This local news item about the expected fierce bidding for antique dairy farm items spurred this thought.
When I was growing up, a kid down the street from me used to collect scorpions.
I used to work for a guy - a born hustler - who lives in Walkersville. His father owned a diary farm, too. I bet there are all kinds of ideas floating through that guy’s head right now.
IN the course of my business career, I’ve become rather an informed person on coins, jewelry, German militaria, antique postcards, baseball memorabilia, and quite a few other.
But this guy came into my store back in the late 1970s and asked if I had any antique shaving items. I’ve become somewhat informed about the values of straight razors from pre-WWII, but he had a three-color printed business card which said(from memory)
XXX Y. SMITH/collector of unused double-edge razor blades in their original wrappers. Phone number, even a P.O. Box
While I"ve since seen such, it never occurred to me that there was someone so heavily into it.
My girlfriend from back when I was an undergrad swore she had a friend who collected guys’ pubic hairs.
We had a guy here (in Denver) that was an avid collector of…everything. Had an art show with a great big mural of all the things he collected. One of the stand out items that made it into the special interest news item was a Mason Jar with the collected dust from the bottom of every box of cereal he’d opened in the last XX years.
On the history channel, I saw a guy whose passion was collecting antique toasters.
Bravo, toaster guy, for giving the stamp collectors someone to laugh at.
I still can’t believe it.
He ain’t the only one. I always wish that I’d dropped by the museum the last time I was up in Seattle.
Spores, molds and fungus 
An odd fictional collection has stuck with me for decades. I remember reading an issue of Sesame Street Magazine when I was 3 or 4 that mentioned as an aside that one of the characters (Ernie?) collected used batteries. I remember thinking at the time that it was interesting, but impractical (already knowing of the fun of leaking/burst batteries), and even now going on 35 years, I still think of that when I use unusual batteries or run across antique batteries for radio sets in antique stores. I wonder if the character collects lead/acid batteries, would have a rechargeable subcollection, if button and hearing-aid batteries would be too bland, would they strip Polaroid film packs for the batteries, etc.
Anyway. My friend collects root beer (not simple bottle/can collecting, it’s like he’s trying to have a bar stocked with infinite varieties of root beer to drink) and bad movies. Not bad movies like so-good-they’re-bad movies… bad movies that simply aren’t worth watching. The live-action Bratz movie, multiple versions of Mariah Carey’s movie Glitter, etc. Gonna make for an interesting party when he finally decides to combine the two in one big blow-out.
My mom was friends with a guy in the 1960s and 1970s who collected cannons. He always swore he’d only marry a woman who also collected cannons; he was driving around cannon-hunting one day, saw a cannon in someone’s front yard as a decoration, and stopped as he was wont to do to knock on the door and swap addresses and information with the owner to work out private trades and such (similar to any other collector networking pre-Internet, really). The home and cannon owner was a single woman, and he indeed ended up marrying her.
I think most collectors who stick with a hobby for a while, if they aren’t rich enough to amass “one of everything” type collections, end up branching off into niches to keep the hobby interesting, thus specializing to the point where it sounds bizarre to someone on the outside. I collected comics for decades, and ended up specializing in promotional giveaways like the Big Boy comics, or the mini-comics packaged in model kits. My friend above started collecting sodas in general, narrowing to root beer. I can readily imagine the antique toaster guy having a fascination with early electric devices overall, then narrowing to toasters since they are often fanciful pieces inspired by art trends, yet cheaper and more fun to collect than the cutthroat antique radio or phonograph worlds.
Those little stickers they put on bananas.
I knew someone who collected newspaper obituaries of people whose names in some way matched their professions (such as a Mr. Rose who was a gardener, for example).
I used to work in an antique store and I soon stopped being surprised at what people collect.
Padlocks, keys, barbed wire, and old glass coasters were some of the things that surprised me at first. A lot of people collect irons but the iron collectors who manhandled a huge early electric mangle made from cast iron and encased in an enormous wooden frame down a flight of stairs and onto the back of a ute win the prize for enthusiasm.
I collect shell lamps, similar to this, this, or this. I’ve got 50 or more (many of them much nicer), with about 40 on shelves in my upstairs hall. They make for quite a display when they’re all on.
A neighbor of my husband’s aunt and uncle collect some gizmo that you put in your pigsty to let the pigs scratch themselves on when they are itchy. It has a specific name but I forget. Apparently they have a whole display. We were invited over to see them but we had a previous engagement.
A girl I went to grade/high school with collected erasers. :dubious:
She had categories for fruit, cartoons, animals, etc, which branched out into scented, unscented.
A little strange to look at her collection…there must have been thousands!
Investigation of the Coco artifact revealed that not only are there people who collect spark plugs, but there’s a group called the Spark Plug Collectors of America.
I have a small collection of military body armor.
My grandmother once knew a man who collected paper towels. Last she heard, he wanted to start a museum.
I know someone who collects business cards.
WOW!!!
Years ago, I saw a competition on tv for the most boring husband (what was I watching??).
Anyway, the winner was a guy who collected brown paper.
My uncle collects cast iron frying pans. Which I thought was unusual until I read this thread.