t-shirts. I try to get one from every placce I go to, and I have around 25… i’ve never really counted, since I’m too busy wearing them. I started joking about it being a “collection” until I realized it actually was…
No…but if it involves lawn gnomes I’ll get it as soon as possible. 
Oh, and Fabrege Eggs…very cool. Not quite in the wooden slug league, but still. 
Funny you should mention that, because I just saw the coolest eyeball mug in the Anatomical Chart Company catalog. 
You might have to go shopping…
I collect my cat’s whiskers, too!
I used to collect hair,too. My own, my parents’ and then my boyfriend’s. I used to make Victorian mourning jewelery out of it. But then I kind of got tired of making it, because it’s really tedious work, so I stopped saving the hair. I alway wanted to save dog and cat hair to make a sweater, but all my animals have slick coats.
I collect teeth, as well. I have all my baby teeth, some of the dogs’ baby teeth, my father’s and my boyfriend’s wisdom teeth, and a few teeth from my monitor lizard. I have tons of shark teeth, fossilized and recent, plus various other animals’ teeth.
Just reading this, I realize I have a weird habit of collecting discarded body parts. :eek:
I collect octopus figurines, too. But I am so picky about them. I can’t stand non-realistic octopi.
A good friend of mine collects late-19th to early 20th century mortuary photographs. She displays them all in one room in her house. It’s about the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.
I really would like to start a lawn gnome collection, though. I love the “Pensive Gnome” at www.mcphee.com.
I don’t have a weird collection myself, but I live in the middle of one. My mom collects sheep and lambs. They’re on the wallpaper, on the sheets, on the towels, on some of the rugs… We last counted them about two years ago; there were 579 individual pieces in the collection, not counting clothes, jewelry and home decor. If we were to count those, she’d hit 700 pieces easily. And when you think of all the pieces she’s picked up in the last few years, it boggles the mind.
I think the coolest part of her collection is that maybe only 2-5% has a religious connection, which is amazing considering how most of the ovine collectables out there are “lamb of God” or “the Lord is my shepherd” related.
Ancient glass bottles found in the woods.
Well, I take that back. This reminds me that I do have a weird collection. I collect funeral/cemetery ephemera. I have a lot of postcards dating from the 1870s-1910s with pictures of now-historic cemeteries. I have a few cemetery admission tickets from when cemeteries were choice recreation areas.
My favorite piece is a shipping receipt from the Michigan Central Railroad Co., which shipped one burial case to the Wagon Works Station in Toledo in June of 1902. And as any Antiques Roadshow junkies know, that kind of thing is of special interest because it appeals to several types of collectors.
I guess I have a collection of my own photographs of tombstones. I work in black and white and wander cemeteries on weekends and during my vacations. I take the nice shots and spring for enlarging and nice frames. It sounds like your friend’s collection would be right at home with mine, ratty! I’d love to get into that area, and I’d love to see her collection. Do you know where she finds the pictures?
Speeding Tickets.
[Steven Wright]
I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. You may have seen it - I keep it scattered on beaches around the world.
[/Steven Wright]
I collect date spikes. Anyone know what a date spike is?
Found in wooden railroad ties indicating the date tie was put in use. About 3" long with the date stamped in the head.
That made me chuckle…
My SO and I collect Champagne corks. Whenever we have a bottle (not as often as we’d like) we keep the cork and write the date and the names of our friends who were with us when we drank it…not sure how many we have (they’re all in a big chapati bowl), maybe 100
I collect "Dear America " Books.They’re meant for pre-teens, but I like them and I strted a collection.
Troll Dolls, the ones from the 80’s. I love the cute little suckers.
Clowns, my grandma and my mom started giving me the clowns, I think they’re called “Ron Lee” Clowns? I dont really pay attention
Owls, my grandma used to give me ceramic owls all the time, I have alot of them.
My favorite Aunt collects Christmas Villages, she has evey little house and person made sine like 1970.She puts them on display every christmas, levels made out of plywood and covered with batting to look like snow covered ground. Starry backdrop made out of blue sheet slpattered with white paint. She has to start putting it up in september.
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My sister collects *Nsync Memorbilia, She steals crap from planet Hollywood all the time because they always put *Nsync on menus and those little advertisements in the middle of the table.
she also buys all of the *Nsync party gear, Tablecloths,paperplates....etc. She has 3 rolls of *nsync wrapping paper, she also keeps a Mcdonalds cup in her room that has them on it. Not one of those nice collectable cups, a real ,paper togo cup.
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I also used to collect pencil shavings, but only for like a month before the jar I had them in filled up. Then i just threw them away.I don’t think I have one, but my best friend does. And I stumbled upon it by accident.
I noticed the stuff earlier, but didn’t really pay much attention to it, till we were watching Star Gate…he has a PVR so he records the 4 episodes every Monday from the Sci Fi channel. But anyways, we were watching Stargate.
And I notice him scratching alot, he has this eczema (sp?) condition, but anyways he scratching, and while I’m watching the television, i see from the corner of my eye…that he’s putting something ontop of his VCR…thats when I looked to see what it was…the stuff I had seen earlier…it was on the VCR.
It was the dried up skin from the eczema he was itching…and he was collecting them, it was piled pretty high…it was like the grosses thing I’ve ever seen…if it had been boogers, I would have laughed out loud, but eczema skin…EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
I have 7 of them but I do not actively collect them. Another post mentioned they are available at Made in Oregon stores, we have Made in Washington stores here in Washington. I was in was a few months ago and they have quite a variety of slugs, I bought a glass one.
As my username suggests, I am a fan of auto racing and I collect NASCAR stuff, mostly diecast cars. I have over 2500 of them now. Most are boxed up in my garage, I wish I had the room to display them all.
I also collect skunks, I have a couple hundred now. I am pretty sure I have at least one of each color 5/16 inch Crayola crayon made since 1918. And I have a nice collection of Patrick McManus books, he has even signed a couple of them.
My wife collects mice and frogs. Makes gift buying quite easy at Christmas and for her birthday.
I forgot to mention my flamingo collection – far more extensive than the women-shaped lamps. The flamingo is my totem animal, so I have a small but choice collection, including salt and pepper shakers, a four-foot tall planter (very tasteful), a string of flamingo-and-palm-tree lights, etc.
She prowls antiques conventions, mainly, and she knows a few dealers in old photographs that will call her when something she’d like turns up. She has actually found a few on Ebay, though-one she found there is actually a really touching photo of a little girl, maybe about 4 or 5 years old in a casket. She just looks like she’s sleeping. But some of her other photos are really disturbing, especially the ones of babies, many of which are obviously not just asleep.
But your tombstone photos sound really cool. I like to explore older cemeteries and read the creative epitaphs. Do you have any of your photos up on the net?
Racer, I’m jealous! I love my slugs dearly. I wonder if there’s a “Made in Missouri” sort of store?
I collect strange and ugly neckties. I have about 400 now. Many are classics from the '30s and '40s. Some are done by well-known artists I or others have known. Some are made of strange materials. A tanner made me a leather tie, a carpenter made me a wood one, a lady who does macrome did one all of knots. I am the easiest person in the world to shop for at Christmas time.
When my mother died I inherited her collection of small elephants with trunks raised. There are about 150 little elephants in it. My father began the collection when he was in the Navy in the 1930s by sending her some when he was overseas. I continued it when I went overseas. Some are jade, some are onyx, some are glass, some are wood, some are ivory.
TV
I collect souvenir pencil sharpeners, mostly landmarks (the Alamo, the Statue of Liberty) and things related to places (Indy race car, Alaska totem pole). The first one in my collection, and still my favorite, is Christ of the Ozarks. Here’s what COTO looks like, if anyone’s interested: http://www.eurekasprings.com/passionplay/attractions/
Recently I decided to collect postcards that say “state bird of <state>” and show a mosquito. So far I have one postcard (Missouri), but I’ve seen these postcards in many states, so it shouldn’t be hard to get more.
You must not have any friends or family who have seen it, or they would have urged you to get it. Yes, get it. Once you see it you’ll want to own it. Not only is it a very good movie, there’s a sweet and hilarious subplot involving a lawn gnome.
If you want to know what the subplot is, read this spoiler, if not, pass by and just go get it. (Ok, you can rent it first, but I promise you’ll love it).
[spoiler]Amelie is a woman who loves to stick her nose into other people’s business (in a nice way, to make them feel good) and is trying to help her depressed father get out of the house and travel. His pride and joy is a lawn gnome, which Amelie steals without telling him. The father then keeps getting photographs from around the world, of famous landmarks, with his beloved gnome in the shot. The gnome at the Eiffel Tower, the gnome at the Statue of Liberty, etc. It turns out that Amelie has a friend who is a flight attendant and gets her to take the gnome around the world and take the pictures.
At the Amelie web site, there are pictures of the gnome on the 4th page of the Photography section.[/spoiler]
Have fun with the movie!
As a kid, I used to collect basically everything, including quite a few things that I’m not sure I would confess to on a message board. Now, in more sober times, the only one I really keep up is penguin stuff.
I’ve always wondered what was up with the tendency towards animal-themed collections, but many people I know did or do it; my mother keeps up an elephant collection, I have the aforementioned penguins, and I have friends who do everything from dolphins to cats. The mother of a friend once had a quite-frankly-frightening chicken collection spread out over the whole house, probably equal to or greater in scope than the sheep/lamb collection Juniper200 mentioned earlier.
A friend of mine collected bones, including a human femur he claims to have found in the woods.