Oh god, don't get me started.

I like to collect ceramic ashtrays that are shaped liked states. I have about 20, I hope to take pictures of them soon and post them.

I don't buy them anymore (student loans and mortgage) now, but I used to collect Marx toy soldiers (that is where half my username comes from). I've been posting some pictures of them here.

Books, books, lots of books. History, books illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. Maps, particularly ones with the little icons on them, like Empire State Building for NY, tobacco for NC etc.

And just plain tacky shit.

I collect old songbooks, preferably hymnals with shape notes. This was a lot easier when I lived in the midwest, and every yardsale or county fair would have another Stamps-Baxter pamphlet; pickings are scarcer out on the east coast.

I collect Jack Vance novels, Ace Doubles, books by Daniel Pinkwater and Jacques Tardi--oh shit! I've pretty much described my metafilter posting history.

I only have a couple more Vance books to find, but they're all in the $500 range.

I also have every Ace Double Vance wrote, signed on either side, in person.

How many Jack Vance books would that be? (The ones you have I mean.)

I collect lint in my belly button, but I throw it away. Such art is so transitive.

Are 'push puppets' those little toys that you press the base and they go limp? I used to have some of those.

Besides the books and records and CDs, I've also got collections of videogame stuff, Matt Groening-abilia and Fisher-Price Little People. Lots of board games, electronics hardware, tools and bike parts, too, but, like the media objects, I think of those as a collection of functional objects rather than a collection per se, if that makes any sense. I feel like I'm forgetting something, but that list is bad enough, right?

I have around sixty or so, Marxchivist. Some of them are duplicates, though--reading copies, alternate covers, some in French, stuff like that.

I also have his three books that were published as "Ellery Queen", in hardcover and in their original paperback editions. All of them are signed, too. He signed his own name, and then put a little "EQ" in the lower corner.

I have a decent size collection of action figures (both 2 and 10+ inches). I am currently looking for a cabinetmaker to build some serious display cases in my home, so I can finally get them all out in the open. I suppose if one wanted to split hairs, my CD buying could also be described as "collecting".

Those are some great photos, Marxchivist.

I'm a public transit geek (want me to tell you about the history of public transit in Budapest? I can!), so I collect transit stubs from every city I visit. One of my goals in life is to ride every subway in Europe, and I hope to have a full collection of tickets by the time I turn 35.

Books. Where to put them all? I built bookshelves over the stairwells in my house. I covered a whole wall of our dining room with floor-to-ceiling built in bookshelves, with a window seat. I have bookshelves scattered through my house, my regular office, and my project office in the library. They are all full.

Marxchivist: Ever heard of Frank C. Pape?

When I started traveling on my own for the very first time, I decided to get a new shot glass from every place I visited in honor of my newfound drinking habits. I think I have close to 50 of them now, some from the same city but different visits. I even got shot glasses from the states I had layovers in, which accounts for Minnesota and Tennessee, I think. I also have too many Disney ones, but that's only because I had access to "the company store" where you could buy discontinued or overstock items at a minimum of 50% off. I once got a set of four shot glasses for like a buck each.

I desperately wish to earn enough money to buy a house so I can store all these damn glasses.

Marxchivist: Ever heard of Frank C. Pape?

I'd heard of him, and I believe I have his edition of Robinson Crusoe, but I didn't know he was as interesting and mysterious as that bio you linked to made him seem to be. Those B&W images about halfway down the page are something else. That Bud Plant site is a great resource for information on old time illustrators.

Pape's best work is in James Branch Cabell's novels. Both men have been too quickly forvgotten.

Bunnies.

Really.

I collect Inuit sculptures. They cost a bloody fortune so I save my change and the money I used to spend on smoking, and then every year or two when I go to Quebec, I shop for a new work. I have a small dancing polar bear, a fish, a few birds, a fetching little green seal, and a few people. I am saving now for some spirit creatures.

A former boss got me started on this when I lived in Maine. He used to sponsor an annual art showing and sale. He would bring artists down from the cooperatives in Baffin Island or Cape Dorset. I volunteered to work the shows and grew to really love the art - I had quite an education from the artists. Plus I got a small discount on any purchases.

I also have a small collection of native pots, and a few retablos. I like the idea of supporting traditional art forms and native peoples and, relatively speaking, native art can be affordable for original art. Sometimes I take an extra freelance project or two just because I have my eye on a pot or a sculpture. I don't get to New Mexico too often, so when I am jonesing for a pottery fix, I visit this stellar gallery in Maine - he shops directly from the artists. I am lusting after one by Erik Fender, but he is in demand so his works are pricey.

I never much cared about cars or houses - just give me a few spare bucks for some art!

Other than the standards, I like to collect old drawing books.

I've got a collection of hear no evil, see no evil monkeys. My favorite has the one on the end who "has no fun". There's Curious George stuff in the laundry room and anything cool that's red, yellow and black goes in there with it. As a family we collect rocks, fossils, feathers, shells and cool sticks.

My daughter is the real collector. Along with lots of interesting things she has a macabre little collection of.... shed umbilical cords from a litter of kittens we had a few years ago. I thought it was kind of freaky when she saved them but she still has them in a little box somewhere in her room.

I am a sick person, here are some of the many things I collect:

- just about anything related to the Great Chicago Fire
- prints and souvenirs from the 1893 Columbian Expo
- books about hobos, tramps, and bums
- really good charlie chaplin stuff (original fan booklets and ads)
- old ashtrays shaped like hands
- antique and vintage dynamite crates
- any recordings (original or reissued) of old dirty songs
- the same goes for early murder ballads with a focus on the child ballads

from the late 1700s to the 1890s
- cleavers
- saws
- mugshots
- magic posters and instructional books
- sheet music
- jewelry made of hair
- prints of things shot, wounded, or on fire
- boxing prints and articles
- bawdy printed materials
- fractional currency
- railroad bonds? stocks?
- card trick and cheat objects and papers
- glass bottles from medicine shows (esp kickapoo)

and yeah i collect a lot more stuff too...i am through and through an obsessive collector nerd.

also i tend to constantly dream about the things i could begin to collect if i had loads of money....

- prints of things shot, wounded, or on fire

I love Mrs. Pants.

- jewelry made of hair

oooh, Mrs.Pants, when my mom lost her hair she put it in this and it's still there (14 years!) because I've never known what to do with it. I think she would have liked the idea of jewelry.

(p.s. from my previous post: I'm pretty sure my daughter kept the cords because it was the "first birth she ever attended", not because they were, like, body parts :)

(Aunt Bunny, I actually kept the tiny, dried out umbilical cord bits from both of my sons. They're in memory boxes with the hats they put on newborns, the cards from their hospital cribs, cards from friends and family, first photos, etc.)

I collect books, too. My dream is to have one room as a library, eventually. The majority of my books are antiques. The oldest one is from 1754, written in French, about the Revolution, I think. I have books about the Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania, the Civil War (anectdotes from the battlefield) home, farm, and garden books. My favorite is called "Darkness and Daylight in New York" written in 1891 about the horrible conditions in the slums of New York.
I collect books and magazines from the "Weird NJ" guys, too. And books on cemetery epitaphs, stones, death, and such.
I'm a bookaholic!!!

Where's troutfishing when you need him? Or that person who's mother had an OCD like condition that lead her to collect any manner of things, including buying things from ebay and not opening the packages when they arrived.

I don't collect anything anymore. I have in the past, but I stoppped.

I collected Pez dispensers until everyone else started doing it. I have boxes and boxes of them.

i just wanted to say i collect push puppets as well and i find it weird that someone else does. i have about 50 or so and kinda quit getting them (or having them given) because there just aren't a lot out there that I didn't have. Maybe I'll take it up again soon, but since the music, books, instruments, and art are taking up space/money, I'll probably stick with what I've got.