Since I love to cook, a significant part of my collections are devoted to kitchen related themes. Such as:
[li]Cast Iron Ware.[/li]Square pans, round pans, molded pans, trivits, griddles, flat irons, dutch ovens, muffin pans and clothing irons. A mongolian barbecue grill, a comal and many others. Almost one hundred different pieces.
[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]Stemware and art glass bottles and vases.
[li]Oddball Stuff.[/li]Tortilla presses, taco shell fryers, muffin pans.
Now we’ll get into the other stuff:
[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.
And the weirdest thing of all is that I don’t smoke tobacco!
On to more stuff:
[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.
My brother said that my collection belongs in the Smithsonian.
[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.
[li]Books.[/li]Old Audel manuals that tell you how to build everything from houses to tram lines. Perry Mason, fantasy, Sci-Fi, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy all sorts of good stuff. Mostly in hard bound. An Encyclopedia Britannica atlas that contains a coupon for a free updated copy of the atlas when the borders are settled after world war II. All sorts of references.
[li]Musical Instruments.[/li]Flutes, guitars, electric guitars, amplifiers, saxophones and synthesizers, harmonicas, effects systems, and lots of others that I play for fun.
[li]Electronic Equipment.[/li]Stereos, tape decks. 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.
[li]Nikon Cameras and Lenses.[/li]The old style bullet proof metal body cameras (Nikkormat and F1’s) with the super-fine lenses that they used to make. All manual settings, none of these PhD (push here dummy) Brownie Hawkeyes for me. Plus tons of other photographic gear like tripods, vests, camera bags, light meters, slide projectors, screens and other gadgets.
[li]Marbles.[/li]Real aggies and other gemstone spheres. Old style daws, bumblebees, corkscrews, ox bloods, steelies and cats eyes.
[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.
[li]Posters.[/li]Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore, Carousel Ballroom, Fillmore East and many museum event posters.
[li]Hats.[/li]Stetsons, Akubras, fedoras, cowboy, straw, berets.
[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, Rapidograph pens, calligraphy pens, rulers and T-squares, drafting machines.
As you can see, most of the stuff actually has value. I do not collect figurines or anything from the Franklin Mint. My collections have a cumulative value of somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars. I guess I’m going to have to set up a second hand store when I get older.
Zenster wins.
Sweet merciful crap… And I thought I was bad…
Zenster wins the Biggest Packrat award.
::genuflects before the mighty Zenster::
OK, a few bits & pieces here, nothing in Zen’s category:
**Stuff with radio station logos ** Includes business cards, letterheads, rate cards, bumper & window stickers, key chains, pens, etc. Have large box of it, some actually organized in large binders. Includes a big packet of promotional stuff sent out to DXers (distance listeners) from Radio Luxembourg, Radio Beijing, etc. Haven’t added to it in the last few years, but it’s still fun to see the logo designs
** trade cards ** a hundred or so of stuff from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, right after four-color printing became widespread. Mostly postcard-sized ads for various patent medicines and household products, some stamped with a local merchant’s name. Fascinating stuff
** books ** but then, who doesn’t? Most of my SF collection of 40 years plus is on a set of custom-built shelves 8 1/1 feet tall and 16 feet wide. The rest, plus other subjects, fill 7 other more standard size bookcases and we could use a few more
Thank you kindly! 
Would that be a Toronto quarter (checked out your website, btw; very cool)?
Sorry, no; It’d be an Ontario quarter, they dont make special coins for each city. But it’d be flattened by a Toronto subway, by a Torontonian! Good enough?
And thanks! I’m rather proud of it myself, though it needs updating.
Thank goodness, but I do have a few.
comics: Enough to start my own store, most likely. Somewhere around 40 standard boxes, plus maybe a half dozen short boxes with graphic novels, etc.
magic cards: Too damn many, going back to the unlimited version (a couple of betas, but they’re the exception). Stopped adding to this collection (and the comic collection) a couple of years ago.
books: I love books. My wife loves books. Two of our good friends own independent bookstores. We have noplace left to put bookshelves and no shelves left to put books. What, you think that means we are going to stop buying books? Get real.
carvings: scrimshaw, netsuki, other stuff. I love woodcarvings that flow from the natural shape and grain of teh wood. I love stonework that takes advantage of the properties of the material. Any shelves not hosting books have little carved things on them. That’s the rule.
Hats: Nothing normal, though. Who wants a normal hat? Cossack hats, jester’s caps, and wierd things to balance on my head. Now you’re talking.
weapons: Hey OP, over here. Knives are my favorite. Kukri, kris, japanese lockblades, diving knives, throwing knives, one my grand-uncle brought back from Guadal Canal made from propeller steel, and many more. I love knives. Got a few swords, too. Phillipine bolo, Panamanian machetes, and replicas of everything from Spanish dueling blades to an English great sword. My favorite is a WWII officers blade brought back by my grandfather after the war. No balanced iado blade here, this puppy has some heft. Lots of sticks, too, and a couple of other replicas (morningstar, mace, battle axe).
canes: Started collecting them after the first time I blew out my knee. Sword canes, canes with a little flask for booze, shillelagh, and plain old walking sticks.
With all the morons I deal with daily, you have NO idea how refreshing it is to see someone who knows the difference between a machete and a kukri (and I assume, a gurkha?), who knows what a Kris is, and, unbelievably enough, knows a mace from a morningstar! Hell, even I confuse them sometimes…
Thanks. I needed that.
Well, I don’t collect anything, but I have my sword. It’s a hand made reproduction of a scottish claymore, long, heavy as all hell and perfectly balanced (if you’re big enough for it). It’s completely unadorned, and I have to oil it regularly to prevent rust - but it’s a real weapon, not an ornament.
It’s a family heirloom - or at least, it will be; I bought it two years ago. 
The wavy bladed Malay/Indonesian dagger?
Never heard of my namesake blade before…
I collect straight razors, Swiss Army Knives, I have a tourist model “jeweled” Arabic blade complete with bloodletting tine, sharpeners and everything. In the collection are a mother of pearl Gerber pen knife, a hardwood sided SAK, the Gerber pocket tool, the Victorinox pocket tool, a few other Victorinox pocket knives, two extra/spare/unused pristine models of the “Mountaineer” model SAK that is now out of production and the only one that I carry, the Buck “Fisherman”, a fruit sampling blade, a Gerber folding lock blade with Maccasser ebony handles that I have carried for over 15 years, several x-acto knife kits (for the wooden boxes). Many different kitchen blades, of course.
Blades, me? No, not interested at all…
Yep. I have a couple replicas I got as a teenager, but the one I show people is British Army issue.
bonks head on monitor
Sorry; my bad. You did say provincial. silent_rob’s gonna read this, and he’ll shake his head and say to himself, “I tried…”
Good enough? Heck yes!
However big it is I bet I could spend about a fortnight looking through all your collections. It’s damn interesting stuff. Never mind setting up a second hand store - you could set up a small museum.
How big is your kitchen? Do you store all the kitchen related stuff in there?
Thanks for asking Tansu. I have an entire basement filled with crap. I recently put in some shelves to eliminate the boxes-stacked-on-pallets syndrome.
Some people have walk in closets, I have a walk in kitchen. Sadly, all of my cast iron languishes in boxes downstairs. A lot of my Le Cruset hangs in a high density display in my kitchen. The pans are so wonderful to work with.
I have an architechtural flat file that has its top drawer filled with most of the semiconductor materials.
(Note to collectors: Collect silicon chips, they’re small!)
I’ve recently been in the process of removing my cookbook library for some remodeling. It’s the music studio that really sucks up the space however. Between the Gallien Krueger 4x12 cabinet, the 8 channel stereo PA and the four track open reel and cassette studio, it’s hard to turn around. Fortunately, music is its own reward.
Trust me, I have design plans in my head for a museum display of my glass collection. It ranges from decorative to utile to scientific to toys.
Most if my several thousand books are in boxes as well. It was all a lot easier when I had a three bedroom house to fill with this stuff.
I’m just gladder than a squid at a milking contest that I never collected some sort of worthless crap. At least a lot of this has potential resale value. Plus you are right Tansu, there are many pieces that do belong in museums. A few examples:
A slender little volume of poetry by Sara Teasdale
Inside are slips of paper bound into the pages that contain handwritten errata. The beautiful script writing is all signed S.T., most likely written in the poetess’ own hand. Inside the hardcover it is marked 10. This probably stood for ten pounds over in Britain where it was published. Here in America it was sold to me for 10¢! I’ve had estimates of value in the $100-$200 range.
A tiny little model cast iron stove
This is a “floor sample” that salesmen would carry around at the turn of the century or earlier. Since it was impossible to lug around several full sized metal stoves, the salesmen had beautifully detailed scale models of the products so that they could demonstrate the features involved. These stoves are incredibly hard to find with all of their parts. The finest examples have miniature pots and pans too and are valued in the hundreds of dollars range. I managed to find this pinnacle of my cast iron collection at a flea market for all of $20 dollars. The piece is in excellent condition with no damage and nearly every single part, right down to the flat irons on the stove top.
All of the cigar boxes
My 10,000 cigar boxes were mostly obtained for free. The solid wood types I paid a dollar or two each. One is beautifully streaked mahogany from the Brazillian presenditial election. Another says 5¢ and Havana, clearly indicating its age. Metal Camel cigarette tins that I paid a few dollars for. I now see the cigar boxes that I got for free selling at flea markets for $2-$5 dollars. I figure that I’ve preserved some small piece of the rain forest in these fine wooden boxes.
A two foot tall cobalt blue glass vase
Walking through the Salvation Army near my house I spotted this large glass vase. It looked nice but was rather large for my tastes. Upon looking it over I noticed the tiny little 5mm paper dot label near the bottom that marked this to be from the Holmegaard glass works in Denmark. The same makers of all of the Danish stemware that my grandmother gave me. Well, that settled it, I had to buy it. I picked up the piece and rotated it to the price tag; $5.50! This piece is called a “floor vase” and appears in the Danish catalog of national art glass. Since finding the blue one I have also found three others in smaller sizes in amber, olive and green. Sadly, some were missing their labels, but the shape is so distinctive that I knew what they were. I paid as much as $8-$10 for some of the others! The combined value of the four vases is in excess of $500-$1,000 dollars.
Yes, the boy knows how to shop.
More reasons why we love Zenster.
I…um…collect stuff? Which is pretty much in line with who I am. I don’t have sections, other than I like stuffed animals and daggers/knives/shortswords (if its longer than my forearm I don’t need it) I’ll pick up feathers, flowers, leaves and other nature stuff, but only if the individual piece moves me. My stuff is less of a focused collection than a way to express every facet of me. So my fairy wings are hanging close to my spiked collar. Its all my collection.
Zenster, I do believe we may be brothers under the skin. Were it not for the influence of various women throughout my life, I’d probably have as much stuff as you. Maybe more, 'cause I’m older.
If you ever find a woman you are thinking of marrying, take her down to your basement (hold the leers you guys.) If she says “Wow!”, she might have possibilities. If she asks “Why do you have all this stuff?”, Run! Run like the wind!
Or at least get a prenup.
Mnementh, Are your swords and other weapons old, or reproductions, or a mixture? I’m sure they aren’t the sort of thing you get on e-bay for $40.00. I’ve always been interested in that sort of thing myself, but don’t think I could sneak them past Mrs. B.
In fact I used to work for Gerber Blades many years ago, and when I left there I literally had boxes full of knives purchased at their ‘employee sales’, or through other avenues. (None larcenous.) Most of them are gone now, but I do understand the fascination with edged weapons.
Enough rambling. Other things that I ‘kind of’ collect:
Hats - I have about 30, but about 20 are baseball caps, so maybe they don’t count.
Jackets/coats - I love 'em, don’t know why. I probably have a dozen at least.
Old tools - And I use them too.
Just about anything old, odd or peculiar interests me.
Zenster, you’d like this: I have a Miller Bun Divider, Pat. Feb 1907. Looks like a squirrel cage blower with two wooden handles, one one each side.
Some of my stuff is eBay crap, yes, but I’ve got some really really nice battle ready stuff as well. Mostly reproductions, though.
The only stuff I have with history is a pair of Finnish knives that were actually used in WWII. Given to me by a friend. They’re dirty and a bit rusty, but damn, they’re nice.
Hey Zen do you have a wooden flute (Irish) that you’d like to trade for a nice mandocello? LMK
I had a wonderful collection of Redline hotwheels cars that I had to sell to pay for the divorce. Any of you over thirty five yr old Dopers got boxes of HW from the late 60-mid 70s, LMK, I’d be happy to start rebuilding my collection
I have about ten Benchmade pocket knives- I prefer the Elishewitz and Mel pardue designs in particular. at ~125 each, I cant get too many of them- I have about 4 or 5 on my acquire list.
I collect anything to do with the Shelby Cobra- the finest, sexiest, badassest sports car ever conceived by Man.
I will have one someday, I swear it.
I collect Tinwhistles so if Zen has any of those I’d be interested as well.
(but I really need another wooden flute to replace the stolen one) 
MikeG: Seen the new Warren Osborne axis lock?
Must… have…