When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to run to the store and buy baseball cards. I loved the sport, loved watching the sport, loved going to Fenway Park and even though I wasn’t very good I loved playing baseball. At night I would always take out my shoebox of baseball cards and look at the players bio’s, stats and try and answer the trivia questions. Ok I will admit it I collected baseball cards as a kid. I still have a ton of cards and planning on giving the collection which includes a ton of autographs to my kids.
When I was younger I also collected stamps but didn’t have the same passion I did as baseball cards. Even though I am not sure I would call it a collection (maybe I should) I have over 1500 books (estimate) with subjects ranging from sports, to research and business.
Lots of my friends collect different things that range from plates, magnets, postcards, maps, beer cans and many other things.
Now your turn:
- What did you collect as a kid?
- What do you collect now?
- What do some of your friends collect?
I look forward to reading your comments.
Nancy Cearley says:
Hi Merrill,
My collecting began at the age of 4. We were moving back to the States from the Netherlands via London and for some reason ended up flying back on my 4th birthday. My mom, not wanting a fussy child, didn’t tell me that it was my actual birthday. Upon checking in at the airport in London, there was a nice gentleman who wished me a happy birthday. Being the rotten child that I was, I started crying. He presented me then with his very cool key chain with a bell. That was the first in my collection of many key chains. For years, I would always buy a key chain in every city I visited. The key chains became so numerous, that I eventually switched to coffee mugs. I have tons of key chains and now enough mugs to give coffee to nearly all attendees of the upcoming MRA conference. I guess it’s now time to start thinking of a new collection…
Nancy
Jami Pulley says:
I went through phases as a kid. First, I collected unicorns. Then I collected thimbles. Lastly, I collected hand painted masks. My mom started working when I was in third grade, and she would bring me a new item for my collection (whatever it was) from the different cities she traveled to. I never really felt that passionate about any of it. I’m not much of a collector of anything now, except diapers.
However, I do love jewelry. My husband usually buys me a nice piece of jewelry every five years (thanks Alice for the idea). I love it!
Shannon Goyda says:
As a kid, I was a serious collector of stickers when it was all the rage. I loved the puffy ones and the scratch-and-sniff stickers the best.
Now my tastes are more expensive, unfortunately. I love antiquing and collect old glass and whatever other interesting pieces I dig up during my explorations.
janet says:
As a kid I collected paper dolls. My Grandmother lived with us and every time she went to the store I would ask her to bring me a surprise and it was always a new book of paper dolls. I am old, so back then every doll and every piece of clothing had to be cut out, including these pesky tabs to keep the clothes on the doll. I had a huge box of them and they were all kept in orderly fashion. Everyone had their own “closet space”.
Other than that I was not much of a collector until my early 20’s when I became obsessed with frogs (because I am proudly of French heritage). A slang nickname for French people is Frog. I am very picky about the frogs I collect as there are some really ugly and garish collectibles out there. But all the big names like Waterford and Lalique make crystal frogs that are beautiful. My favorite is one I bought at the Lalique store on the champs de elysees in Paris. I even have some really cool frog jewelry.
My most recent passions are dishes and tablecloths. Not sure how many I have, but there are lots. To me setting the table beautifully is as imprtant as serving wonderful food. I agonize over every table I do until I am satisfied that it is perfect. I come by this honestly. My mother was the same way and I have actually inherited many of the tablecoths I grew up seeing and even have her dining room set. I carry on her tradition but it looks like it ends with me. Neither daughter is a collector of anything.
Ed Sugar says:
Over my life I have collected:
Comic books – mostly Marvel comics from the mid 60’s to early 70’s. At one point I had Avengers #1 and X-Men #1
Baseball cards – always loved them and at one point had a massive collection of Topps cards where I was missing just about 100 cards between the years 1957 and 1974. I had DiMaggio & Ted Williams rookie cards and a number of near mint full collections. I invested in these when I was a teenager before the card market took off in the 1980’s and have cashed in on them during the past ten years.
Post cards – I love odd and bizarre postcards. Started collecting them during my 2nd Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’ Roll tour of Europe in 1980. Today when I am overseas I always keep an eye out for them.
Stamps – For awhile I took over the managing and updating of a stamp collection that my paternal grandfather and my father has kept. I love stamps, but it was too time consuming. If anyone out there is interested in this collection let me know.
Music – I have covered this passion on numerous posts on this blog. Currently my wife Marion and I have 2,300 CDs in our collection and it is still growing.
I have a very good friend who lives outside Worcester, MA and has one of the world’s largest collections of Wizard of Oz memorabilia. His home is a shrine.
Okay BG, time for you to post all of the wonderful things you have collected over the years.
Michael Braunberg says:
As a child in 1966, I was crazy for Topps baseball cards. Many of the card fronts are burned into my memory still – Koufax, Mantle, Clemente, Rose, Kaline… Two that come to mind particularly are the dreadful photo of Don Mossi, and the lovely and very green Willie Mays card, which was first in the set:
http://www.deanscards.com/Product/56115/-74-Don-Mossi—1966-Topps-.aspx
http://www.deanscards.com/Product/55660/-1-Willie-Mays—1966-Topps-.aspx
Someone once told me that as a child they found the Don Mossi card so frightening they could not keep it in their bedroom with the rest of their collection both for fear of nightmares, and because they were convinced the Mossi card might start some sort of “ugliness contagion” that would spread to other cards.
Interestingly (but not surprisingly) Mossi’s baseball nicknames were “The Sphinx” and “Ears”. And to anyone who knows me and would point out that my own ears bear some resemblance to Mossi’s – correct and touché.
I have started other collections from time to time over the years – first edition books, miniature soldiers, album covers, coins… None remain. Sometimes I suspect that the primary value of collections is learning to let them go.
Ken says:
Like Ed I collected Marvel comics (still have them, over 2000), though my collection years were more mid 70’s to early 80’s. I had the chance to own Avengers #1 at one point but passed on it, deciding to spend my hard earned $100 at the time on several differnet books. Worse decision of my life…but I was only 12 so I do cut myself some slack.
I do own the KISS comic where supposedly they used some of their own blood in the ink when printing the book. True or not, I don’t care…it helps drive up the value!
I don’t still collect but I will pass my collection on to my son…hopefully he’ll keep them in good shape and also pass them on some day.
Ken says:
An update to my KISS claim. Went back and looked and turns out I have the Marvel KISS book that came out in 1978, the “blood” book came out the year before in 1977. Oh the ups and downs of comic collecting…missed it by “that” much.
Melanie Courtright says:
I collect magnets from every place I travel. They are inexpensive and make it through security easily. I absolutely love to travel and consider it a privilege. I heard a great quote this weekend:
“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” — Saint Augustine
Kelly Heatly says:
My husband and I collect a coffee mug from every state to which we travel. So, our cabinet holds a large collection of kitschy mugs. I’m just dorky enough to start my day with something like “I’m feeling New York today” or choosing the Arizona mug because I’m traveling to Phoenix that week, etc.
Fee Sepahi says:
Hi Merrill,
As a kid I started collecting stamps as my relatives traveled a great deal and we seemed to always get letters from really exotic places, they visited.
Over the years and with all the moves, I lost touch with that collection and started collecting coins, while I worked in a movie theater. I collected wheat pennies and coins older than myself!
That required too much research time, so I now have started collecting books that I get autographed for my daughter. So far we have Madeleine Albright, Ellen Jensen Abbot, Dan Heath and a host of others.
At our local library recently, I saw a collection of glass paper weights, by a 4th grader. He had a cool collection of workmanship.
Amanda Bausk says:
Hi Uncle Merrill,
I collect sneakers, I have about 40 pairs at the moment and plan keep adding to the collect. It’s a pretty expensive habit, but I have fun trying to track down certain pairs and search all over the internet for the best prices.
I also have a pretty big dvd collection it’s not nearly as big as grandpa’s because I’m pretty sure he has more dvds then a blockbuster. But maybe I’ll get to that point someday
Elizabeth says:
As a child, I collected many things, but no phase lasted long enough to actually classify as a collection…coins, Mardi Gras doubloons, porcelain dolls, Golden Books, stickers, etc. (My parents saved all my Golden Books, so now I have them for my daughter. I think I collected over 100.)
Once I moved out of my parents’ house, I started buying magnets and Christmas ornaments from each place I visited. Although since we got a stainless steel refrigerator, I have abandoned the magnet collecting. I still collect ornaments.
Amber Leila Esco says:
When I was like 4 years old Sanrio came out with Hello Kitty – perhaps the best thing ever created. I loved HK and collected all of her little tiny goodies then.
When I was around 25, she made a comeback and I began a competition with my best friend – we would order things off e-Bay from Japan, we would drive all over to the Sanrio stores (this was before HK was all over like she is now). It was intense and insane. I have, to this day, two large rubber-maid containers filled with HK stuff (pencils, day runners, stickers, stamps, etc, you name it, I’ve got it…)
It became very expensive and extremely dysfunctional so I still do buy HK merchandise, but only if it is functional – for example, I have HK tweezers, a HK shower cap – things I actually need, not just cute things …
Now, why doesn’t HK have a mouth? why is Sanrio tying to keep her quiet? What does she know that they don’t want let out? A whole different question!! HMMM… :0)
Al Gonzalez says:
is there any difference in the psychological make up of a “collector” and a compulsive shopper? because i have nearly a thousand vinyl albums. in the mid-90s i had 40 albums. since then i’ve searched garage sales, thrift stores, library book sales, and record stores for cheap yet at least good condition vinyl albums (and a few 45s). i would say on average i pay about $3-4 per album. best deal was a yard sale in which i misheard the seller say albums were $1 a piece. what she said was 25 cents a piece. i came away with 60 albums for $15. 5 Rolling Stone albums; 6 Beatles albums……you get the gist.
i would also say: my cheapness > than my obsession
Bob Graham says:
It looks like Ed has outed me as a collector.
As a kid I collected baseball cards casually. There were so many that I knew I’d never get a complete set, but I did manage to amass a complete collection of Ted Williams cards (how I wish I still had those!) The cards I remember most fondly, though were non-sports cards; Three Stooges, Monsters and my all-time favorite card series, Civil War News. Both my brother and I collected complete sets.
In 1962, the Aurora Plastics Corp released it’s first figure model kit based on a movie: The Frankenstein Monster. The kit was hugely successful and spawned a whole series of monster/horror kits and I built everyone of them until the series was discontinued in the late sixties. They became very collectible and all have been reissued recently. My favorite here was a working guillotine model.
In the 90s I collected Starting Lineups, sports action figures made by Kenner. I really enjoyed the “thrill of the hunt” for “rare” figures and developed a lot of friends and trading partners across the country. I stopped when they became just too difficult to find at retail. Dealers were bribing Toys R Us employees to sell them complete cases (and TRU did nothing to stop it, which still has me POed) and that ultimately killed the hobby. But I used to love presenting my friends with figures of favorite sports star that they didn’t know existed. I still remember the look on Ed Sugar’s face when I gave him a Gary Linneker soccer figure.
I’m a big movie buff and have always collected movies in some form or another. When I was a kid, you could buy 8mm condensations 3 -10 minute excerpts, usually in black and white with subtitles. There weren’t a lot of titles to pick from, but at that time, actually owning a complete movie was unheard of. I went through various tape and disc formats and today have a very expansive collection of DVDs (a few more than Ed and Marion’s collection of CDs). The dvd explosion really made it possible to put together an eclectic collection and once again, I am buying and trading all over the owrld (many dvd players, especially the cheap ones, can be “hacked” to play dvds from anywhere and I was licky enough to locate copies of films that I had literally spent 30 years trying to see: Orson Well’s “Falstaff” and Olsen and Johnson’s “Hellzapoppin’” I have my dvds arranged in a way that makes sense to me and I am waiting for the day when someone views my collection and says “I see how you’ve got them filed..”. I colelct all types of films but am obsessive about some favorite directors (Sam Peckinpah, Robert Aldrich, John Ford) stars (Vincent Price, John Wayne) and genres (I’m a sucker for Spaghetti Westerns).
Kimberly White says:
Hi Merrill!
I collect a few things: old cameras, musical instruments from the countries that I visit and hard-backed photographic books of all of the countries I have been to.
I have about 40 old camera but my favorite one is the one that my parents picked up for me in France at a Flea Market with glass negatives and a wooden tripod. (It is prominently displayed in my living room.)
As for the musical instruments, they are sometimes a hassle to get home but great reminders of where I have been and the experiences I had while acquiring them.
As for the photographic books, my Mom started this collection for me when I was in HS after my first trip to Europe and both of us have kept it going.
Thanks for another great post Merrill.
Kim
Jennifer Sullivan says:
I started a collection of Mexican clay and tin churches about 20 years ago. I have about 30. They aren’t very easy to find which is what I really like about collecting them. When I do come across one, I’m really excited to add it to the collection. I typically find them in mercados in San Antonio, New Mexico and Mexico. They are pretty fragile being made out of probably a poor quality of clay, so several have been glued back together over the years. I have some really small ones that are about 1 1/2 inches tall and then some larger ones that are about 12 inches. They are each very unique.