I recently decided I wanted to start collecting vintage Star Wars action figures. I'd thought about it for a couple years and thought maybe it'd be something I would do when the kids were grown but then figured "why wait" and began. So far it's been kinda fun looking for figures, accessories that are missing, that kinda thing and it brings back lots of memories of playing with them as a kid looking at them on the shelf. Some might say it's kinda silly for a 40 year old man, I figure if it makes ya smile, who cares ? Focus: What do you collect, if anything ? Alt. Focus: What are some things people collect that leaves you shaking your head, wondering why anyone would bother ?
Focus: I collect U.S. coins. I collected when I was a kid, but in recent years really got back into it. There's something about it that really appeals to me, not sure if it's the hunt for the right coin at the right price, the sense of accomplishment when I finish a set, or the history inherent in such an endeavor. Right now, my favorite collection is my Jefferson Nickel 1939 - current day collection. All of them are in uncirculated condition. Often, I'll pull out that album and just look at them. My penny collection has been a lot of fun. I don't have a lot of money, so I haven't really gone for high end coins, but I could easily see myself doing it if I ever get a decent paying job again. That's one of the nice things about this hobby is you can do it on the cheap if you want. Bump.
Focus: I collect records. I started collecting when I was in my early teens with my older brother. We would look in the newspaper ads for people selling off their collections and go buy them up relatively cheaply. I have many many fond memories of the two of us rummaging through huge stacks of old 45s and 78s and LPs in some guys freezing cold garage somewhere in Levittown, or Massepequa (Long Island) marveling at what awesome finds we were making. I have some really nice stuff. I recently started collecting a little bit again and miraculously found some original Beatles LPs in really good shape in, of all places, a North Carolina Goodwill bin. I was shocked. Once I start making money again, I plan on getting much more serious. My youngest son is into it and I'm super happy because I wanted to leave the collection to him when I die and now I can really share that experience with him, especially now that he's really old enough to get it. I also collect owl figurines and knick·knacks. I just like owls a lot and birds of prey in general, but especially owls. If I was an Indian I would say the owl was my spirit guide.
Focus: I collect books. Every summer, there are three or four different church picnics in my area that have used book sales, and I scour all of them. Sometimes, I get really good books that I read over and over again. Other times, I find stuff like unofficial biographies of Paul Newman that spends every chapter talking about his secret homosexual tendencies and how many men Marlon Brando blew in a given year. Eery couple of years, I try to purge myself of the crappy books. That said, I still have two bookshelves and about a dozen boxes in my closet all filled with books. Some day, I will have a room in my house dedicated entirely to my books and then I will never be able to move from that place because no one will want to carry that many boxes of books into a new place. Alt-Focus:
Was the title of this thread supposed to be creepy? For some reason I got a very Silence of the Lambs vibe from it.
Well if you had asked me in college, probably porn cause I had a habit of never deleted stuff I downloaded and never watching stuff more than once, but I digress... FOCUS: I used to collect figurines when I was a kid. I probably have 2-3 shelves in a display case at my parent's house with my collections. Every trip to an art fair with my Mom, a business trip by my Dad, etc would yield an item. I stopped when I got a bit older, but its still pretty cool. My dad traveled alot for work when I was younger and he tried to start a sports bumper sticker collection for me. Unfortunately, he was going mostly to Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and Denver, so it was heavily weighted to the sports teams from those cities, plus UW Huskies and Oregon St/Oregon. Bumper stickers kind of fell out of vogue in the mid 90s, at least of the sports variety, so that kind of tapered off, but its still really cool to look at sometimes. ALT-FOCUS: I respect collections, but I often don't get it. For example, no offense to VI, but coin collecting makes NO sense to me. But its BIG business and far from a niche interest. Same with stamps. I tried to get into stamps for about 3 months when I was a kid, my grandpa found out and got gung-ho, gave me some stuff, but I couldn't keep up any momentum with it. Oh and dolls. FUCK THAT. Old women with doll collections terrify me.
I collect vintage Coca-Cola merch. I have still-bottled coke in the wooden case with the engraved bottles from the 30's, an ice pick from that era, and a few other small collectables. I also have a selective vinyl record collection but its not big or impressive. Alt-Focus Echoing Wags, why dolls? My wife has a few from when she was a kid but she hates them, so I gave them a few "adjustments" and use them as Halloween decorations. They scare the crap out of people and rightfully so.
I collect author autographs. It started when I was a kid. I think my first one was Jean Craighead George because my dad took me to see her read and, even though she wasn't officially doing autographs afterward, he brought me up to her so I could talk to her about being a writer and she signed the copy of My Side of the Mountain I had with me. Then, our elementary schools would have author visits each year and they'd do special writing workshops with a small group of kids that I'd always end up going to and they'd sign books for us at those. (My favorite was Paul Zindel.) Then I got older and started going to readings like people get really excited about going to concerts and my collection just kept growing and growing from there. I have some of my favorite authors like Jonathan Safron Foer, Sloane Crossley, and Mary Roach. I've also gotten to meet some awesome people like Simon Doonan and Billy Collins this way. I had a copy of one of the books The Daily Show made signed by Jon Stewart and a bunch of the correspondents and writers for a present for my dad, but then photocopied the title page so that I could have it for myself too. Next weekend is the Brooklyn Book Festival where I'm hoping to get Joyce Carol Oates', Roxane Gay's, and Anna Holmes'. And every now and then I'll get really, really annoyed with myself because Toni Morrison came to read in my hometown when I was in middle school, and my dad and best pal's mom basically forced us to go see her, and we didn't want to bother waiting in the super long line to get our books signed because we didn't realize how big of a fucking deal she was. I don't really know the appeal of the autographs themselves. I don't particularly care about getting any other kind of person's autograph. And I don't care about buying autographed copies of books if I didn't actually meet them myself. But I just know that I find it so incredibly pleasing to look over at my bookshelves and know how many of those books are autographed and how many of those authors I've met.
When I was overseas all the time I used to collect carved elephants. It seems like every country in Central and Southwest Asia has their own take on it. Wood ones and stones ones mostly. Then it seemed every trip though the bazaar there would be more of them and finally it just really played out. There would be five different versions of a wooden elephant with another smaller elephant carved inside of it. I could just picture every six year old in Bangalore being whipped harder to produce more wooden elephants and decided enough was enough. Now, I'm in Africa and they seem to have a lot of cool carved elephants too, so maybe I will pick it back up.They also have carved rhinos which seem cool too. We'll see.
I collect guns, specifically AK47s. I also collect watches, books, and vinyl records. My favorite book is a Fight Club in a hard back leather edition autographed by Chuck P.
I'm a gas mask collector. Occasionally I'll pick up some other military antiques, usually bayonets or unique helmets, but my primary focus is chemical protective gear. Respirators, HAZMAT suits, field testing kits (ya know, to see just how much nerve gas is floating around), etc. Here's a few examples of my collection, but that is by no means all of them. By my own estimate I've got 60ish masks and six protective suits. Spoiler Soviet PBF American M2-10A1-6 American M3 Diaphragm Mask German (World War Two era, has a noticeable Swastika on the filter) Volksgasmaske Edit: I love to show off my collection... So if there is any interest I can photograph a few more of them.
Ok, now THAT is cool. Do you have all of those on display, and if so, how do you find the space? Are you married/how does your wife feel about it? That's a really niche thing to get into, but damn, it's awesome.
The funeral home that handled my grandmother's arrangements had nearly every wall lined with shelves of dolls. Dead people laying about combined with a couple hundred dolls staring blankly at you as you walk by ? Fucking creepy.
His waifu doesn't mind at all. I started collecting flags to all of the countries Ive been to. Had all of them from my high school trip to Europe. Someone from my work stole them when I brought them in to show everyone back in high school. Never got them back. Tried keeping up with it when I was in China but lazed out. I guess the only other thing I can think of is different plants. Ive started growing peppers and tomatoes and I have 4 tomato varieties growing now. One is a Brandywine hand me down from my great uncle, there rest are interesting varieties found on the internet. I also brought back some particular peppers from China that are used heavily in regional Chinese dishes. Ive also always kind of had a thing for house plants but gut into caring for them a lot better in the past year. I just potted up my jade plant for the first time which was the very first plant I bought when I was 10 or 12. I have a few orchids and other succulents. I've lately been trying to find the best potting mix for each type of plant to mix up on my own.
Thank you sir. Sadly no, I have them all in the carriers/bags due to lack of room to display them. I intend to change that if I'm ever so fortunate as to build my dream home. I'm not married either; but my most recent girlfriend was accepting of my collection although she referred to them as "creepy".
My collection is somewhere between trophies and the physical embodiment of stories. It's utterly worthless to anyone but me, but I have the faux wrestling belt I bought as a joke about the threesome belt from HIMYM. One of the Scream masks that everyone wore at my 30th which was horror movie themed and explicity no fucking scary movie masks. A llama keychain a girl brought back from Japan for me. A bonsai kitty plush that I bought to fuck with girl who thought it was real and got outraged. A Rorsarch mask I bought to fuck a girl who had a fetish for cosplay, devil horns I wore while getting a two girl blow job at a party, the fucked gasmasks my weird neighbour gave me when he moved out, a giant birthday card my friends had printed for my birthday with a picture of me in drag on the front of it, a super tacky faux portrait that changes to a picture of a demon when you look at it from a different angle because my girlfriend at the time screamed and jumped when she saw it. The incredibly average pipe cleaner christmas tree star my girlfriend made when she found out I didn't have a christmas tree. A g-string with electrical burn holes in them from the first night I met my ex. A toque that looks like a pair of socks sewn together so the feet flop like rabbit ears that I got in canada to make my in laws laugh, and a stuffed chimp in plush handcuffs . There's a bunch of other similar sort of shit on my 'trophy' shelf. To anyone else, it'd be fucking trash - but I'd cut anyone who tried to fuck with it.
I worked with police and fire agencies for most of my adult life. Typically, we would get a patch representing the agency but I started a contest with one of my co-workers to see what kind of cool stuff we could get. I've gotten a few t-shirts, hats, pens, bags and other paraphernalia. I have two shirts that probably qualify for the coolest thing I own: a Jefferson County AL drug task force shirt and a Illinois State Police SWAT team shirt. The best thing about having all these are the memories and stories that go along with the item. I got the Jeff County drug shirt from a Captain who took me on a crack house bust in Birmingham Alabama. It's also pretty cool to get to go along on a fire call and get dressed as the firefighters do.
I have 1000ish (last count 9 months ago was 952 and I know I've bought over 50 since then) books all around my house. I use my office as the primary library and also have two rather large bookshelves in my bedroom and various little bookshelves around the rest of the place. It's pretty much my main hobby.
I too avidly collect books, but at my own house due to lack of office. Not sure of my current count. Focus: I once attempted to collect comic books at the age of about ten, and I quickly abandoned it thanks to the cost. I also once tried to collect Pokemon cards and Yu-gi-Oh! cards, and by god they depreciate horribly. Unless it's a rare monster or whatever, the cards are worth exactly $0.10 a decade later. I guess my actually cooler stuff was gotten much later in life. One of my prided pieces of memorabilia now is a woolly mammoth bone and ivory knife, and it's pretty cool, and I'm contemplating collecting more ivory pieces. It's hard collecting ivory, though, unless it's a legally harvested species for ivory (Walrus, the extinct species of elephants like mammoths, etc.) because modern elephants are often poached and the market is either wildly illegal because of the elephant ivory sales or really hard to find with the legal ivory sources. So it's challenging, high-yield field of hobby-collecting, and that attracts me to it. Also, I hope to start collecting taxidermy pieces, gems and maybe gold. Alt-Focus: Nowadays I really don't understand any sort of card-collecting, maybe it's because I used to collect all sorts of cards (Baseball, Yu-gi-Oh! and Pokemon) and they depreciate in value so quickly they are basically pure memorabilia with no re-sale value or I guess if you have the monster-game cards you could play the games there, but baseball cards just seem to me are utterly pointless to collect, unless you just want to stare at them yourself. You might as well collect beer bottle caps, (no offense meant if you do collect either).