Aside from a small collection of far less than mint-condition coins and about 25 years worth of National Geographics (you know, the one periodical you just can’t will yourself to recycle or throw away :)), I can’t say that I’m a collector.
Well, that’s not entirely true. It came back to me recently that, when I moved into my present apartment 20 years ago this month, I brought with me my vinyls, the four boxes of which I had promptly stacked away in a locker in my building. Along with those vinyls was a Beatles recording-session photo album which came with the original packaging of the Let It Be LP in 1970. I subsequently checked on the Internet to see whether this memorabilium could have any value whatsoever with collectors but couldn’t find any mention of it. I must add that the search really wasn’t that exhaustive: more for the fun of it and out of curiosity than anything else.
With this rather lengthy intro out of the way, I was wondering whether any of the Dopers were (avid) collectors and if so, what their “most prized possession” was.
Most valuable? Probably a set of minor league baseball cards, the 1977 Evanssville Triplets, which I think is worth something around $400.
Most prized? My hard-won X-Men collection. No, I’m not talking comic books. I’m talking about a photo of every professional baseball player whose last name began with the letter X. I went to the Cooperstown Baseball Library and researched who is in that category, then I tracked down the people themselves and convinced them to send me photos (actually, photocopies of photos, but that’s clear enough for my purposes) of themselves in uniform, and got their statistics (where I couldn’t get them from Cooperstown) by getting inter-library loans of microfilmed old newspapers from the cities where they played. It was a lot of fun.
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
I collect autographs (well, just starting to…), and my most prized one is a poster from “Phantom of the Opera” signed by the entire cast. Looks very nice on the wall.
Omigosh, GregAtlanta, I would LOVE to see those newspapers! I have a Ladies’ Magazine from 1775 that tells about Louis XVII’s coronation, and mentions the troubles in “the colonies.” I also have some great old fan mags (1910s and '20s), and some London newspapers from around 1803. Fascinating stuff!
I used to collect baseball cards. Then rock ‘n’ roll took over and I could not afford two hobbies, so the baseball cards went and I bought my first car with them!
I’m somewhat of a magpie. I save newspapers when the front page story is interesting, advertising and promotional stuff, foreign currency, stamps if they look interesting, soda and beer cans (and bottles), books, out of print CDs by obscure bands… you name it, I’ve probably got it tucked away in this rathole somewhere.
