~~May sound strange but I collect old recipes and colonial
era cookbooks and stuff like that…
mice (for eating later)
humans (i’ve got four so far, and i’m trying to get more…)
Neggs,petpets, paintbrushes, and faeries (in my neopets account)
posts (this one’s added to my collection, too :D)
Barbies. Haven’t gotten any in a while, because I like the expensive collector ones, and money’s tight. I’m also just about out of room for them.
Floater pens. Those pens that have a solid color on the bottom, and the top has something that slides back and forth when you tilt it each way. I have them from each location I visit(or someone else visits). I have about 40 so far.
My favorite is an Elvis one where he’s in a caddy in front of Graceland, driving back and forth and back and…
Little bits of languages.
Antique sewing machines - I have four from the mid to late 1800s, which currently reside in my ex’s house.
I am trying to build a collection of Mark Twain’s various novels, essays, & short stories.
I also collect comics, & ABBA albums.
Well, aside from
a) compliments and
b) the severed heads of my enemies
milk bottles
musical instruments
Mexican pottery (the inexpensive tourist-quality stuff)
old barware when available.
The phrase “I am a small boy.” Don’t ask why, 'cause I don’t know either. So far, I have it in English, German, Spanish, French, Serbian, and ASL. Feel free to contribute.
Czech: Jsem maly hoch (with an accent mark over the y.)
I collect beer bottle tops. It started innocently, as a way to keep track of the ones I’d actually tried, and then got WAY out of control. I think I have 150 or so now, including one I found in an antique shop commemorating a coronation visit from either Queen Elizabeth or King Edward (I’m not sure which 'cos it just has initials … the male porpentine thinks it’s got to be Edward VIII, though, since it was evidently never used. Pretty cool.)
General historical ephemera (from old Salvation Army badges of extinct Corps, to a wooden egg cup apparently made from the kauri wood of a cathedral destroyed during the Napier Earthquake here in NZ, 1931.) Also old postcards (to put on a website).
Historical info on Auckland history, and books on the subject.
Dragons. Anything that is cool, and especially anything that looks mean and nasty. Secondarily, wolves and other carnivores.
Fridge magnets. All sorts of them. I’m running out of metallic surfaces to put 'em on. Help!
I used to collect stamps (still have the collections), and fantasy art trading cards (that field’s kinda dried up down here – 
)
Rocks – especially examples of different mineral varieties. This, of course, breaks both my back and my budget these days.
I collect live concert recordings from the Grateful Dead, and even a few other bands. Currently I have about 7,200 hours of recordings on CDR & DAT. I’ve been at it for about 12 years or so, through varying degrees of seriousness. Right now I’m on hiatus, pending a move, but I’ll get back at it someday soon. My list can be viewed here
I collect muppet memorabilia…it’s actually a couple thing. Sappo and I both collect muppet stuff. We’ve got some stuffed critters of Kermit, Miss Piggy,and some other muppet characters. I’ve been collecting muppet pictures and posters for a while too.
Thanks to Sappo, I’ve developed quite a large collection of a large variety of stuffed animals. I really don’t know how many there are. One of these days I’ll count. I wouldn’t doubt if there were more than a 100 critters.
I also collect frogs…the cute, stuffed kind…not real ones.
Male angels
Antique autograph books
First edition books (but only of authors I actually read and enjoy)
…and dead relatives 
(I’m a genealogist)
Pez dispensers. I have 134 at last count.
Got Milk? ads. I have a binder full of them…I’m not nearly as obsessive as I used to be about getting them, but I’ll still grab one if I see it in a magazine.
Windchimes. I have about 30 sets hanging from my bedroom ceiling…
Picture Frames. Put it this way…I have more frames than pictures to frame…it’s sad really, but I have a backup frame stash for just in case if I find any more good pics…
Er, make that male angel figurines. It would be really difficult to find the live ones.
A collection of glass bottled sodas (all still full):[ul][li] Coca Cola (American)[/li][li] Coca Cola (short Korean)[/li][li] Coca Cola (tall Korean)[/li][li] Coca Cola (Mexican)[/li][li] 7[sup]Up[/sup] (green glass)[/li][li] Wink (Canada Dry)[/li][li] Orange Crush (art deco bottle)[/li][li] Squirt (green spiral glass)[/li][li] Sprite (green nubbed glass)[/li][li] Peñafiel Mineral Water (enameled label)[/li][li] Limonatta (Italian)[/li][li] Arinchatta (Itallian)[/li][li] Sport (Italian)[/ul]And the grand winner is:[ul] G&L Green Ramune[/li]
This is a spectacular Korean specimen (perhaps Astroboy will drop by and tell us about it). I have an extra sample that is empty in order to demonstrate the remarkable marble seal. A spheroid of glass (the marble) is used as a sort of cork that must be dislodged in order to open the bottle. A sharp blow to the cap will knock it into the bottle. The flask must be oriented specifically so that the marble will roll into special pocks that hold it while you are drinking. Otherwise it will roll up and block the bottle when you tilt it. It is one of the oddest mechanical closures that I have ever seen on a food product.[/ul]
I also collect really odd electronic and solid state component specimens but I’ll save that for later.
And now for later;
Since I love to cook, a significant part of my collections are devoted to kitchen related themes. Such as:
[li] Cast Iron Ware.[/li]Square pans, round pans, molded pans, trivits, griddles, flat irons, dutch ovens, muffin pans and clothing irons. A mongolian barbecue grill, a comal and many others. Almost one hundred different pieces.
[li] Enamel Cook Ware.[/li]Le Cruset and Descoware (bought for pennies on the dollar), somewhere around one hundred pieces by now. Skillets, pots, kettles, terreines and grautins. All in the uranium orange.
[li] Pyrex.[/li]Hundreds of colored and clear pieces (like your grandma had). Nesting bowl sets, refrigerator jars, timbales, baking and serving dishes.
[li] Kitchen Gadgets.[/li]The oddball little aluminum things like garlic presses (20), lemon squeezers, olive or cherry pitters, tomato, egg, mushroom and butter slicers, the little Jello molds.
[li] Cookbooks.[/li]Well over a thousand of these. A copy of the Joy of Cooking that refers to prohibition. Nearly every cusine on earth is represented in the library. An Army cookbook where each recipe serves one hundred people. A Nancy Drew cookbook. A Danish girl scouts cookbook.
[li] Spice Containers and Miniature Tins.[/li]All sorts of small containers plus a four story spice rack to hold the ones that I use for cooking.
[li] Danish Crystal and Glass.[/li]Stemware and art glass bottles and vases.
[li] Oddball Stuff.[/li]Tortilla presses, taco shell fryers, muffin pans.
Now we’ll get into the other stuff:
[li] Cigar Boxes.[/li]Over ten thousand of these ranging from antique to modern.
[li] Meerschaum Pipes.[/li]Unused and handcarved pipes from Turkey.
[li] Tobacco and Cigarette Tins.[/li]From Camel cigarette tins all the way to Pince Albert in a can. Chewing tobacco to Dunhill samplers.
And the weirdest thing of all is that I don’t smoke tobacco!
On to more stuff:
[li] Semiconductor and Computer.[/li]Sapphire and gallium arsenide wafers. Patterned and raw silicon wafers from 1" to 8" in diameter, polished and unpolished. Electron multipliers, ferrite core planes, hundreds of different style chip packages, microwave components, solid state lasers, printed circuit boards. Displays ranging from LED readouts to Nixie tubes. Computer configuration patch boards, IBM punch cards and punched paper tape. Ion collectors, electron multipliers, scanning electron microscope filaments, electron beam evaporation hearths, moving mirror optics, optical photomasks, device leadframes, sockets, components, connectors, lamps, Klystron tubes and turbomolecular pumping rotors.
My brother said that my collection belongs in the Smithsonian.
[li] Lasers and Optics.[/li]A 20mW Argon gas laser, a 5mW HeNe gas laser, several other gas laser tubes. Moving mirror optics, diffraction gratings, beam splitters, lenses, micrometer optical mounts and vernier slides. A home made variable speed three stage moving mirror Lissajou pattern generator.
[li] Books.[/li]Old Audel manuals that tell you how to build everything from Victorian houses to electric tram lines. Perry Mason, fantasy, Sci-Fi, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy all sorts of good stuff, mostly in hard bound. An Encyclopedia Britannica atlas that contains a coupon for a free updated copy of the atlas when the borders are settled after World War II. All sorts of references.
[li] Musical Instruments.[/li]A piano, tenor and alto flutes, bamboo, rosewood and ceramic flutes, penny whistles, tenor, alto and soprano recorders, guitars, electric guitars, bass guitar, amplifiers, straight soprano, alto and C-melody saxophones plus analog synthesizers, harmonicas, kalimba, echoplex effects systems, and lots of others that I play for fun. I just picked up a pair of bamboo sakuhachi flutes when I was over in Taiwan.
[li] Electronic Equipment.[/li]Stereos, tape decks. studio equipment, a Hallicrafter short wave radio, a wire recorder, VOM’s and current meters, video pattern generators, Tektronix oscilloscopes and test equipment, geiger counters.
[li] Tools.[/li]Mostly limited to a real life tool kit that I use to repair anything from a million dollar semiconductor reactor to my own car. A stereoscope, calipers and micrometers also some old woodworking tools.
[li] Nikon Cameras and Lenses.[/li]The old style bullet proof metal body cameras (Nikkormat and F1’s) with the super-fine lenses that they used to make. All manual settings, none of these PhD (push here dummy) Brownie Hawkeyes for me. Plus tons of other photographic gear like filters, tripods, vests, camera bags, light meters, slide projectors, screens and other gadgets.
[li] Marbles.[/li]Real aggies and other gemstone spheres. Old style daws, bumblebees, corkscrews, ox bloods, steelies and cats eyes.
[li] Sea Shells.[/li]Abalones, textile cones, local species, miniature shells.
[li] Licorice.[/li]A dozen different types from all over Europe including Italian, Danish and Dutch.
[li] Posters.[/li]Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore, Carousel Ballroom, Fillmore East and many museum event posters.
[li] Maps[/li]Topographic and geological section maps. A full-sky glow-in the-dark star chart with magnitude scaled diameters of all visible stars in the known universe. The map measures about four by eight feet.
[li] Hats.[/li]Stetsons, Akubras, fedoras, cowboy, straw, berets. I just bought a Royal Stetson “Caribou Downs” charcoal black Fedora the other day.
[li] Pennies and coins.[/li]Completely full five gallon water bottle. Many other bottles full as well. Coins from my travels in Europe, Mexico, Canada and Taiwan.
[li] Drafting Equipment.[/li]Drafting sets (Deitzgen, Kuffel and Esser), templates, ink bottles, Rapidograph pens, calligraphy pens, rulers and T-squares, drafting machines.
[li] Knives.[/li]The Mountaineer, The Champion, and other Swiss Army knives, a Gerber lock blade and mother of pearl scaled penknife, a long blade fruit sampling knife, heirloom pearl handled carving set, Buck fisherman and others.
As you can see, most of the stuff actually has value. I do not collect figurines or anything from the Franklin Mint. My collections have a cumulative value of somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars. I guess I’m going to have to set up a second hand store when I get older.
Good lord, Zenster!
How big is your house?
It’s a Victorian and believe me, the ten foot ceilings really help!
(We won’t mention the entire Basement Full’o Crap™ right now.)
vivalostwages
There exists another person who collects sugar packets?
Finally!
I have about 850 packets (not counting duplicates) from all over the world. But they’re all unopened.
Studi
Cookie jars. I have so many, I’ve lost count.
I’d say I have about 400 though.