Small rocking horses. I’d like to find more, but they’ve gone out of style, I guess.
My favorite is the cast iron, painted one I got from the Eugene Field Toy Museum in St. Louis. It’s just a little over an inch high and the detail is amazing.
I too collect coffee mugs from places I’ve been, but only from places I personally have visited. My favorite is probably my Carhenge mug. I’m also fond of the one that has the Chicago skyline in bas-relief.
I keep a few crisp banknotes from each country I’ve been to. My favorites are the 100 Rupee note from the Seychelles and the 20 Rupee from Sri Lanka.
Cookbooks. I have about 300 or so, from all over the world.
I have two categories of favorite - the ones that have unusual themes, like:
Tasty Dishes From Waste Items
Recipes From the Jewish Kitchens of Curacao
Then are the cookbooks I actually consult for cooking purposes (perhaps ironically, I rarely follow a recipe as written, but I do study recipes to get ideas):
The Complete Asian Cookbook, by Charmaine Solomon
A World of Baking, by Delores CasellaRetro Nintendo games.
You know, the NES, Super Nintendo, etc… I guess my favourite would have to be the NES console itself. Im gonna have to get me a virtual boy as well, at which point that will be my new favourite. 
Oops, forgot to mention - Silver Tyger Girl, the detail on the tsukesage is spectacular! What a marvelous motif. I can see why you like to collect kimono.
Andrew Lloyd Webber cast CD’s. The best is the double live Czech Superstar, the rarest is the Russian Superstar. I got a bunch of other good ones.
Turtles. (Not live ones!) I look for a small turtle wherever I travel. It gives me something to shop for that isn’t big or expensive. My personal turtle-buying rules specify that the turtle has to be small enough to fit into my shadow box and it has to be somehow reflective of its place of purchase. I really prefer turtles that were made where they were purchased as well. I have a delft turtle from the Netherlands, a silver turtle from Cambodia, a jade one from New Zealand, a bright shiny one from New Orleans, a lacquer one from Myanmar, etc. But I think my favorite is from India. It was really hard to find a turtle in India. After several days of browsing a tourist trap sorts of stores, I ventured into a dusty store with a sparse collection of ‘antiques.’ I was on my way out after a cursory look around when I spotted the turtle in a basket of odds and ends near the door. Shopping victory! It’s very roughly carved from I don’t know what sort of stone, but I like its character and the way it feels in my hand.
Lego sets, both new and awesome and old and rare. The twin prides of the current collection are the very first LEGOLAND Castle series playset (http://www.chem.sunysb.edu/msl/lego/castle/6080.jpg) and my current rebuilding-after-moving obsession, the collectors edition Star Destroyer (http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=10030). I have most of the early Castle and Pirates series, and about half of the sets in the Star Wars series at this point–and if you have a Lego AT-TE Walker set that’s in reasonably good condition (manual and no missing pieces), can we talk about price? 
Art; oils, watercolors, pen and ink. In one way or another each one is my favorite.
I collect, clean, convert, paint, and use gaming miniatures & terrain of all kinds. Except clicks, cuz they suck.
Kinda hard to pin down a favorite piece. I like a few of the old clan battletech minis. Maybe the big oriental dragon from some old out of business company. Some of the armorcast pieces I have are really nice and hard to find. I like em all.
I collect vintage cookbooks and related ephemera (stuff like promo pamphlets put out by food manufacturers, ads, etc).
I’ve got several favourites - I’m particularly fond of ones where I find a little bit of extra history - notes written in the margins by a previous owner, newspaper clippings tucked between the pages, recipes scribbled into the blank pages or inside the cover… those sorts of things.
I also particularly like the ones that are like pop culture time capsules, especially if they’re absurd - things like pamphlets from the 50s with inedible recipes concocted by marketing types (ham cooked in 7-Up, Jell-O salads with floating bits of hot dog, Campbell’s tomato soup cake and other horrors to make your tastebuds cringe) or booklets with forgotten (and inappropriate) corporate mascots.
I seem to have stumbled into collecting model car kits-- they say you always start out intending to build every one, but somewhere along you turn into a collector… :dubious:
That said, my three favorites are:
I have a number of those myself, but I can’t say I collect them – more like I acquired them. Most were my mother’s.
I collect a few things, but most seriously Swarovski silver crystal figurines. I think my favorite piece that I bought myself is a grand piano with matching footstool (I’ve been a pianist for 30 years), but my two absolute favorite pieces are the ones that my SO gave me for Christmas: a lamb, which is an in-joke, and a Dalmation puppy, because of the (Beagle) puppy we plan to get this fall. It was our first Christmas together and he’s definitely not a romantic, therefore I was really touched that he’d think to get me anything beyond the snowflake I asked for – let alone crystal that was meaningful, which is what I prefer to collect.
I will buy crystal that isn’t Swarovski, if it means something to me and I like the craftsmanship. For example, I’m a quiet fan of NASA and our space program, and when I had the chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center I saw a crystal space shuttle in the gift shop that I liked, so I bought it.*
The other things I collect are matchbooks (only from bars that I’ve been to) and Crayola products (mainly crayons and markers). I used to collect “do not disturb” signs from hotels that I stayed in, but for some reason a few months ago I decided not to do that anymore – and I threw out the existing collection.
*A week later the Columbia exploded, and I brought the piece to work and displayed it on my desk in memoria.
I don’t really collect Asian knick-knacks any more. I don’t have room to display them. I have a few geisha dolls, mud men, cork sculptures, and some misc stuff. My favorite ‘geisha’ is a boy and a girl. I haven’t seen anything like it.
Yeah, when I was bidding on that one on eBay, there was another one with books. And it was a summer-weight one, which I don’t have enough of. But it got out of my budget.
Tijuana_Golds, what do you think of the upcoming Watchmen movie? I’m not particularly hopeful, because it would be so hard to convert it to action. And the costumes aren’t exciting me at all.
That sounds cool! Pictures?!
I collect first edition books. I have two collections: books written by Stephen King (I have all of his works in first edition) and books published by Arkham House.
For the Stephen King collection, I guess the best “find” I have is a copy of Six Stories. For the Arkham House, it is either my copy of **The Outsider and Others ** or A Hornbook for Witches.
I’ve got some other good pieces as well.
Sure 
Here’s the repro (about 5"x5") here’s the original in situ.
This is another frieze showing a heart-eating eagle next to another jaguar frieze. I have no idea what’s going on on top, unfortunately I had very little time there.
I really left Mexico with far too many cat things, they were everywhere, esp. at Chichen.
Alcohol related items, you know, bar stuff. Neons and signs and glasses and decanters and what have you. I have shelves and walls and boxes full waiting until I can open my own bar. My favorites right now are two metal signs advertising my favorite East Coast beer, Yuengling (including this one ) both personally inscribed to me by Dick Yuengling. My brother got them as my groomsmen’s gift for his wedding earlier this month.
I’m looking forward to it. Zack Snyder did a great job with 300, there’s no indication he’s screwing up the movie, besides Alan Moore pretty much designed the book like a script with a storyboard attached. As for the costumes, it’s necessary most of the time, no one who can act well is ripped like a super hero.