bowen Cyclops statue and not the Classic Uncanny X-Men version, relax. I've got you covered.

P.S. - Let me know if you ever come across that Fantastic 4 shirt, I'd like to get it back.

Bradley - November 2011