Featured How did this happen ?

Collecting - be it bottle caps, or fine furniture. Many of us find ourselves collecting a wide assortment of objects with ebbs and flows through the years, never forgetting what we collected at age eight even (antique bottles for me). Can't count the phases of relics I've gone through in my 63 years, always engaging in the history of my new found item of interest - books, articles & talk always follow. Have a lot of fondness for all those categories of things I've collected, even if I no longer search for them.

In the end the explanation may simply come down to the phase . . .'I like that, I think I'll start collecting those' !

 

Or because you like them, you buy more like them that are just a tad different, different material, size, colour, etc.
And then one day you find that you have a collection.

 

I guess certain people are just drawn to certain things as they pass thru life.

"at age eight even" ..... about the time I got my 1st pocket knife ....
That collection ebbed & flowed...but never subsided !

It also has to do with disposable income.....
You can't buy what you can't afford to buy !!!


But then again , I have an old friend who lived sparse in his old apartment.... and now that he has a large $$$$ condo....... even sparser........
He collects........ nothing !

 

I didn't start collecting till I was in my thirties. Depression blue kitchen glass was my thing. I watched my father collect stamps all his life. Could not understand his love of them and when I asked him why he collected them, he said it was because a President collected them.

I did like to buy clothes and shoes and fashion when younger, but they were not a collection, they were for me to wear and be trendy.

I should add that yes, I collected cookbooks. Lots of them.

 

My dad started collecting stamps because President Roosevelt did. I used to have a big collection of books and old SF magazines - I'd read them all.

 

I collect(ed) simply because of the beauty and "thingy-ness" of things.

 

I first started collecting at the age of 7 with silver pocket watches, I was amazed I could buy something so well made for such little money. I also went bottle digging and collected quite a hoard until I sold up to move to another country, unfortunately we returned a few months later for reasons beyond our control but I did keep all the clay pipes I collected from digging. Now I'm no longer a "collector" of any one thing, if it's beautiful, rare, well made and it's at the right price I'll try and buy it.

 

I must of had a latent gene, because avid collecting really came on suddenly, in mid-life, about 10 years ago.

Before that, I obsessed about fishing for years; then it was bicycling for years; now, this is the thing I do.

The best scenario for me is antiquing, on a bicycle, while carrying a fishing rod just in case an opportunity comes up.

 

I went all in on the bottles .` . .by the time I was 15 I had a couple of hundred, all pre 1910 mold blown. 95% were dug in my home town in Connecticut. It was a lot of work, poison ivy, cuts, etc. but we loved searching out abandoned fields. 19th century dumps were plentiful in the 70's. I've kept about 25 of the ones seen in this photo from 1976.

 

My mom's cousin dug bottles too. She lived in an area of New York state that was all farm country, and midden/bottle dumps were everywhere. I think her son still has them.

 

I was bitten by the antique bug about eight years of age. A great-aunt had passed and the family made several trips to clean-out her home. To me everything in that house was straight out of the 1930s films I watched on television. Our home was post WWII to 60's modernish. I recall holding onto an old phone and typewriter, and the family kept a victrola, small potbelly stove, bentwood ice cream parlor chairs. It expanded my world.

 

in grade school..... trading cards.... hockey, baseball, Batman !!
Also Comics.....right up into high school.....and a bit beyond.

 

My parents bought and sold 'stuff'. In those days, second hand stores were more popular than antique stores because after the Depression and WWII, people were still recovering. My Dad either had a store or sold stuff out of the barn out back. My mother would send me out with him when he did his trash runs because she thought it would stop him from drinking. Ha! We'd stop at the dump and he'd be in the gatehouse having a beer with the guard and I'd be dump picking when I was 8. He was friends with a guy named Eddie Lee who had a junkyard and old car graveyard. They'd be in the kitchen and I'd be roaming around the old cars. Eventually, a group bought that house and it's now the Robert Frost Homestead in Derry. It'll always be Eddie Lee's junkyard to me. I didn't have a new doll or toy until I was 10 and my mother hurt her back and went for surgery. My Dad bought me a doll in a swing at the hospital gift shop. I still have it. My mother lived in a convent school from ages 5-10 and she collected things she liked. There were knick-knacks on every surface of the house. Nothing special. Just things she liked. I didn't realize I collected open salts until I was going to post them on the FB page and found that I have over 40! They were in various china cabinets so they weren't all together. My home is more like a Victorian museum. Lots of interesting antiques and 'stuff.' . I'm not a fan of unlived in looking houses. They have no soul.

 

Our 1850 house was built by my husband's ancestor. There are probably five or six bottle dumps out back. When he was a youngster in the 50s his father raised sheep and there weren't any trees back there. Now it's all grown up. I had started digging for bottles neatly. One time we were away for a couple of weeks and his brother and a friend came and dug all over the wood and just chucked the broken glass all over. It's deadly. My son's dog cut his foot badly so we stay out of our own woods. I"m still angr

 

Oops. I just realized I have 23 fancy antique boxes. Guess I could call that a collection too

 

This is an evil post! I had no idea I was a 'collector' until I thought about it. I have open salts. I have boxes. Now I realize I have a collection of antique canes and walking sticks. OMG.

 

I have collected things since early childhood. I think the first collection was keys. My gran had hoards of things stored in jars and old boxes in her house and she used to let me sort through them. This is where the collection started. It then built through childhood and snow balled to around several hundred. It was an obsession until I was around 15 and then one day I just threw them all in the bin ceremoniously. I still regret this as there were a lot if small, probably antique keys in the collection from cabinets, clocks and all sorts. I did however keep a set of five large keys on a key ring which look like they should fit a church or chateau perhaps. Along the way I have also collected coins and stamps. I think maybe it's bourne from an obsession with things that come in sets that you can categorise and index. Put in order. An outlet for underlying OCD perhaps.

About 20 years ago I decided to start collecting silver snuff boxes and gave up after buying one, on the grounds of expense. Nowadays I have a few mini collections on the go. I have a cloisonne shelf and some oriental items on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. I have to tell myself off for daring to consider starting any other collections though.

 

In the late 50's I was rummaging around out in the fields of my Aunt & Uncle's California farm looking for arrowheads when I found a 6 inch brass and steel Arabic-style knife ! That find just hooked-me and I became an amateur archaeologist,bottle digger,etc. It just evolved from picking-up arrowheads to Fleas,Estates,Malls,etc.
PS-The 'Arabic' knife was probably a novelty piece from a 1920's Johnson & Smith Catalog.

 

My dad was a collector, and he instilled that passion in me. He loves militaria and had an impressive collection.
He got me started collecting stamps, coins, arrowheads, mineral specimens, seashells, etc. I still like coins, among various other things. But my absolute love is jewelry.
One of my childhood friends collected international dolls. How I coveted them! That started my addiction for Japanese dolls.

My first question as a kid when I made a new friend was "What do you collect? What are your hobbies?"
To this day, I still ask people that question.
I absolutely cannot understand how people can live without collections or hobbies!

 

Well said!