I collect E V E R Y T H I N G!
A collection of glass bottled sodas (all still full):[ul][li] Coca Cola (American)[/li]
[li] Coca Cola (short Korean)[/li]
[li] Coca Cola (tall Korean)[/li]
[li] Coca Cola (Mexican)[/li]
[li] Coca Cola (Armenian)[/li]
[li] 7Up (green glass)[/li]
[li] Wink (Canada Dry)[/li]
[li] Orange Crush (art deco bottle)[/li]
[li] Squirt (green spiral glass)[/li]
[li] Sprite (green nubbed glass)[/li]
[li] Peñafiel Mineral Water (enameled label)[/li]
[li] Limonatta (Italian)[/li]
[li] Arinciatta (Italian)[/li]
[li] Sport (Italian)[/li]
[li] San Bitters (Italian)[/ul]And the grand prize winner is:[ul] G&L Green Ramune[/ul]This is a spectacular Korean specimen (perhaps Astro will drop by and tell us about it). I have an extra sample that is empty in order to demonstrate the remarkable marble seal. A spheroid of glass (the marble) is used as a sort of cork that must be dislodged in order to open the bottle. A sharp blow to the cap will knock it into the bottle. The flask must be oriented specifically so that the marble will roll into special indentations that hold it while you are drinking. Otherwise it will roll up and block the bottle when you tilt it. It is one of the oddest mechanical closures that I have ever seen on a food product.[/li]
Since I love to cook, a significant part of my collections are devoted to kitchen related themes. Such as:[ul][li] Cast Iron Ware.[/li]Square pans, round pans, molded pans, trivits, griddles, flat irons, dutch ovens, and clothing irons. A mongolian barbecue grill, a comal and many others. Almost one hundred different pieces. Lots of muffin pans patterned with everything from a gingerbread house to cactus shaped cornbread.
[li] Enamel Cook Ware.[/li]Le Cruset and Descoware (bought for pennies on the dollar), somewhere around one hundred pieces by now. Skillets, pots, kettles, terreines and grautins. All in the uranium orange.
[li] Pyrex.[/li]Hundreds of colored and clear pieces (like your grandma had). Nesting bowl sets, refrigerator jars, timbales, baking and serving dishes.
[li] Kitchen Gadgets.[/li]The oddball little aluminum things like garlic presses (20), lemon squeezers, olive or cherry pitters, tomato, egg, mushroom and butter slicers, the little Jello molds.
[li] Cookbooks.[/li]Well over a thousand of these. A copy of the Joy of Cooking that refers to prohibition. Nearly every cusine on earth is represented in the library. An Army cookbook where each recipe serves one hundred people. A Nancy Drew cookbook. A Danish girl scouts cookbook.
[li] Spice Containers and Miniature Tins.[/li]All sorts of small containers plus a four story spice rack to hold the ones that I use for cooking.
[li] Danish Crystal and Glass.[/li]A complete Holmegaard crystal stemware service, many kuttrolf pinch flasks in blue, green, smoke and clear colors, four gulvases (floor vases) of varying sizes.
[li] Cobalt glass.[/li]Lots of bottles (Pepto Bismol, Alka Seltzer, et al) plus a recently added Bormioli Sapphire table service of chargers, platters, bowls and cheese domes for entertaining.
[li] Soda Siphons.[/li]The old style ones bound in wire mesh, etched glass bottles (Schweppe’s) and some modern stainless steel clad glass seltzer bottles as well.
[li] Oddball Stuff.[/li]Tortilla presses, taco shell fryers, muffin pans.
[li] Flint Ware.[/li]The old Ekco style kitchen utensils. These are the traditional riveted bakelite handle stainless steel spoons, ladles, potato mashers and seives your grandma had. I’ve somewhere around twenty pieces.[/ul]Now we’ll get into the other stuff:[ul][li] Cigar Boxes.[/li]Over ten thousand of these ranging from antique to modern.
[li] Meerschaum Pipes.[/li]Unused and handcarved pipes from Turkey.
[li] Tobacco and Cigarette Tins.[/li]From Camel cigarette tins all the way to Pince Albert in a can. Chewing tobacco to Dunhill samplers.[/ul]And the weirdest thing of all is that I don’t smoke tobacco!
On to more stuff:[ul][li] Semiconductor and Computer.[/li]Sapphire and gallium arsenide wafers. Patterned and raw silicon wafers from 1" to 8" in diameter, polished and unpolished. Electron multipliers, ferrite core planes, hundreds of different style chip packages, microwave components, solid state lasers, printed circuit boards. Displays ranging from LED readouts to Nixie tubes. Computer configuration patch boards, IBM punch cards and punched paper tape. Ion collectors, electron beam evaporation hearths, moving mirror optics, photomasks, leadframes, sockets, components, connectors, lamps, electron microscope filaments. Klystron tubes and turbomolecular pumping rotors. Also old Hewlett Packard calculators and manuals.
I recently added a partial cassette of 300mm (12") silicon wafers to round out the collection. I now have wafers of every standard size used in the semiconducter industry.[/ul]My brother said that my collection belongs in the Smithsonian.[ul][li] Lasers and Optics.[/li]A 20mW Argon gas laser, a 5mW HeNe gas laser, several other gas laser tubes. Moving mirror optics, diffraction gratings, beam splitters, lenses, micrometer optical mounts and vernier slides. A home made variable speed three stage moving mirror Lissajou pattern generator. I recently added a Stanford Research variable speed precision optical chopper that will permit me to modulate beam patterns. I also picked up a handy home brew optical bread board so I can start laying out my components.
[li] Books.[/li]Old Audel manuals that tell you how to build everything from Victorian houses to tram lines. Perry Mason, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy plus all sorts of good stuff. This includes a hardbound set of Arkham House Lovecraft editions. An Encyclopedia Britannica set and its atlas that contains a coupon for a free updated copy when the borders are settled after World War II. All sorts of references.
Special mention of truly oddball stuff like Applied Atomic Power, which speculates about plans for nuclear powered planes and trains!!! Books on analog computers and how to convert your IBM Selectric typewriter into a printer. This manual is accompanied by the professionally built electronic interface box I bought for a few bucks in a thrift shop.
Tons of science fiction paperbacks by Clarke, Bradbury, Pohl and other classic writers.
Also, a massive library of classic paperback fantasy work by Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, Hannes Bok, Lin Carter, William Morrison, Edmund Hamilton, et al.
[li] Maps.[/li]National geographic color maps, topographical surveys, color geological crossections plus books on surveying and map history.
[li] Musical Instruments.[/li]A piano, tenor and alto flutes, bamboo, rosewood and ceramic flutes, penny whistles, tenor, alto and soprano recorders, guitars, electric guitars, bass guitar, amplifiers, straight soprano, alto and C-melody saxophones plus analog synthesizers, harmonicas, a kalimba, an echoplex effects system and lots of others that I play for fun.
I recently added a Conn tenor saxophone. Also a Fatar 88 key electronic MIDI controller velocity sensitive keyboard with weighted action, thumbwheels and a Yamaha FB-01 FM Sound Generator to voice it.
[li] Ticket stubs from many of the rock concerts and movies I’ve attended.[/li]
[li] Hundreds of matchbooks.[/li]
[li] Cardboard beer coasters from around the world.[/li]
[li] Electronic Equipment.[/li]Receivers, turntables and tape decks in stereo and quadraphonic, studio equipment, short wave radios, meters, video pattern generators, oscilloscopes and test equipment, geiger counters.
[li] Tools.[/li]Mostly limited to a real life tool kit that I use to repair anything from a million dollar semiconductor reactor to my own car. A stereoscope, calipers and micrometers. I recently added a full Kennedy machinist’s box and its matching roll-around.
[li] Nikon Cameras and Lenses.[/li]The old style bullet proof metal body cameras (Nikkormat and F1’s) and a motor driven back F1 with the super-fine Nikkor lenses that they used to make. All manual settings, none of these PhD (push here dummy) Brownie Hawkeyes for me. Toss in all of the filters, polarizers and shutter releases, plus tons of other photographic gear like tripods, vests, camera bags, light meters, slide projectors, screens and other gadgets.
[li]Ray Ban Sunglasses.[/li]Aviator style shades with gold frames and green, amber and photochrome lenses plus a few clip-ons. Some are WWII vintage.
[li] Marbles.[/li]Real aggies and other gemstone spheres. Old style daws, bumblebees, corkscrews, ox bloods, steelies and cats eyes. This includes faceted crystal spheres and other shapes.
[li] Sea Shells.[/li]Abalones, textile cones, local species, miniature shells.
[li] Licorice.[/li]A dozen different types from all over Europe including Italian, Danish and Dutch. All of these are stored in old fashioned style glass candy store jars.
[li]Posters.[/li]Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore, Carousel Ballroom, Fillmore East and many museum event posters.
[li] Hats.[/li]Stetsons, Akubras, fedoras, a straw Panama and sombrero, berets.
[li] Money.[/li]Paper currency and coins from my travels to Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Armenia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Holland.
[li] Pennies.[/li]Completely full five gallon water bottle. Many other bottles full as well.
[li] Drafting Equipment.[/li]Drafting sets (Deitzgen, Kuffel and Esser), templates, ink bottles, Kohinoor pens, calligraphy pens, rulers and T-squares, drafting machines.
[li]Pens.[/li]Mont Blanc, Cross, Rapidograph and other fountain types.
[li] Vintage Camping Equipment.[/li]Kelty packs, Optimus, Primus and Svea camp stoves and all sorts of other handy crap for relaxing in the great outdoors.
[li] Knives.[/li]The Mountaineer, The Champion, the pocket tool and other Swiss Army knives, a Gerber lock blade and mother of pearl scaled penknife, a long blade fruit sampling knife, heirloom pearl handled carving set, Buck fisherman and others.
My most recent addition to the knife collection is a mint condition vintage 1975 Puma 972 Game Warden that I shall carry daily. It replaces the Gerber on my belt.
[li] Porcelain.[/li]Numerous Royal Copenhagen plates.
The most recent and excellent addition to all of my collections is a complete set of the Haviland Parlon Unicorn plates modeled after the Flemish produced Cluny tapestries. I now have all six plates of each red and blues series. I am currently designing illuminated wall-mount cabinets to display them.[/ul]
I’ll stop now.
… as it turns out, this is a distinct disadvantage in the armadillo collecting field, there just isn’t much 'dillo paraphanalia randomly found in Northern California.
The kiddie collections are long gone, as are the comic books. The snakes stayed with my second ex. And, the books periodically, and with much anguish and whining, get thinned out. I think the whales are still around, somewhere, but I couldn’t tell you where. So, yes, I can move, if I’m careful. But, only because it’s a big apartment. 
I’m just thankful for the variety though so I don’t have to always choose from the same sort of gifts.
As far as cameras go, my bestfriend would like to, so I’m trying to educate myself on something she might like. Do you have any objections for an amateur/novice? But, so you’ll know I’m not a complete photo dunce, I do have a 110 in the shape of a clown face. Can you imagine!?
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