Serious collections

Cafe Society
1

What serious collections do people have?

I mean, all collecting is fun, and you collect what makes you happy, but some collections have value too: art, coins, vintage cars, antiques.

What collections do you have that may actually have appreciated since you started them, of if not appreciated, at least maintained value, so if you suddenly needed money, you could sell off portions in an emergency?

I’m not asking because I wasn’t to look askance at people’s ceramic cat collection (DH has one), or collections of 45rpm records (I have one), or collection of Nancy Drew books (I have full sets of several different editions, but I collect only US hardbacks). I know some people who collect first editions of old books, or have first editions of bestsellers, or autographed books of famous authors, all of which could be worth something.

I even know someone who has a pretty serious collections of serial killer memorabilia. He has non-reproduction editions of all the papers the Zodiac ciphers were printed in, first editions of the best-regarded Jack-the-Ripper books, most autographed by the authors, and an original John Gacy painting. He also has some copies of autopsy reports on victims, and tons of photographs, plus letters serial killers have personally written to him.

Having that in the house would keep me up at night, but the fact is, he could probably make a lot of money is he auctioned it all off on eBay.

I know lots of people who have collections of Judaica. They have tons of kitschy pieces; pieces with lots of sentimental value, but not much else; pieces that are pretty nice, but they use, and would never sell; and then a few really valuable pieces.

My serious collections are my pinball machines, and my coins. I started collecting coins when I was 11 and had a paper route, so I had income. Now the collection is worth about $30,000, and that’s if I liquidated it all at once to a dealer. If I wanted to patiently sell each coin online, it’s be a full-time job for about six months, but I could probably make about $42,000, even after eBay’s cut, and the postage and packaging.

What are your serious collections?

And if you want to talk about your non-valuable collection of rocks from around the world that it took you years to assemble, and is worth nothing, but you are very proud of it, go ahead. It sounds fascinating.

MODS: I chose this forum, because I think the question is “about creativity, entertainment, [and] leisure.” But if you think it should go in MPSIMS, go ahead and move it.

2

I have a Silver Age comic book collection I haven’t added to in 15 years. They’re all reading copies and probably aren’t worth any more than I paid for them decades ago. Right now I only collect surfboards and pinball machines and have a strict buy one-sell one agreement with my wife. I’ve never sold a pin or board for less than I paid for it, nor have I ever made much profit either.

3

I mostly have a bunch of junk.
But I do have 2 Pennsylvania Dutch wedding chests that my Mother actually collected and no one else wanted. They have some worth, IMO.
I also have a nice collection of ‘Cam-ark’ pottery. It was made semi-locally to me so it wasn’t difficult to collect. It’s worth ‘something’, I guess.

4

That describes me. I collect rare books.

Some are rare because they’re limited- or first-edition, signed copies; others are rare because they’re only one of a few hundred extant copies of a first edition that was originally printed in the tens of thousands; and yet others are rare because they weren’t terribly popular in the first hardback edition, so no further hardbacks were produced, but in the years since, have since gone on to become popular in paperback.

I deal with a rare bookseller, with whom I’ve dealt for years. She’s at a distance, so most of our business is done by phone or e-mail, but if I’m passing through her location, I’ll set up an appointment, and we’ll talk books in person for a while. She knows my wishlist, and will get in touch if she runs across an item on it, or if she finds something I might be interested in.

She has a staff of authenticators behind her, so I can be assured that I’m getting the real thing; and she has appraisers behind her, so I’m paying a fair price for condition, availability, and so on. Of course, that kind of service costs, and typically, a book (one book) that I buy from her costs in the four figures. At any rate, if I ran into a financial jam, I guess I could sell off portions of my collection to get by.

5

I own more than 20,000 78 RPM records. The genres include jazz, blues, dance bands, vocalists, and novelty records. Very few of them are rare - the most I ever paid for a single record was $85 for an E+ copy of Columbia 1946-D (Mound City Blue Blowers - Indiana/Firehouse Blues). I stopped adding to the collection several years ago.

6

Old handwritten documents, diaries and journals going back to the 1500s.

Most of Mad Magazine from the 50s to the 70s.

Original comic book art. I’d kill for some Kirby but even his off-brand stuff opens in the thousands of dollars.

7

I just realized I accidentally wrote 45rpm in my OP, but 78 is what I meant. I don’t have 20,000-- I have about 200 78s, and I have a wind-up record player I can play them on. Once, when there was an extended black-out in town (about 28 hours), I took my collection, and my wind-up played out in the hall, and people in the apartment building came out and listened. People came out with candles, and oil lamps, and we had an fun evening.

8

I have a pretty large collection of DVD (last time I counted it was over a thousand if you count all the individual disks in box sets). I had a pretty large collection of books but when I moved I had to pare it down.

I have a decent collection of Magic cards but unfortunately even though I started playing back in the 90s it was already after the real money cards became hard to get.

9

I have a “serious” collection that I could sell off parts of while still retaining everything.

It consists of about 30 varieties of fig trees (most in large pots). There’s sufficient demand from fellow fig aficionados for dormant woody cuttings that I could make a small business out of it.*

*probably a very small business, since I don’t scramble after the ultra-rare must-have kinds that fig nuts pay insane prices for.

10

I’m going to be somewhat mysterious…sorry.

There is a musical group that released one album in the 1970s and then broke up. That single album meant a lot to me when I was in college, but it did not do well at all and nobody would recognize it if I brought it up in conversation.

Over the last 30 years, I have collected dozens of the original vinyl albums, an original acetate demo of the album with pre-release tracks, demo cassettes, several cassette and 8-track versions of the album, 45s of a couple of the songs, scores of original publicity pictures of the group, numerous posters for live performances, videos of the group playing in NYC, and a whole bunch of personal photos from the time period, mostly contributed by band members, roadies, and photographers. I also have numerous albums and singles released by members of the group after they broke up.

Again, this is for a group that was together for about two years and one album.

11

Re: Silver Age comics. It depends, even in poor condition the first ten issues are worth a lot. Even the next 40 or so issues are worth more than you think. I bought most of my comics back in the 80’s though and sold them in 2010, so prices may have stabilised since then.

12

Not sure if they have appreciated much, but I have a serious collection of Seeburg Background Music records.

These are 16-2/3 RPM records that look like giant 45’s and hold about 20 songs per side.
I have a collection of around 300 of them, some of which are in downright sketchy condition, while others were still sealed when I got them.

I remember the day when I broke the seal on a set of 5 records from 1964 and took a whiff of that sweet cigarette-smoke-laden 1960’s air that had been sealed in the package in April of that fine year.

Along with the records go the machines; I have a fully functional and restored Seeburg 1000 BMC1 (an ugly machine) and am currently restoring a beautiful Seeburg 1000 BMS2 (a beautiful machine).

13

My unusual collection is calculators, starting with electric models from about 1940 onward, through the advent of LCD displays (when calculators became cheap and generic and boring). I’ve been finding most of them through eBay, such as a few Nixie tube behemoths from 1968 that weight 20 pounds and can do all four basic functions (add, multiply, divide, and subtract!) That’s better than even five years earlier when they were all electromechanical (think gears and motors) that did multiplication by repeated addition, and must have been really loud when bunches of them were in use in an office. (These are not simply adding machines with paper printouts.) These big old calculators were apparently scrapped (with malice) when cheap electronic calculators started showing up. Because so many were destroyed, they don’t show up that often, compared to the earliest Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard calculators, or earlier manually operated calculators (pinwheel calculators). Since they are hard to find, they should be a decent investment, and the early HP calculators are indeed valuable.

14

I was going to mention arcade games, particularly pinball, but a couple people here already mentioned their collections. I started collecting arcade games in the late 90’s, and if I’d have known what would happen to the pinball market, I would have bought every solid state and later machine I had opportunity to buy.