We often take Kevin to a resale shop to collect beanie babies. He picks out one or two for a dollar each. He is more interested in the idea of collecting them than playing them although he is nuts about animals. The other day on paying for them, I asked the girl to cut off the tags so he could play with them in the park and she was shocked.
"I've never played with any of mine," she told me. "They are more valuable with the tags on, you know. "
Each one of hers was apparently put into a baggie on purchase.
"But now they're selling them for a dollar," I said, without thinking.
"I wish I'd played with them," she told me.
Thinking back on it, my kids had similar collections they didn't touch. My son, baseball cards; my daughter a few expensive dolls. Neither collection is worth much today either. I especially regret the dolls because I think she would have played with them. By the time my son encased baseball cards, he was done with playing with them.
The only thing I ever collected was comic books and they went the way things go when your mother is an eager housekeeper in a small house.
Did you collect things? What? Did you play with them or encase them in plastic?
32 comments:
Only comic books did I save and still have a relative decent collection. Toys of any kind were, ah, beaten to a pulp over time.
My brother and I collected Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars and played with them like it was going to be outlawed tomorrow. My mother eventually gave them away when we outgrew them, and no one is upset, least of all the kids whose parents might not have been able to afford new ones and got to play with ours.
So that's where the name came from.
Yes, my son's matchbox and hot wheels cars disappeared too.
I did collect baseball cards and yes, I did play with them. Of course, we were young in an era before they sold them in sets in plastic covers for "appreciation."
I read comic books but didn't collect them.
Jeff M.
I collected some comics, although I didn't take that good a care of them. Quite a few were stolen at one point, including some worth good money now.
I was a huge comic book collector. Then, just like the cliche, I went to Summer Camp and came home to find all the comics gone. My Mom had "cleaned up" in my absence. I then turned to collecting paperbacks...30,000 of them now reside at SUNY at Buffalo. The rest fill my basement.
I've always used/read/played with the things I collect. Even now, I always read my vintage paperbacks, even though they go in plastic bags. I have enough vinly, cds, vhs and dvds that you could call them a "collection," but again I always watched or listened to them. More fun that way!
Various things. Cards, comics, records. Everything was roughed up pretty bad.
I don't collect much of anything these days beyond repair bills for my kid's brokedown old beater.
My father's near-complete run of Classic Comics have been read by my family since before I was born. They were moved to my brother's house about 8 years ago when my nieces began to read. Eventually they will get back to my place when my kids get a little older.
My father bemoans that they all are falling apart and I tell him: "Dad, they were supposed to be thrown out 50 years ago. You've got grandkids who read Dickens Dumas."
Maybe the most important dimes he ever spent.
I still have some of the comics my kids collected. But they are in pretty read shape. And one box mistakenly went to the basement in our old house and tells the tale.
I tried my hand at collecting coins and stamps but never got into it. I have a few collectible books but I gave up on that, too. Now I mostly buy used copies 'cause 1) I can afford to get more, and 2) the books I want are usually out of print anyway.
My grandfather had a huge stamp collection and tried unsuccessfully to get us interested in it. You don't hear as much about those collections today.
I had a few comics, but I generally wore everything out I played with. Once I found a buried (and slightly fossilized) He-Man toy in the back yard. It must've been there for years.
Like David, Charles, etc, I've always been a comic book reader, but I never considered myself a collector. In fact, if I buy a comic that's already "bagged and boarded", the first thing I do is throw away the bag and board. It's kinda pointless, I think, to buy anything for no reason other than hoping its value increases.
Aside from books and magazines (must be read!) and music and video (must be taken in/enjoyed!), coins are the major collection I've had (fiddled with stamps a little, and the oddest collection isn't too odd, but is film ticket stubs). I gave my collection to my father, who was and is more serious about it as well as more settled in domicile.
As a kid, I collected coins and stamps. Nothing really methodical--I'd just check my coins when I got change and keep anything that seemed particularly interesting--although I did put my stamps into an album. As an adult, I tend to collect decorative things (cobalt blue glass, teapots, fleurs-de-lis ornaments) until I get tired of them and then move on to something else. I never buy anything that has much monetary value (can't afford to), but I like color & design. As for my kids, they have had all sorts of collections (stuffed animals, angel figurines, buttons, coins, etc.), but they chose what they wanted to collect and only what they could afford. I never placed any restrictions on what they could play with.
One of my daughters who is almost 13 is a coin collector. At a recent coin show, a dealer gave her several very old coins, saying that it was so nice to see a young person interested in collecting. Sadly, collecting and looking for the odd, obscure, and rare items, may be another of those activities that are fading because of ebay and other on-line sites: Almost everything is so easy to find now.
Have never really hung onto anything - not counting my spouse. Once even put a briefcase full of my old journals in a friend's garage. Never saw them again. Don't think I'll ever miss them... Patti, do you really read all these?
Gosh, you reminded me Deb, I collect those things too: Frankoma pottery, water pitchers Stenglware. I am more of a collector now.
Yeah, I do, Ron. And that's why my writing proceeds in dribs and drabs.
But I do get ideas for stories.
I guess more than anything, I collect stories and people.
Can't believe I'm the first to write this, but I collected all things Star Wars and KISS back in the day. The KISS stuff went away once I "got out" of KISS...but I wish I had that stuff now since I'm again loving the band.
Star Wars Stuff: action figures, any magazine that had any story about that movie. I still have all my action figures and, indeed, my son plays with them now. My wife, upon seeing how much some of them are worth, chastised me for letting my boy play with them. I told her that the monetary value wore off years ago. But the Velveteen Rabbit value is priceless!
I still read comics, and add the occasional issue to my collection, but have literally only sold one for money. I'm more partial to e-comics nowadays, but I still love paging through my old ones.
We have some Star Wars stuff-cups, cards, books. We also have some Wizards of Oz stuff.
A late friend had a huge collection of Beatles memorabilia. I wonder if her husband sold it after her death.
Jeff M.
I imagine that would retain its value. I hope she didn't stick it out with the trash.
I suppose I am a collector, but definitely not of the kind who puts anything in a plastic bag. Nor the type who cries or rages when her children smash one of her blue glass things by accident. I just like rows of similar objects on the shelves, I suppose.
I'm more of an accumulator than collector. In my twenties I had comic books. I sold them during a bout of unemployment. Right after that their value doubled every year. I started a paperback collection, which I still have, but it never amounted to much. For about 23 years I've been collecting toy soldiers. I have about 10,000 figures and maybe 30 Marx playsets.
Wow. That is quite a collection. From various wars or do you concentrate on one?
I love that you said you collect stories and people, Patti.
I used to say I collect my scattered thoughts and scars from innumerable botched attempts at being athletic. But I'm often called a flippant person who says "inappropriate" things far too often. So I stopped.
Aside from books (I read them all - even the "valuable" books. Some people would think it's a mortal sin to ever let human fingers touch the pages. Not me.) At one time I collected wooden animals when I was a kid and it lasted all of two years. I only have two left which went with me (packed ever so carefully) from home to home since I was ten years old. Sentimental? Not me. Have no idea what happened to the rest of them. I have hardly any mementos or belongings from my childhood. Long involved story about what happened to us when my parents sold the house we grew up in. Grr...
Collecting? Nope. Accumulating? Yep. In my mind a "collection" is a specific set of things acquired with the goal of having all of those items at some future point. I recognize, however, that is not what most people mean when they use the term. Bob Napier does collect, those toy soldiers, not just accumulate them, no matter what he says.
Me? I have a lot of some things now, but first the other question. I never had a comic book or toy that wasn't played with, and by play I mean, for the comics, read, reread and carried about. For toys, they were played with indoors and out, on lawn, in sandboxes and dirt, carried about in pockets, traded, banged up. I had marbles as a kid, but I played marbles and sometimes won new ones and sometimes lost favorites. Never had what I'd call a collection, and all of them are long gone, along with the toys and comics.
There were some comics my older brother had that I'd also read that got thrown out when we were both "too old for that", but they wouldn't have been worth much as collectables and I can't remember them now.
As an adult, I bought comics at one time, and have some of them. I bought busts of comic characters, considered highly collectable, then sold most of them them for cheap when I didn't have room. I have some books but I don't consider anything I have to be more than something to read. I do have a few paperbacks in plastic bags, because they came to me that way and I never bothered to take them off.
There is one thing might say I collect, though not by my own definition above, since it would be impossible to have all of them, but I got rid of many of them years ago so now it's just a few in a display case, HO scale model locomotives.
Phil collect carnival chalkware-horrible stuff that they gave away as prizes and people painted them themselves. He also collects evocative postcards of artworks or place we've been, pens that have the insignia of a place in a sort of bubble, presidential buttons and plates. He is the real collector.
Remember: Once you have three of anything, you have a collection.
Patti: My figures cover cave men to space men, but my areas of greatest interest are the Old West, The Alamo, and the French Foreign Legion.
I had no idea they made cave men. I guess the most popular are the Civil War and the two World Wars.
After giving the question some thought, I decided that other than books, I really haven't collected anything. That's despite looking around my office and seeing a glass cabinet full of somewhat unusual sports stuff (anyone want to buy a Chicago White Sox paper megaphone) and just having moved a showcase full of pins while vacuumimg. And I can't forget my mother's large collection of Toby Jugs that I now have which fills a corner cabinet in my living room. In all seriousness, magazines would be the one thing that I have collected almost forever. I can't argue with that when my basement has a 50-year collection of Playboy, very old copies of Sport, Sports Illustrated. The Sporting News, the Hockey News and other sports magzines, and Downbeat and other music magazines. Most of my old Esquires from the 1960s and
'70s were hauled to our cottage and I think I may have some copies of the Los Angeles Free Press, the Berkley Barb, the San Francisco Oracle and the Village Voice out there.
Post a Comment