1. Sifunkle

    Sifunkle Dis Member

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    Collectibles

    Discussion in 'Research' started by Sifunkle, May 6, 2016.

    Hello lovely people!

    In gathering inspiration fuel, I'm wondering what things you've made a hobby of collecting at some point in your lives (maybe you're still working on your collection!), particularly in your youth.

    For my purposes, it will need to be a collection of tangible items (vs conceptual ones, e.g. epithets), and it will also need to be something that either comes as a 'bonus' with something else (e.g. toys inside chocolate eggs) or is salvaged from a different primary function (e.g. postage stamps) - as opposed to something sold purely as a collectible. But it will be interesting to hear about other things too, so don't let those requirements stop you from commenting.

    Please be as specific as possible about what fits the bill for your collection (or be vague if your criteria are).

    I look forward to hearing about baseball cards, coins, cola cans marketed with people's names, the fingernails of your victims, concert ticket stubs, etc!
     
  2. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I usually take a garment of clothes from my victims.

    As for less macabre things: I have a collection of fossils I've found throughout my life and travels.
     
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  3. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Almost anything can become a collectible. I worked at an antiques auction house during university days and the collections that came through were various and sundry. In fact, "in the trade" about the only things that aren't thought of as genuine collectibles are things that are marketed as collectibles. When beanie babies were happening, David (the auctioneer) refused to have them pass through the auction house. I believe his exact words were: "Abso-fucking-lutely no."

    I collect and refurbish vintage fountain pens from turn of the century to 1950. Nothing newer. I also collect vintage Science Fiction pulp novels from the 50's and 60's.

    IMG_0674.JPG
     
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  4. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    Some guy in our neighborhood collects old cars. He has a Mercedes from the 1930s, and it's beautiful. :love:
     
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  5. minstrel

    minstrel Leader of the Insquirrelgency Supporter Contributor

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    I have a collection of slide rules I want to add to. I have a few sextants as well. I like pre-electronic calculating and navigation devices. I'm fascinated by how clever people did things before cheap computers helped them along.
     
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  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    And brass and fine wood always looks so pretty. :-D:agreed:
     
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  7. Brindy

    Brindy Senior Member

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    I used to have a large collection of anything shaped like a crocodile. From nut crackers, to pencils, cigarette lighters to teapots. I also had the obligatory soft toys and pictures. If it was shaped like a crocodile I bought it, old, new, second hand, re-cycled. I off loaded it when I moved countries, just keeping a few special bits.
     
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  8. Brindy

    Brindy Senior Member

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    I never did get the hang of slide rules, though I wanted to. I was stuck with logarithms.
     
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  9. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    I collect 1980's books especially Ya books in series but also horror books and 70's gothic romances. I have about 6 bookcases full - when they're out of their boxes.
    My brother collects vintage table lighters. Oddly enough he doesn't smoke.
    When I was 8 I used to collect bottle caps. There were so many around back in the early 80s - I wish I'd kept them.
     
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  10. Rob40

    Rob40 Active Member

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    My mother had to tell my father, who likes to buy Christmas presents that are collectibles, "Don't start collections for other people!"
    Special edition NASCAR car models, some book series from his childhood (has the whole original lone ranger set now) and things like that and some would be a nightmare to get rid of when he's done with them.
     
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  11. DeadMoon

    DeadMoon The light side of the dark side Contributor

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    I guess I don't collect anything anymore. It's not that there is nothing I want to collect and not really the lack of money. It is more of a lack of wanting to add more to my life. I already feel like I am owned by what I do have and adding to that just seems so... tiresome.
     
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  12. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Does it have to be about victims?

    My natural collections: fossils, incredible rocks and minerals, meteorites, and shells from all over the world. My best: hadrosaur bones and a large Gibeon meteorite.

    My other collections: neat stuff, folk art, religious art. It's hard to pick the best, maybe my original Yellow Submarine movie poster or my original copy of the Beatles Meat Album? Or it could be the more valuable discoveries I have like a pair of 1800's original oil paintings, Sunlight and Moonlight by Albert Montague that I found in a thrift store.

    My investment collectables that I am currently selling: Board games, collectable toys, holiday collectables like Christmas ornaments and Halloween things, popup books and other collectable books.

    My investment collectables not yet ready for sell: art from vintage children's books and hundreds of neat frames that I plan to put the pictures in. These are books in poor repair or so common they are not valuable as a book by itself.

    And I have a lot of miscellaneous besides what I've listed. Treasure hunting has been one of my many passions, but now I'm divesting, no more hunting, except maybe an occasional yard sell or rock hunting excursion.
     
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  13. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    When I was younger I collected dragon stuff - mostly figurines, but also jewelry, coins, posters, clothes, some knives, whatever. I also collected knives of any kind, be they fancy and nice or average pocket knives. Weird kid.

    I still kind of collect feathers and have a variety of them, from bluejay to seagull to wild turkey to budgie. I'm a sucker for seashells - I have a friend who specifically likes really tiny ones, but I just look for ones that are either in good condition or broken in some cool way. And cool rocks, though what makes them cool is pretty subjective. Maybe it's s chunk of quartz or flint, maybe it's exceptionally smooth, maybe I just looked at it and went "I need that" :D
     
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  14. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    My interest in collecting shells was one of my first. I had a grade school teacher who had an incredible shell collection. We went on a field trip to the beach to collect shells and he'd told us about these little cowries called coffee beans.
    [​IMG]
    I found some and I was hooked.

    My current shell collection is fantastic, but nothing like my teacher's who had everything categorized and labeled. Mine are really cool but just scattered all over the house.
     
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  15. Shbooblie

    Shbooblie Senior Member

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    I used to collect rocks and minerals when I was a kid. Had a huge chunk of pyrite which was always my favourite, but unfortunately I lost them when I moved house.
    Right now I've got a bit of a coin collection going on.
    DSC07008.JPG
    I don't even know how I've ended up with most of them but every time I come across an unusual coin I feel the need to keep it. I've got some really old ones too like a penny from 1916 - I don't even remember how I got most of them though that's the strange thing.
    My cousin used to collect living dead dolls, she had about 30 of them. I thought they were so cool, but too big to collect so I've settled for 2. I also collect miniature skulls and fancy notebooks (which I buy but never write in).

    I guess I'm a bit of a hoarder!
     
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  16. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I use to collect Mickeys caps when they had those pictographs you had to try and figure out, and drunktionary terms. Also the Sobe lids that had the characters and their meanings.
    Now a days I collect paraphernalia (new) of a certain profession(s), and no there will be no explanation to go with that. :p
    Also I collect knives and swords, though it has been funding my life lately so it is shrinking. :(
    Off and on I collect rocks of various type, and spent shell casings.
    Have a small collection of old books too. :D
    Also I have an adult collection pertaining to a few specific things, and it is in digital form. And no there will not be an explanation for that either.:p
    And for some strange reason I have about thirty or so paper towel tubes, and I don't know why. Perhaps in the future it will be the new currency?
     
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  17. storystitcher

    storystitcher Member

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    I collect glass bottles of interesting shapes and colours. Mostly wine/liqueur bottles, but I don't drink so I have to get other people to drink so that they can give me the bottle haha. They sit on my window-sill. I love the way the light shines through them in the morning.

    When I was little I collected feathers with the aim of building a giant bird. Never came to fruition, you'll be surprised to hear.
     
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  18. Sifunkle

    Sifunkle Dis Member

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    Thanks for all the replies (and sorry to take so long to respond)! Interesting to read all around.

    I'm a bit surprised that most things mentioned have been 'open-ended' collections; I expected that there might be more like 'I collected the 1976 series of X brand of trading cards and was only two cards off the whole set'. I thought the sense of accomplishment you'd get from a completed collection would be a factor in the pursuit, as much as admiration for the objects themselves. So can anyone explain what the draw is exactly? And how do you decide on the limits for your collections? (E.g. Wreybies - why only sci-fi pulp novels from the 50's and 60's? - have used you as the example as you posted the first mention of limits; interested in everyone's responses.) Or does it just 'feel right', along the lines of @izzybot 's last sentence?

    I can appreciate the 'anti-exploitative-capitalism' stance (and accompanying eloquence!), but why that exclusion? Surely anything people decide to collect (regardless of marketing) would count? (Although mass-produced things like beanie babies might not be attractive to an auction house for supply-demand reasons.)

    I've loved reading about everyone's collections, but I think this is most in line with what I'm aiming for so far. Could you tell me more? And we talking tin caps that need to be removed with a bottle opener? Would you only keep ones that weren't particularly deformed by the opening? Did you keep whatever you could get, or you'd pass on those with designs you already had? How many did you have? Did other people give them to you as well, or were you only interested in ones from drinks you'd had yourself? Would you share/swap with friends?

    Can you please explain what these are to a non-American? SoBe is the only one my Google-fu has proven fruitful for - drink brand - but what were the characters/meanings? Were there a finite number of different ones? How many did you get? Would you trade around for ones you didn't have, or was it just a casual 'these are cool' sort of thing?

    I collect glassware too! Not hardcore, but one of my hobbies is 'mixology' (beverage making, especially cocktails), so having nice bottles and glasses to serve things is part of it. I don't really drink either... bit of a silly hobby to have, although it makes you friends.

    Well obviously, you have to start with the egg ;)
     
  19. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    In the case of the auction house where I worked, Dave's stance on the matter had to do with keeping the reputation of the auction house at a certain level. In his mind (and in effect) his auction house was an antiques auction house and not a glorified garage sale. He and I went to many smaller "rinky dink" auctions (his words) to hunt for items for his auction house. There were occasional finds amongst the 1970's bric-à-brac. Mostly items were taken either on consignment or purchased outright at estate sales and other such venues.

    Interesting note on the fountain pens I collected: Dave hated those as well and would rarely pick them up because he didn't like that they were almost always unserviceable, which made them unappealing in his eyes. This afforded me pretty much carte blanche to take any that came along with estate sales. He would just hand them to me. I taught myself to refurbish them and make them work. When I showed Dave that I had learned this, he stopped giving me the pens for free and instead gave me a jeweler's bench that was in the upstairs of the auction house. Whenever pens came along he would consult me as to which were worth spending time on and which were not. I would fix the ones that could be fixed, and buff them to a certain point of "pretty but not new".* Then during the auction night he would let me give the information on the particular pen (which was fun on the mic in front of the crowd) and then he would take over the auctioning of it.


    * Typically, refurbishing an antique damages the value considerably, but it's a balancing act. There is a lower threshold in the original condition of the item where it's already lost what value it could have and refurbishing it will only improve the value. Also, items of a practical nature that are meant to serve a purpose and not just be decorative can be refurbished as regards working or mechanical parts without damaging the item's individual intrinsic value. I say "individual" because an item in perfectly original condition, with original parts, which functions as it should, is of course going to be significantly more valuable than another example of the same item that has been refurbished to bring it to working condition.
     
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  20. storystitcher

    storystitcher Member

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    aha I thought mixology was a word made up on the sims!! oops. :D
    I used to be quite an avid cocktail maker too, I enjoyed mixing different colours of liqueur together and presenting them nicely. My favourite invention is named 'murder in the pool' - blue curacao, bitter lemon and tequila with a dash of grenadine for the "blood". I never drunk much either, and even less so now, but I still occasionally open up the liqueur cupboard and have some fun experimenting.
     
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  21. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    @Sifunkle It was a casual thing. The Sobe lids had I think 9 different symbols. Mickeys is a malt liquor that you use to be able to get in a 6-pack and were in glass bottles that looked like green barrels. And they had those picture+picture+picture things that you had to figure out what the term or message they were trying to tell. The Drunktionary terms were regular terms with a drunk prefix like: Sloshed, inebriated, etc. And had definitions like they were from a dictionary. I don't know how many were in all for either. Hope this helps you understand a bit better
     
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  22. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    Here's what I can recall - I used to walk along road sides, go to the park and baseball diamond and around the local store to find the bottle caps. Ditches also proved to be pretty fruitful. And my parents had a metal detector so any they dug up, that were interesting, they passed on to me. They were ordinary soda or beer bottle caps - all used. I kept ones that had minimal dents or scratches - especially if they were ones that were readily available. With older ones I couldn't be so choosy. I did find lots of unusual ones though that were older, from drinks that were no longer available. Brand names I never heard of and it was fun to see the colors and graphics and weird names.
    I had no guides so I just kept ones that were different. And ditched or traded the duplicates. I had favorites - for instance I was a huge fan of Tab soda and Tahiti Treat and Coke. And I'd always try and find ones that represented a different style change - 70s graphics, 60s, 50s. Anything unique. Parents that knew I collected attempted to give me some and I accepted but they were usually pretty easy to find caps. The ones I ran into the most were for Labatts beer. Which got to be a running joke.
    A lot of my friends were more interested in sticker collecting but there were a few that collected bottle caps and we would trade them usually trying to fill in spots or just because we liked a specific cap. After a day of hunting we'd pour out our bags and sift through them to see what we'd found. My prize cap was one I had no idea what it belonged to. It had a graphic of Superman on it.
    The fad burnt out pretty fast, though. I'd say it lasted a summer and that's all. The collection was long gone by the time my family moved when I was eleven - I kept my favorites but they got lost over the years.
    I think it got started because my friends and I used to hunt for empty pop bottles to cash in on their returns and just happened to come across some interesting caps and it became a challenge to find more unique ones.
     
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