My grandma has a shitload of knickknacks, mostly bird figurines. My mom also has a buttload of tchotchkes. When I was about twelve, I noticed that I owned several small clowns. Obviously I cleared a shelf and began displaying them all together.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize that I didn’t like clowns, or collecting things.
Ever hear of a “date nail”? Well, neither had I until I went into the room housing the date nail collection at the Western America Railroad Museum.
Now I whenever I see them in a museum gift store I look for one older than I am and buy it. My most recent date nail acquisition is from the Devils Rope Museum which, as you would expect, houses a pretty extensive collection of barbed wire.
That’s almost exactly what happened to me, except not clowns. Probably about 15ish years ago I had a tube of M&Ms with one of those M&M character toppers on it. I ate the M&Ms and stuck the topper on a counter. A full year later (the following Christmas), I had another tube of M&Ms and when I realized I still had the topper from the previous year, well, it turned into this…
and that’s not even all of them.
ETA, looking at the picture, I noticed something sticking out of that red cup. It’s a pack of M&Ms with David Bowie on it. I forgot about that.
Snow domes in my case, but various friends were buying them for me well before I realised I had the bug. I would say - completely cluelessly - ‘Thank you for your gift, but I don’t collect these. Nonetheless I’ll place it with the others covering the mantlepiece’.
Oh God.
I collect found objects I see on the ground. I’m like a crow if it shiny I see it and put it in a pocket.
I pick up more buttons than one person should feel inclined to do so.
Lead to bottle caps (please, please no more Busch or Bud bottle lids grandkids!)
So here’s my list: safety pins, nails, screws, playing cards(you wouldn’t believe how many,
D-rings, pencils (not pens)
I refuse to pick up hair ties or barrettes.
Wooden utensils (new only)
Mostly chop sticks and coffee stirrers.
CDs.
I have found many pieces of jewelry.
Rocks. Artificial flower heads.
Credit cards and pictures baffle me. Leave them.
Shell casings, surprised how many I’ve found in parking lots.
Most anything.
Now I’m collecting hearts I see randomly. I take pictures of those and post them in our family chat. Son said if there’s anyone who can break the internet it will be me with my collections.
At home, I won’t go into my giant collections. But, I do get the sticker off bananas and stick them on a piece of poster board. Sort of a collage. It’s getting quite big.
And, no. I’m not a hoarder.[quote=“Beckdawrek, post:25, topic:976464, full:true”]
Oh God.
I collect found objects I see on the ground. I’m like a crow if it shiny I see it and put it in a pocket.
I pick up more buttons than one person should feel inclined to do so.
Lead to bottle caps (please, please no more Busch or Bud bottle lids grandkids!)
So here’s my list: safety pins, nails, screws, playing cards(you wouldn’t believe how many,
D-rings, pencils (not pens)
I refuse to pick up hair ties or barrettes.
Wooden utensils (new only)
Mostly chop sticks and coffee stirrers.
CDs.
I have found many pieces of jewelry.
Rocks. Artificial flower heads.
Credit cards and pictures baffle me. Leave them.
Shell casings, surprised how many I’ve found in parking lots.
Most anything.
Now I’m collecting hearts I see randomly. I take pictures of those and post them in our family chat. Son said if there’s anyone who can break the internet it will be me with my collections.
At home, I won’t go into my giant collections. But, I do get the sticker off bananas and stick them on a piece of poster board. Sort of a collage. It’s getting quite big.
And, no. I’m not a hoarder.
[/quote]
E
Norwich Castle Museum, in England, has a collection of 2,800 British ceramic teapots - the largest such collection in the world. It was largely donated by a private collector in 1947.
Not so strange, you might think. But that collector’s brother, not to be outdone, also donated his collection, which was of custard cups. He had hundreds.
What, I hear you cry, is a custard cup? In theory a custard cup is a small oven-proof vessel in which an individual custard is baked. But the custard cups at Norwich Castle Museum are small, fragile, highly-decorated porcelain vessels which are certainly not oven-proof. They look pretty much like teacups, with a handle on the side, except that each has a fitted cover or lid, also of porcelain, and decorated to match the cup. We don’t really know what these custard cups were for — they were possibly used for serving small individual desserts but, then again, possibly not.
If I remember correctly they were strung between two small posts.
The strangest thing I ever found was a fake dubloon from a Pirates Day parade they used to have.
I use earthquake putty or museum wax for anything breakable that’s valuable. If any of his pieces were rare, he might never be able to replace them all.
The creator of the House on the Rock aspired to be the anti-Frank Lloyd Wright. Years ago I spent the morning at Wright’s studio and on a tour of his local creations. I spent the afternoon at HotR. I came down with a severe case of cognitive dissonance as a result.
I was pretty surprised when I found one in the toilet of my hotel room in West Yellowstone. (a Wolf .223 Remington)
Plush. I doubt I have anything rare but I enjoy it. They make great souvenirs.
I collect pennies.
Now, this might not seem like a strange or rare collection, but I’m going to say that it is. Not because of the dates of the pennies, or anything like that, but rather because of my motive.
Quite simply, I want to see how many pennies, in raw numbers, I can amass over the course of my lifetime simply through normal living–i.e., no extreme measures.
Unfortunately, I don’t actually know how many I have, because I have rolls of pennies scattered around in multiple places. My best guess is “somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000.”
IIRC (this was 1994) he just went out to the mall to replace them. I saw the collection on a couple of occasions, and there was nothing vintage or unique that I knew about; these were the standard ridiculously overpriced stuff you bought at the Warner Brothers Store. In his case, twice. (Like I said: WEIRD collection.)
If it helps to visualize, 5000 pennies would fill up a smallish shoebox and weigh probably 25ish pounds.
Cite: I buy 5000 pennies every week or two.
Oh. That’s different. I thought that he had like limited edition, vintage stuff. Dang.
Rhino figurines, hundreds. I recently shipped them all to the Rhino Orphanage in S.A. so they could sell them as a fundraiser because I am seriously down sizing and didn’t want some poor loved one having to dumpster them all.
One of my brother’s kids went to Connecticut College, where the mascot is a camel. There were a large number of camels figures, paintings, plushes, etc in the admissions building, so we we found one overseas, we gave it to him to give to the school.
An antique mall where I used to have a booth inherited a collection of brass figurines, all of them around 3 inches tall, of common household objects, and all of them had a heavy bottom that contained a pencil sharpener.
May I ask why you frequently purchase 5,000 pennies?
