Also a cookbook collector. I prefer pre-1960, church/community cookbooks, especially if they’re from different communities. I use the 1941 Ukrainian Orthodox Church cookbook that was in my grandma’s stuff a lot.
Cross stitch supplies. I have a large wheeled bin stuffed with every DMC color, charts, fabric, accessories. I am no where near as bad as others who collect patterns just to collect them. I just have difficulties getting rid of patterns when I’ve already finished the project.
Scissors and knives. I used to work at a cutlery store. I have at least a dozen embroidery / hardanger / cuticle / small scissors. A half dozen decent quality larger scissors. I’ve given away many of my pocket knives, believe I have maybe 6-8 left? And I still have 4 hunting / fixed blade knives because I just do.
I have collected things for much of my life. Antique measuring tools like rules and speed indicators. Watt Pottery. Worthington Pottery. Vidrio Products (electrical appliances using glass parts). Electric kitchen mixers (125 of them, mostly pre-WWII. See my user name). Badges from Triumph and Standard autos.
Fountain pens – not any more unusual or eccentric to collect than stamps or watches, I think.
The accumulation is something of an addiction I’m afraid. The thrill of the chase, the thrill of out-bidding other people, the anticipation of waiting for the pen to arrive, the day it arrives and I open the package, and then – boom. Thrill is usually superseded by satisfaction and enjoyment (and occasionally disappointment) , but it’s not the same. I can avoid buying for a while, and there just aren’t that many more pens that I really want. But the itch always comes back, and sometimes I just give in.
It’s not huge, but I seem to have inadvertently started a collection of beer glasses. It started in 2008 when I visited Boston and bought one from the gift shop of the bar you see in exterior shots on Cheers. Then I visited my parents in Wisconsin, and we went to antique shop, and I bought another one. Then the next time I visited them we went back to the same antique store, and I had to buy another one. The a friend sent me a novelty Simpsons pint glass for my birthday. Then the local public radio station offered a pint glass as a thank you gift, so I changed my usual annual donation to a monthly donation so I could get one.
Unintentionally… maybe business cards. I have a habit of hanging on to every one that I get.
I ended up with my dad’s music collection, which numbers about a thousand LPs and half as many CDs. Not 100% sure what I’ll do with it, since I don’t have a record player.
I do collect slide rules and vintage calculators. I probably have about 150-200 between the two?
I used to collect Modern Library books. I liked to read on the Red Line into work and always found paperbacks too flimsy, so I got into small hardcovers. Then Kindles and smartphones became a thing, and I stopped taking the train to the loop. Some editions of my favorites are still the ML editions.
Like a lot of voracious readers, I seem to collect books. But within that inadvertent collection, I have a small subsidiary hobby of collecting Astronaut biographies. I’ve got upwards of forty, thirteen of which are signed.
I have 177 different English translations of the Bible (mostly eBooks), 17 Greek New Testaments, 6 Latin Bibles and 4 Hebrew Old Testaments. And one Syriac Peshitta.
Cat figurines and plushes. I have cats, I have volunteered for cat rescue groups all my life. Mom bought me a cute stone cat figurine when she was in England and I brought it to work to put on my desk.
At the next Secret Santa, a co-worker bought me a cat coffee cup which I left at work. A different co-worker found a cute cat shaped tape dispenser at a thrift store and bought it for me. I put it by the stone cat on my desk.
As a result, I have been “collecting” cat figurines and assorted cat paraphernalia for over 30 years.
I started collecting small bowls for real about 10 years ago. I have stone, wood, metal, clay and china bowls, none of which is big enough to even feed a cat with. Bowls are much easier to dust than cat figurines.
Rocks. Definitely rocks. I cannot go on a walk without ending up with a pocketful of rocks, and sometimes a lovely BIG one that I have to carry in my hand. I polish the ones I can polish in my tumbler and have jars of them all over the place. The ones I can’t polish but I think are neat are simply plunked on any available shelf and cubby.
Fox stuff. I’ve got a doormat, a couple of candle holders, a plushie, a soap dispenser, some towels, and a couple of T-shirts. Heck, most of my roleplaying characters are anthropomorphic foxes.
As a collector of science fiction books and magazines, I make a distinction between things I collect and have a database of, and things I just have a lot of.
We have lots of cookbooks also. My wife brought a bunch to the marriage, we inherited a ton from my aunt, and I buy her at least one for Christmas and her birthday. Our kids have given us many also.
I also have lots of jigsaw puzzles, from a fantasy I once had of doing them all on the floor of a giant ballroom like in Citizen Kane. Running out of space in the garage coshed that fantasy and I got rid of like 100, but I still have way too many old Springbok puzzles and ones I can’t bear to get rid of. But they are not indexed, and I redonate new ones, so they’re not a collection.
Foreign Coke Bottles. They have to be in a non Roman alphabet. I was disappointed when I went to Greece and they didn’t use the Greek alphabet on the Coke bottles. I got Thai, Isreali, Arabic, Ethiopian, and others. I had to settle for a Sri Lankan Sprite bottle because the Coke bottles there just used “Coke”.
Roses, as depicted in art. I inherited a couple of rose themed swag lamps and a couple of still-lifes of roses from Gma n Gpa. I really wanted the dining set which also had roses carved and upholtered on the chairs (went to my cousin dagnabit!). I was going to take the light covers from the fixtures in the dining and living room (also rose themed) but Big Sis laid claim to those first. Now I’m thinking about putting some latticework over the windows of my house and planting some climbing roses. So probably going to be branching out in a few years.
I didn’t intend to get into roses, but the stuff I wanted from Gma and Gpa’s estate just happened to be rose themed
