Hobby Thread - Sept 7, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the horde in this little corner of the interweb. A spin of the Ace of Spades wheel of hobbies has come up with a theme of collecting for this week.

What do you collect? Is it wierd or unusual? How did you get started collecting your items of choice? Do you collect thinking that your treasures will increase in value or are economics irrelevant? Do you display your collection or pieces from your collection or are you content with owning the items? If you display, how do you display? Have you build custom shelving or displays? Does part of your collection reside in boxes, mostly unseen by human eyes? Do you track what you collect? Have you found a marvelous treasure only to find out later you already had one and forgot about it?

Do you buy in-person, on-line or both? Do you haunt auctions, garage sales, estate sales, etc.? Do you ever sell or trade or do you only acquire? Do you have a tradition of picking up a souvenir from every place you travel? Have you made plans for what will happen with your collectibles after you have breathed your last? Do you share your collection with others or is your collection a solo endeavor? Do you collect toys or legos? Do you collect decorations for a particular holiday? What collections have you seen assembled by others that were memorable, inspired respect, or were head-shakingly puzzling? What did you collect as a child? Do you still have a stash somewhere of a childhood collection? Did it stick with you or did the idea pass as you moved on to other things? Do you collect things that nobody else would value or care about?

TRex is detailed for duty elsewhere at an undisclosed location, so looking for horde help to make this work and honor hobby thread etiquette. Ben Had is authorized to maintain order and make entries on permanent records as needed. We're here to talk about collections and collectors. We are looking for passion projects of individuals rather than museums that have accumulated holdings over decades. Collections don't need to be rare or valuable - just important to the collector. We are looking for purposeful collecting - as opposed to hoarding or accumulating stuff. Maybe collections of the horde can become the themes of future hobby threads. Please keep the collections of discussion tasteful - no body parts or human souls. (Sorry Zod.)

While firearms and ammo might qualify as collectibles, let's leave gubs to the Sunday evening thread and find other interests for this thread. As usual, keep this thread limited to hobbies. Politics and current events can wait for other threads. Play nice. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls. Pants not required.

Whenever I show my collection off to someone.

36 Unusual collections - monolopoly games, plastic ducks, air sickness bags, golf balls, pez dispensers, traffic cones, garden gnomes, Coca Cola cans, dinosaur poop, milk bottles, bricks, toasters, cookie jars, pizza boxes, and more.

More random collections of random things:
A Growing Antique Garden Tool Collection
Dwight Cleveland's Movie Poster Collection Stars as Largest in The World
Introduction to License Plate Collecting - from the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association
Inside the world’s biggest record collection: An interview with Zero Freitas
Rancho Obi-Wan houses the world’s largest Star Wars memorabilia collection.
The man with most baseball cards on Earth
The Beginner’s Guide to Antique Spoons

Example of a random private collection: scissors. Photo courtesy of Jim Golden:

With this particular project, what was your inspiration to shoot it?
My friend Rob has a scissor collection, I knew I wanted to make a survey of the most interesting pieces, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. He gave me his favorite 700 and said good luck. After a week of pulling my hair out it dawned on me to use the classic top-down apparel format to translate the idea. Boom, project kicked off.

If you like that photo, Jim shot photos of other random collections as well.

The largest collection of Legos in the world per the Guinness Book of World Records:

John Deere toy collector:

Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has an amazing private collection of space artifacts:

One of the biggest private Matchbox collections in the world - part 1 of 4 parts:

What you need to know about storing stamp collections:

Spiral wine cellars for wine collections? Guess so!

How to organize your wine cellar

Mastering Wine Cellar Organization: Tips and Strategies

Some consider William Buell Sprague the father of collecting in America. That may be an overstatement, but there is no question that he diligently assembled a massive collection of early American autographs. We was a well-known Presbyterian pastor but history likely will remember him for being the first to assemble a full set of autographs by each of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence (the first of three) and a full set of autographs by each of Washington’s generals. He built a massive collection.

Nana Baubles:

Jay Leno does not typically open his garage for tours, but this walk around with Tim Burton gives brief sense of what is inside Jays Big Dog Garage. Some of my favorites are in the room with cars powered by airplane engines (minutes five through eight). There is a lot more there and Jay knows a LOT about the engineering, design and history of his cars and bikes. He has never sold a thing.

The largest private collection of tubas - in the world:

Seven Keys Lodge in Estes, Colorado features a collection of keys. The book - Seven Keys to Baldpate - was written in 1913 and inspired the name of the inn which was first the Baldpate Inn before becoming Seven Keys Lodge. The hotel had a tradition to give a single metal key as a memento of their stay to each person, saying that it was the One and only key to Baldpate. During World War I, the price of metal increased which caused a reconsideration of the tradition. Lore has it that Clarence Darrow suggested that the hotel should see if guests would be willing to leave a key instead. He left the first key and now thousands of keys hang from the ceiling.

Keys of distinction have found their way. Notable keys are purportedly from Westminster Abbey, Mozarts wine cellar, Frankensteins Castle, Adolf Hitlers bunker, the Pentagon, a White House bathroom, keys to robbed banks, and the dressing rooms of Hollywood actors.

What will happen to all the stuff in the shop of Adam Savage (of Mythbuster fame) after he dies?

Did you miss the hobby thread last week with a model building theme? The horde shared some great stories. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

If collecting is not your thing and you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, hijack the thread for your hobbying as you see fit. We will feature a different hobby next time around. Send thoughts or suggestions to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Ace of Spades medical coverage does not cover hoarding.

posted by Open Blogger at 05:30 PM

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