Besides he also needed the money for his college tuition in Germany.
I remember he had access at one point to a very bad quality 1977 print of star wars without the a new hope subtitle. A guy he knew on ebay was selling and he asked me if i was interested in bidding on it. Of course i had little to no money, so i passed on it. It went for something like 400 american dollars or something. it may have even been a very bad 16mm dupe, there was little or no color left in the reels and there was very noticeable wear and tear and what people call cigarette burn when a print is shown far too many times.
I also came across in my ebay searching many prints from germany aka krieg der sterne with the german title scroll and even german dubbing people in the us still paid a few hundred dollars for them.
the one time that flat full frame prints showed up on ebay for star wars, empire strikes back and return of the jedi starting bids were 20.00 us and no one bid they were even full feature 8mm prints.
the six reel derann print for return of the jedi 8mm scope sold for about 600 dollars, i bid but that was way too much money. this was quite a few years ago.
The most absurd thing i have ever seen is a revenge of the jedi trailer 35mm flat print from the national screen service still sealed go for around 400 dollars just because it had a few seconds of the deleted sandstorm sequence in it.
very recently on ebay a 70mm portion of a mag sountrack reel of return of the jedi showed up on ebay the guy even claimed it had minor water damage. the thing still sold for like 150 bucks even if it was only good for film cells.