What do you have a collection of and how long have you had it?

I still have my stamp collection fro when I was a teen. I stopped adding to the collection when I was a senior in high school.

One of these days I will give it to someone who will appreciate it. There are some valuable pieces in it.

I used to collect trading cards. The sources for them were various: snack bags, magazines, shops… Now I have stopped since I want to use my money for other things. The trading cards become decoratives, and sometimes they become bookmarks.

I still love trading cards though. But it’s more like “I see this enclosed with what I want to buy so I get it” than “I have to buy it because I want to add it to my collection”

STDs. Want to trade?

I have spent nothing on my collection of rocks.

Not sure what it is but whenever I see a rock that strikes my fancy I will pick it up and take it home with me. Most of the time I have them scattered around my home, both inside and out. Sometimes I collect them and put them in a storage box. I have several such boxes in a couple of different places in the house. I do it to clear out more space for more rocks but I can’t bring myself to “throw them out” so they get boxed up.

But, when I occasionally open the boxes they are stored in (usually when I am ostensibly cleaning up) it is like Christmas all over again.

@zenvelo my father collected stamps from when he was a child until his death a couple of years ago. He has (or rather we now have) books and books of stamps, trays of stamps, boxes of stamps, plastic containers of stamps, cake tins of stamps, box lids of stamps (pizza boxes were a favorite), drawers of stamps, envelopes of stamps, and have not yet decided on what to do with them. There is no rhyme or reason to their storage. At least not one that we can discern so it makes telling the ones of worth from the run-of-the-mill variety almost impossible; particularly if, like us, you have no expertise in them.

None of my sibs or any of our immediate family collect stamps. The only other family member who does is my uncle back in England. He and my father used to purchase and swap them. I imagine he has as large, if not larger, collection already. Neither his kids nor anyone their family collect them either.

My dad would buy four sheets of stamps at a time, put one away for his collection then send out two of the other sheets either on envelopes to family members who know to collect them and send them back, or send out stamped self-addressed envelopes to get them back. He always had way more postage than necessary because he had to have an unmarked stamp and a postmarked stamp for his collection, and not just a single copy of each stamp but of each different edged stamp; whether perforated on one edge, two edges, three edges or four edges. He would do this for the two sets, keeping one and, sending the other, along with an unused sheet, on to his brother.

Books. I’ve always had them and they’re always increasing.

@syz I have a lot of books but, according to my wife anyway, they are an obsession, not a collection. At least mine are/is.

Teapots. I started when I was first married with one I bought at a craft fair. Most are handmade pottery; one is an antique from Delft, one set is one my uncle brought back from occupied Japan. I don’t add to it often anymore as I am trying to reduce my belongings.

Oh – and penguins of course. mainly small ones. (They live in the basement like Mr. Potter’s.)

Servants, they look so pretty in their colour coded uniforms :D

I have a huge collection of Sinatra LP albums, cassettes, CDs and books, amassed over most of my lifetime. I also have a collection of antique tea spoons, though I haven’t added to it for years.

I have a collection of armadillos and a collection of boxes. I have quit adding to them because I don’t want or need more stuff.

I also have a large collection of shells.

I have a collection “records” including some vinyl LP’s dating back to the earliest LP releases in the 1940’s. I also have some 45’s, and some 78’s, some dating back to the 1920’s and 1930’s.

I collect cars. Some of them I will never sell and others I bought just to barter with. I usually don’t drive any of them because they’re mostly older cars that are better to look at than drive. I don’t consider them a waste of money at all. Anything I buy is old and won’t depreciate because I never put miles on them.

@rojo Your late father’s collection may be worth quite a bit. I suggest you consider seeking out a local stamp collector’s club to find someone near by to catalog and evaluate the collection.

After that you can, depending on value and your own situation:
1) Donate it to a non profit for a deduction
2) Sell it at auction
3) Give it to a younger relative

The crazy cat lady has nothing on me. I just counted my music CD’s (125 in the office, more at home) and about 5000 books. Five bookshelves full.

<self satisfied smirk>

Oh, yeah! I forgot to mention the books. MIL (rip) was a librarian, and her love of books was handed down to her daughter (my wife); my father was self-educated past grade 6, and both he and my mother loved to read, so it was a perfect match from that point of view.

Lighthouses. Whenever I see something lighthouse related, if I can afford it, I buy it!!

Horror movies. The collection keeps growing.
Rare video games, although I pretty much gave up on that, as it’s really pricey.
Porcelain dolls, when I find em and have the money.

Cook books – - BBQ, Baking, Slow cooker, Oriental, North African/Morrocan . . . Vegetarian.
About a hundred and fifty. Including “Joy of Cooking”.
The oldest is a vegetarian baking & cookbook from about 1968.

I started collecting Liberty Head Nickels in the 5th grade (52 years ago). Back then the most that I spent on a nickel was $5 (a fortune to me) at a coin shop. I have 22 different dates from 1883 (the first year of production) to 1912 (last year of production) and a couple of rolls of duplicate nickels. I still occasionally place low bids on ebay for Liberty Head Nickels. Of course I could simple buy the nickels I need to complete my collection but that wouldn’t be fun.

An interesting thing about these nickels is that the first two years of production the size and design were very close to that of the $5 gold piece in circulation at the time. Racketeers quickly started gold-plating nickels for a huge profit. Later Liberty Head Nickels had the word “CENTS” boldly written on them. Yes I have one of the racketeer nicks. Fun stuff.

I’ve had my coin collection since Autumn, 1962.

I collect cat figurines and have several scrapbooks that contain inspirational, at least to me, quotes.

I just realised I don’t collect anything at all.

Scars:

First, gonzo skateboarding and various physical stunts. Later it was bicycle road racing.

These are now closed holes that once allowed courage and fearlessness to enter my body.

I would collect spots on my liver but my good genes are not cooperating.

I also have a near-complete collection of films by my favorite writing-directing team, Pressburger-Powel (a/k/a The Archers)l including “The Red Shoes” and “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.” If you’re a lover of older British movies and appreciate the highest quality of story-telling, dialogue, acting and cinematography, I high recommend your renting or streaming a few. They’re dated but highly watchable.

@SecondHandStoke My wife says that scars are tattoos with stories.

I knew this very old man, he was a tallboy still, used to collect dust aye thangyoo

I still have green stamps from the 60’s

Tattoos. Got my first at 22.
Disney pins. Collecting for about 10 years.

I started collecting glass at the age of 13. 40 years ago this year. I have 1,000’s if not 10s of 1,000’s of pieces of glass.
Two of the most fun collections are my glass toothpicks and glass drinking straws. The toothpicks are mostly meant for drinks, to spear your olive or what have you on. I have picks with people’s heads, flowers, animals, etc.
Many of the straws are hollow clear tubes with colored ends attached. Most common are a colored spoon. Rarer are clear and colored, striped glass. Rarer still, and opaque glass tubes with colored spoons. The most unusual I have are multi-colored striped glass where even the spoon is hollow and a set of clear tube/yellow spoon that have tiny little story-book characters decaled on them. In addition to spoons, you find hollow colored balls (the red ones look like cherries) and bumpy balls that resemble berries.

I am literally a collection collector. Everyone’s eye would be glazed over if I tried to list everything I collect.

(The smashed penny and wooden nickle collection are coming along nicely, in addition to the glass.)

@ibstubro _ smashed penny_

There are several drawbridges in the town where I grew up, and they are raised several times daily to allow the river canal traffic through, mostly tugboats pushing barges. The large mechanism that allowed the bridge to be lifted is visible to any pedestrian waiting for the bridge to come down. We used to put pennies on the gears and wait for them to be smashed and flattened. When the bridge was down and locked, we would retrieve them. They ended up about 5” in diameter, and you could still make out some of the original markings.

Words!

Collect them all and trade with your friends!

Or with your not so friends…

I used to collect business cards. I stopped when I started having so many that they were becoming clutter. I realized they really had no value to me.
Now, I collect key cards from hotels I’ve stayed at. I’ve stayed at a lot of hotels since I started a couple years ago, so I have a quite a few of them. I’d say somewhere around 20. I date them and put the room number and occasion on them. It brings back memories and helps me remember what year these events happened.