I collect a number of things - but right now , highlights of my collections are
a) quite a number of first edition/first prints of tolkien’s works - I even go back so far as “Fifty New Poems for Children” and a number of Foreign language editions of the Hobbit (gathered on travels). In addition to the books, my office is adorned with many of the Swords from the movies.
b) A large collection of Roger Zelazny first prints/first editions, including all of the small press (Underwood, Gregg) prints
c) Non-Sports cards - Star Trek all the way back to the Leaf and A&BC sets.
I’ve really started to appreciate Benchmade - I also have a Crooked River and a new Bugout (in blue). I won’t carry them, I carry my SOG Twitches instead.
I have all 4 editions of the SOG BLUTO in the knife collection.
What about collections other people have created for you? I had a rainbow gecko tattooed on my forearm about 12 years ago and have received gecko themed gifts from everybody in my life ever since. They are everywhere in this house. Don’t get me wrong, I love them but all I ever intended to have in the gecko line was the tattoo. We have added to the collection ourselves over the years but most of it has been gifted. They all make me smile.
After a trip to SF where I carried a small backpack (and it felt like I had everything I needed to be happy), I started de-cluttering…
Except for those fifteen boxes of comic books in the basement.
Now, I’ve always thought of them as an accumulation rather than a collection. I bought them individually over the years just to read, because I loved the writer or the artwork. So I’ve never cataloged them or actively tried to complete a run.
If you ever want to sell those as a lot let me know. I love learning about Alaska and I make it up to Portland every few months. I’d definitely be interested.
I have what my friends refer to as my “computer museum” – all the computers I’ve ever owned (or else their facsimile replacements), set up the way they were in their prime, and networked together so I can remote into them and control them remotely and transfer files back 'n forth.
I also sort of have a pocketwatch collection but they’re all nonworking at the moment (and I don’t have the $$$ to put them in the hands of a repair person) and I only have four anyhow so I’m not sure that counts.
Single-malt Scotch (Surprise!). Around 200 bottles of limited editions and discontinued offerings put up at the moment. Managed to accumulate two complete sets of the Diageo Game of Thrones editions, which I was quite psyched about. I just managed to get a couple bottles of the Glen Scotia 2003 Peated Rum Finish limited edition released for the Campbeltown Malts Festival 2019 before it sold out.
At some point in my early teens somebody gave me largish stuffed toy that was basically the prototypical smiley face (:)) with arms and legs. Despite being a dude I don’t scorn toys (legos/TFs, natch), so I cheerfully sat it in plain sight, used it as a throw pillow, played with it with my young sister, etc. People noticed this, and next thing I knew a significant percentage of the random small gifts that come into one’s life started being :)-related, mostly in the form of these simple little stuffed dudes sitting about eight inches tall, generally a solid color with a simple smiley face for a face. I have them in various colors, I have ones with bunny ears, santa beards, gingerbread and pumpkin faces, and ones with 2000 happy new year shirts. (There are three of those, named Mil, Lenny, and Um. Um has sort of a dopey look because of his head shape.) Aside from a few random ones scattered about (my mom has a few that come out with various holiday decorations), they’re all* stuffed in a tote that I have dubbed the “happy box”, which has for the past decade sat completely ignored and forgotten except when somebody mentions something like this.
I also have an unusually large number of piggy banks, including this massive insane thing made specifically for my by welding things to and otherwise modifying a five gallon metal jug. (It’s really heavy.) This was again due to the fact that 1) I already had two piggy banks (one was inherited from my grandpa) and 2) I’m insanely hard to shop for if you don’t know which specific things I already own. (One TF is good; the same TF a second time, less so.)
This sort of thing is why I started religiously making wish lists - if I let you know which specific things I don’t have yet, you can buy me stuff I like without wondering whether it’s already in my collection, and thus you don’t have to get me weird things that you’re sure I don’t have because for some unknown and unfathomable reason I’m not buying them myself.
*Okay, the huge one that uses a full-sized pillow as its innards is lying on top of the happy box. Same difference.
I think of myself a collector of fanfiction. That is, I have a lovingly-curated archive of fanfic recommendations on AO3. Some of the stories I regularly reread, and some of them I’ve only read once, but I take joy from scrolling through the pages and seeing them there. Yes, there is a sort of utilitarian value in that I can easily find the stories when I want to read them or share them (and I do love to share them). I feel excited for new ones because that means a good story, of course, but I’m also excited just because my list has expanded.
There’s nothing physical there to collect. I don’t actually own anything. Would you consider this actually a collection?
I have a collection of almost 500 shells that I personally harvested while SCUBA diving. I started collecting on Guam, and it began by trying to collect an example of every shell in the cowrie family native to Guam. After working on that for a few months, I moved on to other families/genus. For the record, if edible I ate the animal from every shell I collected. They are displayed on my desk and in my home. I use them to teach my kids about mollusks, examples of dangerous animals for friends/coworkers visiting areas I’ve collected from, and as mementos of places I dived. I have the scientific names, locations, and time/date collected for all of them.
When I google gecko and insurance I come up with a company called Geico so I now sort of understand your reference :p. Here in Australia they use geckos to sell Bridgestone tyres which makes me a bit sad given tyres are kind of responsible for squishing lots of critters, geckos included.
Sounds like you go more for some upper-end knives. I look for older knives (though not necessarily valuable or true antiques) and have several Case autos from the 30s and 40s. When I’m shopping, I gravitate to leverlocks and swinguards because…well, I think they’re neat. My favorites are some Schrades and Benchmarks from about 15 years ago and a couple conversions of newer knives. Along the way, I’ve also picked up some older Camillus Lev-R-Locks and assorted auto and assisted openers for the trades.
I hardly ever show my knives to people. No matter how often I warn people, they end up cutting themselves when they try to manipulate them.
I don’t know if I would properly call myself a book collector. I’m more of a compulsive book hoarder. I can’t get rid of books that I like, so my “collection” is just every book over the years that I’ve read and liked. I keep building new bookshelves and filling them. At this point I’m running out of places to put more bookshelves. It’s a wide variety of books, everything from classics to fantasy/sci-fi, mystery, horror, historical, non-fiction, comics/humor, technical books - basically whatever interests me, and I have fairly wide interests.
Guns:
I collect old guns, everything from U.S. Revolutionary War flintlocks and Civil War muskets to WW1 and WW2 rifles. Nothing more modern than that. It’s not a big collection, but it’s growing.
Robots:
I collect all kinds of robots. Some are fairly functional, others are just wind-up toys or decorations. Like my books, I’m running out of places to put new ones. Sometimes I’ll take out a few of the functional ones and put them in explore mode so that they can chase the pets around. I have a Wall-E that “waves” (among other things), but I swear it really looks like he’s flipping me off when he does it.
I no longer have it, but I collected the National Geographic magazine. I had over 1000 issues, every single one from 1914 to the time I gave it away. All issues had their maps as well. It resided in my folks attic, which needed to be cleared out. Nobody wanted it. libraries, bookstores, etc., but then a fellow Doper wanted it and came all the way from Minnesota to Kansas to pick it up. They sent me a picture of the shelves which they had built for the collection, with the magazines on them!
I now collect a series of cookbooks that were published in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, from 1931 to 1957. It was called The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, and there were twenty-eight printings in all. My mom and I lack only on copy, the ninth printing. If by any extremely longshot chance you have this book, I would be very generous to you!:D:p The original printing had only fifteen hundred copies made, and I was lucky enough to find one online in a bookstore in Las Cruces, New Mexico, of all places. It was in first class shape, and I forked over $100 without a quiver. Most have been less expensive though. I really really REALLy want to find that last one though! One of my very first cookbooks, as a child, was my the copy my grandmother had owned,(the 14th), and it has her handwriting and personal additions in it.