Collections and recollections

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Collections and recollections

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1nohrt4me
Mrz. 20, 2009, 12:19 pm

The "Introduce yourself" thread is gettin' pretty long, so here's where you can talk about your collections (flamingos, fiestaware, books, tins) and recollections (Mavericks, 8-tracks, "The Twilight Zone" and "Steal This Book").

FWIW, I've reached the point in life where I'm trying to unload stuff rather than accumulate it, even winnowing my book pile, often to my regret later on.

I wish I still had my high school copies of "Lord of the Flies" that my boyfriend drew a flyswatter on, and Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun."

2mckait
Mrz. 29, 2009, 3:54 pm

hmmm collections?

Like you, I am trying to rid myself of clutter. I even give books away a often as possible.

I would say that I collect books. I like those little fat birds that are made of wood or plaster or stone. I have a couple of outdoor flags with them as well. I have several.. plenty..

I have a few elephants, and serendipity has sent several animal and other creamers that my way. So I guess I have a small collection of those.

I have hundreds of crystals and minerals ... and rocks and stones and quartzes of all sorts. I used to have them all over, but currently have them in a couple of clear vases and jars.. the why is that I am a Reiki master and have used them for working~

I love my furkids, my books and my laptop. I have made some RL friends from interaction on the internet.

I remember spending many hours with friends, smoking pot, exploring all sorts of places and things. I remember when one of those friends literally saved my life.

That was long ago... little drama in my life now.. good things, bad things.. such is life.. I am happy to meet up with others of similar age and memories..

3cyderry
Apr. 6, 2009, 4:00 pm



This is my passion (besides reading of course!)
I have a collection of 115 buildings that I setup at Christmas time.
Each year I modify the placement of the buildings and levels so that it is different. I have been collecting these since 1986 when I started with 2.

I also collect Teddy Bears (I have about 82 at last count).

Maybe, if I had children living in the house I'd be ready to downsize but not just yet.

4mckait
Apr. 6, 2009, 4:02 pm

wow! nice... lots of work?

5cyderry
Apr. 6, 2009, 4:09 pm

It takes about 6 weeks of heavy duty hours for setup, about 3 weeks to pack it back up. But it's fun, my husband and I do it together (our winter project).
He plays carpenter, plumber, electrician and I'm buyer, art director, designer and landscaper.

6mckait
Apr. 6, 2009, 4:11 pm

Clearly, it is a true passion! how wonderful :)

7loriephillips
Apr. 10, 2009, 2:36 pm

#3 Wow, Cheli. That's awesome! I've got Dickens Village, which I set up nearly every year, but it's nothing compared to yours.

8barb0476
Nov. 20, 2009, 3:19 pm

Wow! That's amazing and beautiful! How cool that it is kind of a family tradition to set it up together each Christmas season.

9mamzel
Nov. 23, 2009, 11:42 am

I inherited stamp collections from both of my grandfathers. My French grandfather owned a cafe in Nice and his customers would bring him stamps they had received from all over the world, particularly the French colonies. My American grandfather worked for Texaco Corp. and would be given stamps from his co-workers. Of particular interest are stamps from the German occupation. When I was in school my brother and I spent hours sorting, mounting, and learning about the countries, their leaders, their languages, as well as their currency. It upset me that I couldn't get my kids interested but not surprised with all the other distractions they had.

My mother-in-law collected Hummels. Cute dustcatchers. Haven't learned much from them.

10BradonK
Sept. 13, 2011, 7:36 pm

How awesome. Those are nice. How did you get them.

11Tess_W
Bearbeitet: Sept. 20, 2011, 8:51 pm

It sounds as if many do enjoy things other than books! My husband and I are remodeling the basement..where I had metal shelves from ceiling to floor with books, books, and more books. At least 50% of them were children's books from my children who are now 31 & 32...time to offer to grandchildren and then get of! I have dwindled about 1200 books down to 400 in my personal library, that are now upstairs in very nice shelves, I sold about 350 on amazon and donated the others to my local library and the school library where I teach. I feel very very good about the clean up and how I "disposed" of my books...no regrets, yet.

I also collect teacups/saucers, mostly "Made in Occupied Japan" and Flo-Blue, of which I have about 30. Over the years I have also purchased, been given, many types of bunnies and rabbits, glass, paper mache, etc. I have them sitting in corners or niches throughout my house and get lots of compliments about the "theme'...which wasn't planned.

However, no more books (I will get them online/Kindle/Gutenberg Project, etc, my display case for my teacups and saucers are full..no more. I do enjoy serving my guests, all with a differernt one with a different story. And no more bunnies..except for the dust variety.

12MerryMary
Sept. 20, 2011, 9:13 pm

Besides my books, I seem to have a lot of little figurines connected with reading. Reading children, reading bears, reading angels, reading gnomes. I even have a reading frog and a reading ant. I push my books back in the shelves and arrange a few little figures on each shelf. They look cute and make me happy.

13theretiredlibrarian
Jan. 3, 2012, 10:30 pm

I have a collection of about 200 Christmas ornaments. They are all book related; either book characters or something/someone reading. Started collecting about 10 years ago with a Professor Dumbledore, and a Grinch. It runs the gamut of fairy tale characters, picture book characters, nursery rhymes, a lot of Dr. Seuss , Harry Potter, and Pooh Bear. Most of the older ones were chased down via EBay, some have been happened upon in antique shops; and twice yearly run is made to Hallmark--in August to scope out the new stock, and buy a couple; and then after Christmas when they are half price. These all go on my tree in the school library--this year I got a 7 foot tree to hold them all. The oldest in a 1980 Hallmark Berenstain Bears bulb. I love when the children find book characters they know. Takes a couple of days to set up (between teaching classes), and a day to put them all away; 4 large plastic storage bins as of this year. Amazingly, in all these years, only one has been lost or stolen (Hedwig), and a couple broken. I just remind students to look but don't touch, and they usually do. The kids really enjoy the tree and look forward to it going up each year.

14aviddiva
Jan. 3, 2012, 11:04 pm

Besides books, I collect studio art glass from the 60's and 70s, and I have a small collection of tea pots.

15fuzzi
Jan. 5, 2012, 12:29 pm

I like collecting books (duh!), and have some small stuffed animals like Beanie Babies, but not name brand. I have them because I like them.

I also have a few 'fat birds' (as described above) sitting on my piano: two are plaster and one is metal/cast iron. One is supposed to be a lamp topper, but he sits by the others in the living room.

Amongst my odds and ends I still have a couple pewter gryphons that I collected about thirty years ago...when we moved long distance I gifted my unicorn collection to a young neighbor, but kept the gryphons.

And I have a few 'kitties' around the place, some stuffed, some alive, some wood, and even one glass Siamese.

I used to have a lot more, but I've had to scale down quite a bit.

16Neverwithoutabook
Jan. 5, 2012, 12:56 pm

I like collecting books, too! :) For some reason I love the look of old books, and of course new books are really good for reading as well as home decor! *tongue in cheek* ;)

I also collect tins. The count is somewhere around 300 at this point. I have all shapes and sizes and a good number of them actually came with something in it. I inherited some old ones from my grandmother and those had things in them too! One had her matchbook collection from travelling from Canada to Mexico each year of her last few. She would pick one up everywhere they stopped along the way. She also stored puzzles in some of her tins. I have no idea what any of these puzzles are, or even if all the pieces are there. I'm not a big puzzle fan. Maybe some day I'll get around to trying to put them together.

The other thing I collect, which kind of happened by accident, is my cow collection. Back when everyone was buying duck and geese stuff...tea towels, canisters, you name it! I was walking through a store one day, heartily sick of seeing them everywhere! Said to my Mom....why can't they put something else on this stuff! Why does it always have to be ducks...or geese! She said well what would you have them put on it. I came right back at her with "There's lot of other animals....like cows...or pigs....well maybe pigs isn't such a good idea...but there's other animals...and birds and stuff!" Next birthday, my gift from her was tea towels, kitchen mat, hotpads, cutting board, etc....all cow themed! After that, I had a collection of cow themed items and still do. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon! LOL Oh well...the black and white ones ARE kind of cute! ;)

17aviddiva
Jan. 5, 2012, 4:13 pm

Isn't it funny how other people sometimes create a collection for you? I once had three or four wind-up toys sitting on a table in my living room, and by the end of the following year had received about fifteen more from various friends and relations. Instant collection!

18Neverwithoutabook
Jan. 5, 2012, 4:25 pm

LOL That's absolutely true aviddiva! They assume that because you have a few of something, you must love all of those somethings and another never hurt! My tin collection started because I visited a friend and saw that she had all her tins grouped on top of her kitchen cupboards and I thought that looked really neat. She said when you put a group of things together in one place, they become a collection, so since I had some tins...scattered all over, I decided to collect mine all in one place too. And all of a sudden I was getting tins as gifts from everyone I knew!

19staffordcastle
Jan. 5, 2012, 7:13 pm

I have quite a few tins myself, especially tea tins, which are often very pretty! I seem to attract things with owls on them, or sheep. What I am collecting of my own volition is 19th century fashion magazines and fashion plates, and images of historical costume from many periods.

20Neverwithoutabook
Jan. 5, 2012, 9:21 pm

You're right staffordcastle! Some tins are hard to resist because they're so attractive. I try to make sure I've either got room for it, or a use for it before I indulge anymore. The ones that are hardest to resist are the unusual shapes. I've got a carosel tin that used to hold cookies, one that looks like an open book of "goldilocks and the three bears" complete with a spoon shape resting on the open pages, a race car shaped tin and a lindt bunny shaped tin. I don't mind them coming to me empty, but it's even more fun if they're full!

21mmignano11
Jan. 18, 2012, 7:05 pm

Since I seemed to collect dogs and cats, I have to keep my collectibles down to a minimum. I enjoy Vintage Christmas pins, usually Christmas trees, but anything that catches my eye is acceptable. I also enjoy vintage kitchenware or at least that is what I call it. I like pyrex and bakeware like casserole dishes. That is an exceptional Christmas village but I would have liked to have seen some close ups. I bet you can look at it for hours.

22fugitive
Bearbeitet: Jan. 19, 2012, 8:05 am

I'm a collector of the works of two people: Barry Hughart and Warja Lavater.

Lavater's works are my pride and joy and for those who enjoy artists books she's fantasitc. I've got one book written (and signed!) by her mother with illustrations by her daughter, Warja, early in her career. I spend WAY too much money on eBay and AbeBooks getting her stuff and am leery of promoting her because that means, potentially, more collectors. Her stuff is still generally flying under the radar, but I've seen her popularity steadily increase since her death in 2007 (age 93). I bought a box of 6 books of hers in the late 80's for about $75 that is currently priced at $1400 on AbeBooks. My most recent purchase is one of her fan-fold lithographed books, Die Grille und die Ameise, which is the story of the Cricket and the Ant, told in symbols rather than words.

The slightly reclusive Hughart wrote just three books in his career. I'm currently pursuing getting foreign language editions of Bridge of Birds and his other works. I haven't found anyone else who has inscribed copies of his works (though signed editions are fairly common) and I have two!

I wrote him once and received an absolutely hilarious lengthy response musing about reference librarians (this is an excerpt):

"When I was a lad I thought of reference librarians - when I did so at all - as rather romantic figures of the ancient sage variety: creaky-jointed, rheumy-eyed, bits of old manuscripts clinging to their clothes and silverfish slithering through their scraggly hair, coughing up clouds of dust as they turned huge keys in rusty locks so vast doors could open with the screeching sound of the one guarding Jack Benny's vault (that should date me), and then fumbling through stacks of manuscripts encrusted with green and yellow mold and coming up with the one copy the world possessed of the cabalistic creed containing the information (unwisely! dangerously!) sought. Now, however, I simply think of doomed creatures clinging desperately to plunging desks amid the howling storm of an untamed internet that stretches obscenely infinite claws toward the cringing creature we once called God. That prose needs work and a lot more purple, but it'll do for now." -Barry Hughart

23techeditor
Jan. 7, 2013, 10:40 am

Like most of you, I collect books. Since I want only hardcovers, that could get pretty expensive. So I collect only books I can get for free or at very low cost (less than $2). I'm happy to say that much of my collection are lovely hardcover bestsellers given to my by publishers in exchange for a review or maybe not even that.

24lbradf
Jan. 17, 2013, 10:10 pm

I collected Reader's Digest World's Best Reading books until I had two full shelves and then I was done. It still gives me pleasure to look at those two well-matched shelves of excellent books. At work I have a collection of blown glass globes. I have also purchased or been given a unique holder for each one. When I retire, I don't know what I'll do with them, since they have always lived at work. You would think that I collect teddy bears and other stuffed animals, but the truth is that they seem to be what my husband buys me instead of flowers.