I’ve seen a lot of collections at estate sales. The one that stands out in my mind was the person who collected alphabets. Mostly the posters where you would have each letter next to something that started by that letter, and books that did likewise.
I collect dragons, blue and white pottery, and teeny tiny things
I’ve got a growing collection of oddball shit I find in junk cars at the Pick’n’Pull and out in the desert.
Totally random shit. Barbie Heads, Bike Club patches, funky gearshift knobs, employee badges, rubber ducks, lots of old rusty cans. One of my favorite is a tiny little Christmas figurine, maybe about 1/48 of a woman in a hoop skirt singing Carols. But she is headless.
Work. Gotta keep the cash registers stocked. I probably buy about 5000 quarters in a month as well.
That’s what I thought, and it makes sense.
When I worked in UK aviation I had a colleague who collected sick bags (empty!) from the various airlines. Colleagues all travelled world wide a lot and used to bring him back a bag stamped with the airline name from all over.
My immediate thought was that Gran actually hated the damn things, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She made sure that he got them all back when she went.
My stepmother had a modest collection of red glass figures. he made it clear that she did NOT want red glass as presents. It’s hard to find presents for people who already have the things they want.
The House on the Rock is strange as hell. Alex Jordan created it to spite Wright who told him he wouldn’t hire him to design a cheese crate.
Speaking if Wright, as in Steven Wright, I too have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world.
I always thought stamp collecting was plenty strange and the most boring hobby In existence. Made no more sense to me than collecting the little stickers they put on fruit in the produce section of the grocery store.
Cents…it makes cents.
You are not alone. I used to have a neighbor in his early 60s who had not spent a penny since he was 12. Like you, all acquired through daily living, no purchasing of rolls or other measures. He didn’t even have them all in rolls, just many random containers filled with pennies. And he didn’t do anything with them, didn’t view them under a magnifier, or look for valuable coins, he just collected them. Strange but interesting.
When I was in college, I knew a girl who collected stickers from Chiquita bananas. (She was pretty quirky.)
Working in produce, we occasionally have employees that will have little collections of them. It’s not uncommon to see a random piece of equipment or spot or door frame with a a 20 or 30 stickers on it. One guy collected just stickers from bananas. There was probably a hundred different stickers stuck to [whatever he was sticking them on] at one point.
Also, I saw this in a court room. I can only assume the judge/court commissioner was the one doing it. If you’ve been divorced in Milwaukee County, you may have seen this as well.
This is my psychotic sister’s gift-giving strategy. Take an idea and drive it into the ground.
Mom got a ceramic Zebra long ago. My sister decided that one Zebra is okay, so two must be better. The next logical step in her drug-addled mind is 14,000 Zebras is what Mom needed. Her house is festooned with fucking Zebras. Mom couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, and sadly the attempt put her in her grave.
Do you live in an area where earthquakes are uncommon? If not, he really should have been more careful in displaying them IMNSHO. That’s just me, however.
Anyway, a local retired librarian died within the past year or so, and because she never married or had children and really didn’t have any other heirs, her estate is in the process of being liquidated and the money given to various organizations and charities she supported. I was told that she was “a big doll collector” and apparently, people who are into that traveled from long distances to come to her estate sale, which was run by a local company.
The first one(s), anyway. I’m on a self-imposed moratorium myself, but I broke that a couple weeks ago to go to Sale #4, just to see what was left. That’s right, sale #4. (It also wasn’t very far from where I live.) There were still dolls and other items displayed, although nothing that was very valuable. I picked up some romance novels for my antique-mall booth, and the sale coordinator told me that they aren’t finished. They still haven’t gotten to the basement yet, and will have THAT sale, the first one/fifth one, anyway, in early January. He also said that she was NOT a hoarder, because everything was proudly displayed in china cabinets along the walls, and in excellent condition.
SoCal – this was Northridge – but I doubt he could have done too much. Walls came down; bolted-to-wall display cases came right off the walls that remained. It looked like it had been bombed. I don’t think his building was redlined, but it was a close thing.
Now that I’m posting again in this thread, I’m recalling my own beloved Fiestaware collection, not a very nice one, but it was most of my everyday dishes. (I do mean the antique stuff, not the new stuff.) In that same earthquake, not quite so near the epicenter, every bit of it came right off the cabinet shelves and smashed. I never had the heart to collect the stuff again.
Briny, that makes sense. My earthquake experience is limited to rattling windows.
My grandmother had Fiestaware, and I’m pretty sure she even had the burnt orange, which used paint that contained uranium. I think she sold it when she moved into a retirement village in 1975.
I have a large collection of pieces of coral, in the shapes of letters. Which I accumulated while walking lots of beaches, situated just off coral reefs.
They’re fun, I spell out greetings to guests, use to send birthday wishes, etc.
I fancy I might be the only person with such a collection.
Hey, I like her and I don’t even know her.
Sorry to bump a dead subject with a slightly off topic post. I used to own retail stores and I remember lugging change orders around almost every day.
Now that debit cards are replacing cash, do you order less change from the bank than you used to? IIRC, you have a family run market, which always had a lot of cash business back in my days. Has that changed?
I fancy you are right. What a cool idea, I’ve never heard of that before. If you have a picture you could post, I’d really like to see them. How many do you have all together?
I was hoping you were going to tile your floor…
I think I go through about the same amount of change. We certainly bring in a lot less cash than we used to, but about the same amount of change goes back out. Or at least that’s what I would guess is the case, but those aren’t metrics I’ve ever paid a whole lot of attention to.
Nah, I did mine with AOL CDs.