I collect matchbooks from glamorous nightclubs. It’s amazing: if you just write to them and ask them nicely…
My gf picks up heart shaped rocks whenever she sees one. They are brought home and placed wherever they seem to fit; be it in a planter, on a shelf, in her jewelry box, even outside in a flower bed.
Another magnet guy here, along with stickers, patches, pins, vintage postcards and brochures, maps, guidebooks, etc. Basically stuff that’s small and/or thin. I take a 16qt plastic bin on road trips, toss everything in and put the stickers on as I go, so I end up with a memento box after every trip.
My friend collects hiking staff medallions and has a wooden staff about 75% filled up with them.
For most of my four-decade professional career, business travel (and most pleasure trips) entailed visiting museums around the world, at least one or two a year. I usually bought a coffee mug with the museum’s logo, eventually collecting three or four dozen. I routinely used them for most of that time, but as we’ve downsized in the last few years, I’ve gotten rid of most of them. I still have a handful.
While I was driving my sports car on track, I would buy patches of every track I visited and sew them on my driving suit. It seemed such an obvious thing to do but I don’t recall seeing other drivers doing it. I also stuck little outlines of the tracks I’d been in to the back driver’s side window of my car.
I usually pick up a shot glass from wherever we travel to but since we aren’t big travelers and generally only go to a few different places on a rather frequent recurring basis what this means is I have something like 10 or 12 Oregon Coast shot glasses, an equal number of Glacier National Park glasses, a few Crater Lake glasses, and similar related sub-collections.
I don’t wear ball caps, it’s rare to find a t-shirt that I like, and while I used to collect key chains I realized I can’t really display them like I can shot glasses so I stopped doing that. So shot glasses are what I’ve been collecting for ~10 years or so.
Is your first name Edna? 
Magnets for us, though we don’t always acquire them on the trip. Sometimes we just get them online after if we didn’t bother with any shopping.
First two posts covered a lot of what I had to say. I don’t usually buy souvenirs and the only one that came to mind when reading the thread title was a southwest-style lizard motif magnet I got which I just couldn’t resist. And while I am not a fan of postcards - they’re certainly not a favorite - my mom does like them, so when I was in London I bought a postcard of Big Ben because it was encased in scaffolding, so it didn’t feel like a waste of money when I could have just as easily taken a picture with my DSLR for free under normal circumstances.
And speaking of absolutely needing it, in San Francisco I bought a tie-die skullcap because I was going out on a windy cruise around the bay. Ironically it was so windy I didn’t wear it because it would fall off, but I later started using it for running because it was flamboyant enough that it was harder to lose and it was not as heavy as other hats. I did end up losing it but it lasted longer than other running hats.
Pins.
When you’re in Arizona it’s wise to wear a sun hat, especially when follically challenged as am I. Mine’s a surplus store boonie hat and I put them in the crown. Following the lead of bikers who put pins on their leathers I replace the clutch backs with Pin Savers.
My gf bought a little porcelain (?) bowl with a cherry hand painted on it when she was in Paris two years before we met. It always sat on the kitchen counter. It was one of those things people always commented on, it was just so lovely.
Last weekend she accidentally bumped it, it fell and broke. She was in tears, I found myself choked up as well.
I like getting those smooshed pennies whenever I can
I started doing magnets, about 10 years ago or so. I don’t travel much, but I have a good magnet collection from places and events.
I just now realized I didn’t get one from my trip to Cincinnati last year and now I’m bummed.
I used to buy a locally made doll or large figure for my mother when I travelled. A geisha figurine from Japan, a doll vodka bottle holder w/ shot glass from Russia, a gaucho from Argentina and a rag doll from Belize are the ones I remember.
Years ago I started a work thing where folks who went away on vacation would bring back a magnet from the location of their visit. My contribution was a magnet with a photo of John Lennon wearing a New York City t-shirt.
Then, one day I got into a minor tiff with a co-worker about something that escapes me now. The next day, Lennon was conspicuously missing from the fridge.
I guess she showed me.
mmm
If I visit any castles while in the UK I try to buy the thin standard National Trust book on each one. I also collect a lot of postcards. Anything bigger than that is too much of a hassle to lug around, and I don’t need a shelf full of snowglobes.
If you have the pieces, may I suggest Kintsugi - Wikipedia?
When I break something I really like, I use silver nail polish to put it back together. My not so labour intensive version of kintsugi, and I prefer silver to gold. It really works well for things that don’t need to be food safe. The nail polish works well as an adhesive.
I get shirts and glassware on my travels.
Squished pennies
Small, cheap, don’t break, you never have to throw them away. We have a small wooden box we toss them in. Every once in a while we dump them out and go through them reminiscing.
When my wife and I go on vacation to a place we really love, we try to spend an afternoon finding a piece of artwork from a local artist. We try to then write some memories down and tape them to the back. If we don’t find a piece we love, we’ll get an ornament.
That’s really cool! Unfortunately the two pieces are gone. I almost suggested we go to Paris to pick up a replacement, but I do not want to go to Paris.
I often pick up a small stone from places I’ve been. I occasionally feel ever-so-mildly guilty doing so, as you are often told “take nothing but a photo.” I think the ecological impact of me - or every tourist - taking a pebble is pretty darned negligible.
When I was a kid, I collected those big triangular pennants. Just got rid of the whole pile of them.