MetaChat - What Do You Collect?

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03 August 2010

What Do You Collect? Me? Illustrated editions. From bad to good. from mass produced to private sale. From engravings to drawings on the paper itself. Adore them, makes digging through a dollar bin much more fun. What Do You Collect?

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Also, pins from small design firms, comics, etc. Useful as a clothing accent when you want a littttle pink and some black.

post by: The Whelk at: 21:03 | 33 comments

Bicycles. I currently have six that I ride, a couple more frames to build up, and a couple restoration projects waiting in the wings.

posted by Doohickie 03 August | 21:18

bookmarks

posted by gaspode 03 August | 21:20

Boxes. In a similar vein, keys.

Books. So. Many. Books.

Plushies. Particularly odd plushies, which I sometimes will put on my head and take pictures of.

Games of all kinds.

Yarn, evidently. I really need to stop buying yarn, but that one's so fluffy and ooo I could make that with that skein and then edge it in that sparkly stuff and... yeah. Yarn.

Frogs. So far, only two living, but many froggy things are about the Mirror household.

posted by lriG.rorriM 03 August | 21:24

Vintage eggbeaters.

No, really. Without really noticing, I managed to acquire a number of vintage eggbeaters from thrift stores: mostly crank-style, but some novelty types.

I've pared the collection down quite a lot since I moved to the tiny dollhouse apartment. I currently have four or five manual eggbeaters in different styles, a couple of patented Depression-era egg-whipping cups (lidded aluminum cups with inserts designed to beat the egg), and an eggbeater-looking thing with a shelf clamp (for stability) and a serrated blade where the beater would be.

I also collect old cookbooks, especially Depression-era or older, though I do have a passion for '50s convenience cookbooks, the kind that talk breathlessly about steak cooked in mushroom soup concentrate.

posted by Elsa 03 August | 21:34

carnivorous plants
sea glass
skulls

posted by jamaro 03 August | 21:40

Trouble.

posted by dg 03 August | 21:50

dust

posted by arse_hat 03 August | 21:50

Like lirg.rorriM, I am a lover of all things books and boxes.

posted by msali 03 August | 21:52

Glass Dazey butter churns. May start collecting tabletop wooden ones too, if I can find room.

posted by Melismata 03 August | 22:03

regrets.

posted by Obscure Reference 03 August | 22:05

Floaty pens. If I remember correctly, someone else here also collects them. Either jrossi4r or iconomy, I think.

posted by amro 03 August | 22:51

bookmarks

I've suffered a shortage of bookmarks and/or good bookmark substitutes lately. I blame you, gaspode.

I don't collect anything purposefully. It never made much sense to me. Though I'm starting to accumulate a lot of shoes. And I tend to keep boxes for a few weeks for no discernible reason until there are three or four piled up and I get annoyed with their presence. Of course, I end up needing a box within a few days after that.

posted by mullacc 03 August | 23:28

Seashells, rocks, coins, and boxes.

posted by EvaDestruction 03 August | 23:41

I don't really collect stuff anymore except books.

I used to collect:

- Ruby stain glass with novelty or souvenir markings on it (Started with a piece my great-grandmother collected with "Fern 1908" (her name and the year she bought it) on it. Fern is a family name and is my middle name.)

- Vintage kitchen tools with red accents

- Vintage art pottery (Rookwood, Weller, Roseville and some no-name stuff I just like)

I'd love to collect more pottery but it keeps getting more and more expensive. I haven't bought any ruby stained glass in several years and need to thin out what I have. I have plenty of vintage kitchen tools, I just need to do the kitchen makeover and display them.

posted by deborah 04 August | 00:19

When I had spare money, I bought these awesome Nicaraguan vessels created very traditionally (techniques, pigments, forms), but with subtle modern changes - they weren't copies, they were continuations of a tradition. I love them, and that I was supporting the continuation and teaching of ancient methods and techniques. I also bought interesting art by artists and artisans whose work I admired, and most of them still delight me.

I also have collections of rondelles/wheel charts, West Virginian glass, (all things glass, really), books, and really cool things I claim I'm just buying for resale in my antiques booths and not because it is endlessly fascinating to look at (like Worlds Fair stuff. And vintage games. And Plasticville. And really cool furniture from the 1900s-1940s. And vintage children's books. And ...)

posted by julen 04 August | 00:51

mp3s and guitar tab books.

posted by Ardiril 04 August | 01:34

Vintage Girls' and Boys' Own pulp fiction of the particularly appalling kind. Must have frontispiece with some exclamation that has been taken completely out of context and makes no sense to the casual reader. And bits of nice paper. And empty pens and pencil stubs (due to sense of enormous well-being felt when viewing pile of completely used up pens and pencils of assorted colours).

posted by mondaynoaware 04 August | 02:09

Pine cones. I'd much rather bring home a cone from a trip than a souvenir made in China.

posted by Senyar 04 August | 02:40

I collect uncluttered spaces.

I would collect unusual element samples if I had scads of money.

posted by Wolfdog 04 August | 04:23

I never throw anything out.

posted by Obscure Reference 04 August | 06:45

I guess you could say I collect vintage hankies and kitchen linens. Hankies just aren't made anymore, and the old ones are so beautiful. I use them for allergies. As to the kitchen linens, I tend to pick up any linen/cotton tea-towels I can find. I love how they dry so quickly and are so absorbent. If someone has taken the time to decorate them with needlepoint, etc, they're even better.

posted by Stewriffic 04 August | 07:24

For a while, I collected "recordings that wouldn't have been made if the singer wasn't already known as a pretty woman" - i.e. the Nia Peeples record.

posted by Joe Beese 04 August | 08:03

Books. I have six bookcases full. And swan stuff, but it has to be useable swan stuff (i.e., a swan candelabra, jewelry, cross-stitched pillows). Also hourglasses, because my dad decided I should collect them and makes them for me, and nutcracker dolls, because my mother decided I should collect them and gives me one every Christmas.

posted by Orange Swan 04 August | 08:52

bookmarks

Oh hey I have some bookmarks I got in Eastern Europe for a friend who use to collect bookmarks but has long since vanished. Yours if you want them!

posted by The Whelk 04 August | 09:28

Yowza, yes please!

posted by gaspode 04 August | 09:36

Ticket stubs to every live performance of any kind that I attend.

posted by danf 04 August | 09:57

Gaspode

e-mail Or email me an addy!

posted by The Whelk 04 August | 11:40

Bicycles, bike parts and digital media. the lfr household currently houses fifteen fully functional bikes, with shelves and boxes full of spare parts, a couple of random frames, several racks and 2 large rollaway toolboxes, with yet more on the way (the mister is embarking on a custom fixie project, and we have both mused upon the need for additional mountain bikes next year). We could essentially open our own bike shop if we really wanted to.

We also currently have 4TB of media storage devoted to the photos, music, movies and various shows we like; fortunately digital media is highly compact and easy to store (our set of mybook externals are quite small and discreet)

Fortunately we're also both into clean and uncluttered spaces, so the garage full of bikes is currently our only mess liability. even at that, the mister's both a Mech E and highly clutter averse, so he's got the shop well mapped out, organised and neat despite the fact that it's effectively bursting at the seams.

posted by lonefrontranger 04 August | 11:43

Consciously, nothing.

But without really thinking about it, I've accumulated a helluvalotta

Books
Electronics and electronic accessories
Shells
Rocks from beaches around the world
Tote bags
Name tags
CDs
Kitchen appliances
Wine glasses

posted by bearwife 04 August | 11:55

Toys. And comics, obviously, although I think I'd part with most of my physical collection if I could store it on DVDs.

Which reminds me, you might like this: all 146 issues of Creepy magazine in high-rez imgs (including the original ads) for $30 including postage. Ask the seller nice and he'll throw in every ish of Eerie for another $10, same postage. You probably know all the names: Krenkel, Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Al Williamson, Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Jones, Corben, etc etc etc. I asked the seller and he's working on putting together Vampirella as well, which features some hard-to-find art by Jeff Jones (now Jeffrey Catherine Jones), including one piece written for Jeff by Wrightson. Not sure iff you're into the old classics, but I thought I'd mention it since I know you're a comic dude (right?)

posted by shane 04 August | 17:00

I'm in more of a getting-rid-of-collections phase these days, but:

Akro-Agate thumb pots (hi julen!)
Sesame Street Fisher-Price Little People
glass insulators

(I've also got a ton of bike stuff, and tools, and records, and books, and a bunch of other stuff.)

posted by box 04 August | 17:46

(Oops, that Creepy collection on DVD is $20 including post, not $30.)

posted by shane 04 August | 22:24

Souvenir stamped pennies
Ticket stubs
Books

posted by halonine 05 August | 15:31

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