About a year ago I put a fridge in by my bar. I chilled some drinks, popped the cap and had no where to go with it. I tossed it in a Gentleman Jack tin. The tin is almost full now and I can’t bring myself to throw it out. Oh, and vodka bottles. I seem to have wound up with a collection of vodka bottles. At least they arn’t Absolute, Smirnoff etc… They are nice looking bottles that had good Vodka in them (Jewel Of Russia Classic, 44 North, Hangar1, Ketel 1, Youri Dolgoruki, etc). Same thing, can’t brink myself to toss them, so I’ve got to find a nice way to display them without it looking like a dorm. (I might have just come up with an idea though.) I think that’s all for the moment.
Most of my “accidental” collections are because someone heard or thought I liked something and started buying them for me as gifts…and kept buying them, long after I lost interest.
I started collecting Bank Checks by accident in 1972, while looking for coins in a Richmond Virginia shop. The vignettes on the ones from the 1860-1870’s were superb. Makes our modern check images pale by comparison.
Cookbooks. And 60-80’s Corelle baking dishes.
They were handed down from my grandma to mom to me. Now I find myself on ebay looking for a deal on casserole dishes that match what I already have.
While going through my late wife’s endless accumulation of junk I found about a dozen casino slot machine cards which she had …I can’t say “collected” as she did not understand collecting and collectors…but she never threw things out.
For those who don’t gamble (I don’t) these are credit card sized cards issued by casinos to track the playing habits of their customers. The more money one shovels into a slot machine the more “points” he earns, which can be converted to stuff from the casino gift shop, or discounts on meals and rooms. Frequent gambler miles, so to speak.
This formed the nucleus of a collection, which now is about 150 cards strong. I buy them on eBay and stop at Casinos for the purpose of collecting cards, which casinos love to give out.
But wait! There’s more.
While at the Tropicana in Las Vegas I came upon a room key. Again, credit-card size, with a magnetic strip on the back. Hmm. I kept it, and now have eight or nine of them.
When I was in Cairns last August, I bought my husband a tacky, nasty, cheap looking snow globe from the airport, mainly as a joke and to replace the mermaid I’d promised him (honestly now, you can’t eat an entire mermaid in one sitting anyway), and he put it on his bedside table. Then he bought another one the same design at the Ettamogagh Pub in November, and oh la! bought another matching one on the Spirit of Tasmania. Yep - he’s a collector now. Friends of mine in Sydney have a ‘tacky souvenir shelf’ where they actually display the nastiest tackiest souvenirs they can find when in a new a place either on work or holiday. Some of the stuff is hilarious - like the plastic pineapple from a place in Australia that not only doesn’t grow pineapples, but is covered in snow for much of the year - the pineapple plays “Aga-Do” when thrown very hard against an unyielding surface.
Some years ago when I was a bigger Beatles fan than I am now (I still like the Beatles, I just don’t listen to them nearly as often) my mother gave me a “limited edition collector’s item blah blah yadda” plate of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show (this one) for my birthday. I liked it okay, thanked her, planned to display it, etc… Then for Christmas (3 weeks later) she gave me the next in the series, and then another one later, and then another until I think I now have nine of the things (I know I have all of these).
It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I don’t like them that much, but I couldn’t tell her after the second or third that “I appreciate it, but you can stop now” without hurting her feelings, and anything could potentially offend my mother. (She might get mad then or she might sit on it for eleven years and then erupt at a family style restaurant in Gettysburg that “YOU DON’T EVEN APPRECIATE THOSE BEATLE’S PLATES THAT I SOLD MY HAIR AND KIDNEY TO BUY YOU!” while you’re trying to maintain a peaceful calm voice and demeanor for your benefit and the confused German waitress she had hostage at the moment.)
So I had them and I had to display them, which gave others the impressions that “Oh Jon is a Beatles nut!”. (No, Jon is a Beatles fan- he likes their music but doesn’t really have use for a life-sized Yoko cut-out and a “limited to the first five thousand production days” Yellow Submarine hand sanitizer dispenser et al.) Consequently, my cousins and sister and others started giving me Beatles merchandise (and there is TONS AND TONS of Beatles merchandise, most of it crap). I did get a few things I like: a set of Russian Sgt Pepper nesting dolls (Paul and John seem to have Down Syndrome but still cool), a couple of original albums in good condition (not particularly collectible, but cool for historical value), and a couple of good books- but also posters, books and shite signed by the person who met the guy who was the brother of their bellhop at a hotel in Australia, a pair of John Lennon British Soc.Med. “granny frames” (I do in fact have a pince nez, but it’s authentic Victorian and I bought it in a junk shop for $5, but granny frames look all wrong on a round face), and other stuff. Finally it stopped, thank the big Blue Meanie in the sky (though I do have a childless much older friend who has some original cells from Yellow Submarine that I’m down for in the will).
I actually refer to this as “The Beatles Plate Paradox”- it’s when somebody is doing something that is nice and selfless on their part and you appreciate the intent but not the results, yet can’t diplomatically tell them to stop because it would hurt their feelings.
The other thing I accidentally collect is monkeys. My aunt, for no apparent reason, started giving me ceramic/toy/porcelain/carved/etc. monkeys (chimps mainly, but also spider monkeys and others) a few years ago, no idea why, and my sister joined in. I think it’s because when I was little I had a stuffed animal named Monk (through the glory that is google and the grandeur that is image search I now know, about 35 years after I last slept with him, that his “real” name was Mr. Bim) that I was inseparable from, and also a wind-up hand-me-down wind-up monkey that played cymbals that I’m told I love and very vaguely remember, but why they waited 30 years to cash in on this mini-pattern I’ve no idea.
The Beatles plates I still have (although they’re boxed up and in storage). I kept some of the “select” monkeys and the nesting dolls but most of the other monkeymania and Beatlemania flotsam and jetsam (again- we’re not talking signed first edition In His Own Write but mass produced valueless stuff) I’ve given away or accidentally thrown in the garbage during various moves over the years.
I’ve bought a few tacky salt and pepper shakers on vacation. Hula girls, lobsters, you know. Kitsch.
Well, somehow the word got out. This Christmas I somehow acquired, from my mother’s friends, seven sets of Christmas salt and pepper shakers.
When I was in about 7th grade, my family went on vacation to Busch Gardens in Virginia. While there, I was bitten by one of the Clydesdales as I petted it. (I guess it thought my finger was a carrot or something.) Anyway, I wanted a small, cheap souvenir to remember the incident. So, I ended up with a keychain. Since then, I’ve gotten keychains from whereever I go and other people started getting me keychains from wherever they go. So, I now have a shoebox sized tote full of keychains from all over the world.
I accidentally started collecting ex-boyfriends. I never asked for them; I just seem to acquire one every several years. :dubious:
Cats.
Nickel-iron meteorite fragments and trilobite fossils.
Unfortunately there’s no interesting story behind either one, just kind of picked one up occasionally until I realized I’d crossed over into “collecting” territory.
Do you find them in far-flung vicinities, or do you happen to live someplace where they are not as rare as they are where I live? Either way, lucky you!
I would love to have a piece of meteorite olivine, but those are just hecka rare, I’m told.
Since my favorite is Gibeon (from Namibia), those I buy online. Colorado doesn’t really have any spectacular fields that I know of, and those guys in Arizona get cranky if you go into their crater with a metal detector, I’m told.
Owls and thimbles.
Really it was my wife started collecting both and after she passed away I just kinda carried on where she left off…I’ve got hundreds of the buggers now and I’m certain they breed…the owls not the thimbles
Porcelain dolls.
We went on vacation and I saw a doll that I really wanted, so I spent ALL my vacation money (whole… 40 dollars I think) on it.
Well ever since then I get dolls, most of my family has stopped giving me more but my Dad brings me new ones from time to time (the latest two are one from Hawaii and a Betty Boop).
I have nowhere to display them though, not if I don’t want my son to get into them, so they remain in my closet or in a box. Most of them are okay, nothing fancy but not what I’d pick for myself either (some I like, like my Russian doll). I still really lust after a Rapunzel doll I saw once though…
Rubber chickens.
I collect honey. It started on a Grand Voyage; I bought a jar of “Marshflower” honey at the French Market in New Orleans. It kinda got misplaced for a few years, and when I found it, I thought “Cool! This needs a partner!”
Since then, I’ve gotten more, and had others give me some. When it’s time for me to die, I wanna invite EVERYONE to a big toast & honey & tea party. I have over 30 pounds of honey!
Like… where do you keep them? Doesnt it get crowded - or do you have a large room to display them? Ok, I guess that isnt fair to assume the quantity… are they full bodies or just body parts? And how do you keep them from running away?
In my younger days: motel room keys, swizzle sticks, and, of course, phone numbers. 