A response in one of the eBay-related threads reminded me that people collect the oddest things. So what do you collect, and what got you started?
I used to collect turtles - back in the late 70s when other teenage girls were collecting unicorns, a neat little gadget in a second-hand store caught my eye. It was a wrought iron turtle, and he was designed to hold a ball of string under his shell, and the string came out where his tail would be. I bought him because I’d never seen anything like him before, and he was only a dollar. Shortly after, I was at a flea market with my dad and found an iron matchbox shaped like a turtle - you could store wooden matches under the shell and strike them ON the shell. On the turtle’s underside was molded the name of a stove company, and I found out this little matchbox was once included in the purchase of a stove! Gradually, I built up a nice collection of turtles-with-functions, then my family caught on, and I was inundated with turtle figures, plush turtles, turtles, turtles everywhere - which ultimately ruined the whole idea for me.
Now I collect fairly random and mundane things for no real reason than they match my home decor, but I miss my once-unique collection.
I collect Star Trek novels because I’m an avid reader and a Trekkie. I own around 300 or so of them at the moment and might just wind up filling in the holes and then stopping. The current product seems too money-grubbing to me at the expense of quality.
And since they’re Trek novels, there wasn’t a lot of quality to begin with.
I collect tiki mugs. I love the horrid things, and I have quite an assortment. No two are the same, and I have never paid more than a quarter for them (most have been ten cents) because I buy them at yard sales.
I dabble in Star Trek (mostly small ship models (like the recently released Johnny Lightning series), but not the kits), diecast models (almost all 1:18, mainly VWs, but I also have movie cars: BTTF DeLorean, ECTO 1 from Ghostbusters, and THE CAR from The Car), Electric Light Orchestra stuff, and Beatles bootlegs.
Records. Acoustic gramophone records, electrically recorded 78s, LPs, 45s, CDs. Label variations, different mixes, promotional copies, picture discs, shaped picture discs, imported pressings, pressing errors, printing errors, bootlegs of concerts and studio outtakes. The only examples I don’t own are cylinders or 16 2/3 RPM records.
Why? It started in 1963 with “Mom, I really like that song. Can we get that record?” and it doesn’t seem to have stopped being interesting. I’m working on my database of singles - the 78s and 45s they’re on, and the subsequent albums and CDs they’re on. With all the 45s and compilation CDs and LPs listed, I just started on the regular CDs, A-Z. I’m only up to Bowie, and I just went over 8000 entries. After that, I have the regular albums A-Z to do.
Comic books. I have about 12,000, mostly mainstream Marvel and DC superhero stuff, and a couple hundred trades and hardbacks.
I enjoy it because comics books, when they’re well done, are both visual art and literature. It gives me a chance to go to a world that doesn’t really exist in any other medium.
I collect Barbie Dolls, and I have no idea why. I just like them, and I had many when I was little. I was the only female grandchild out of 7 grandchildren, so I always got over-the-top girly stuff for every occasion.
I also collect old Fisher-Price “My Friend” series dolls from the 70s and SeaWees from the 70s.
Yes, I was a little girl in the 70s. I have a picture somewhere of me with a pixie haircut, wearing embroidered bell bottom jeans and a crocheted halter top at age 6.
Vintage Cameras that I have picked up at garage sales or Salvation Army.
Vintage Evening Bags, most from my mom. One is from King Saud or Faud of The King of Arabia. (via a family friend who knew him personally.)
Antique bed pan,a glass male urinal and female urinal in stainless steel. I love these and am still figuring out how to display them properly
Records because of my new found love of finding a working record player for $3.
Kids books. I am meaning to read through the piles I have of adolescent literature, but it is growing like Tribbles.
Buddha statues I would like to collect because they are not nearly as creepy or guilt inducing as Jesus Christ/Holy Mary Virgin Mother of God. And cause it makes people go, " Wha?" Just throwing off the order of the white bread world I live in.
“Normal” Thing: I collect crystals, specifically Swarovski figurines and collectibles. I don’t have very many pieces because they’re fairly expensive, but my curio cabinet doesn’t look too empty. The most recent pieces were purchased 2 years ago, while I was on vacation: I bought a Swarovski seal (as in the animal) on the cruise ship, and a no-name crystal space shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center. (I bought the space shuttle exactly one week before the Columbia exploded, and was able to bring it in to work and have it on my desk as a sort of memorial for a while. Amazing timing.)
Not-So-Normal Thing: I collect hotel do-not-disturb signs, but only from hotels I’ve stayed in. And only if the hotel name or logo appears on the sign. I don’t know how many I have; they’re in a photo album downstairs, and I’m too lazy to go down and check.
Hmm. I seem to have some vintage Whiting & Davis mesh evening bags here. And an enormous chamber pot that my aunt suggested could be cleaned and used as a punchbowl.
We really need to get together, Shirley. I think you and I would have entirely too much fun to be legal.
I collect coffee mugs. Most are just funny, somehow (a painting, cartoon, or quippy quote on them), but a few are from places I’ve been and seen, like Pike’s Peak, and the U.S.S. Yorktown in Charleston, or my mug with the T-Rex skeleton done in gold leaf, from a visit to a natural history museum on my one and only (so far) trip to New York City.
Then, a few years back, I saw these die-cast airplanes at the Hobby Lobby, usually around 1:100 in scale (though it varies). I took a liking to them, and started collecting them. I call them my own private Confederate Air Force.
Swords, and other martial weapons. I don’t have enough money to afford real antiques, but I have some visually very nice replicas (and a few real pieces, as well) hanging on my walls.
'50s shell lamps – various shells, coral, figurines stuck into plaster and lit up with a 7-watt bulb. They used to use them in the early days of TV to provide low light while watching TV, so they’re often called TV lamps.
I’ve got about 35 displayed on shelves in the upstairs hall; another half dozen on the sideboard in the living room; a few in the guest room; and my latest acquisition (which is way too cool) has a place of honor in the living room.
Hard Rock Cafe polo (not T) shirts. Too often I find myself in an exciting foreign city drained of all energy by the flight, and all I want to do is sleep. So I collect the shirts to force me to get off my butt and make at least one trip out of the hotel.
(A Lodge brother of mine gets pins from each HRC I visit. But he is being silly, HRC shirts on the other hand are a perfectly normal thing to collect.)
All things Tolkien (but not any of the movie tie-in stuff): various editions, printings, and covers of The Hobbit and LOTR; games (CCGs, RPGs, board); posters; action figures; t-shirts; minatures; comics; etc. My pride and joy (at least until I win the Lotto and finally buy that set of 1st/1st editions)? English and Medieval Studies, Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. It is an academic festschrift to him and includes a poem by W.H. Auden and a collection of papers including one by C.S. Lewis. I’ve never seen another one.
I also collect interesting items that I have found while out in the field. It is a pretty diverse collection ranging from a croquet mallet to an empty Viagra prescription bottle.
I am a turtle person as well, but I honestly have no idea why. I collect figurines, stuffed turtles, t-shirts, keychains, jewelry…if it has a turtle, I like it.
Writing papers and pens. I have piles.
Cutesy little Asian notepads and stationery. Bonus points for horrible English on it. I had a huge dose of ‘whoa’ after a little Chinese owned dollar store went out of business in my town, and apparently they took the leftover merchandise and tossed it in dumpsters along that road. My boyfriend works on that road as well, so in their dumpster one morning was about 200 cute notepads that say things like “We love virus.”
Books…this is ongoing and almost limitless in scope.
Faeries…mostly pictures and prints. I love Brian Froud and Amy Brown’s faeries.
I have a picture somewhere of me with a pixie haircut, wearing embroidered bell bottom jeans and a crocheted halter top at age 6.