Was it rows of plastic horses on your shelves as a little girl? Dolls? Star Wars figures? Artwork as an adult? Shoes? Bags? Christmas ornaments? Books?
I’d love to hear about your collections — then and now!
3 for Thursday: 3 Collections You’ve Kept in Your Lifetime
Hmmmmmm…
Ok here goes:
1-old coins~I love old coins, though I’m by no means an expert. I love thinking about what they’ve been through and about the stories of the hands that they’ve passed through. I keep them in a little plastic jar all taped up in a drawer. I will often take them out to look at them and, I guess, just winder about them. My wife doesn’t even know I do this…well, I guess she does now.
2-Old magazines (no not Playboys); again I like to leaf through them and get a glimpse into what life was like in the era that the magazines came out.
3-Tthat’s all I really “collect” or save but one more would be a wish list of guitars. I think they are beautiful works of art. Oh and I include ukuleles in that mix!!!
I have collected the entire short run of George Magazine, published by JFK Jr. The magazine served up politics in a fresh way, focusing more on personalities. Loved the covers. And his name lent him entre to people and places that might have been harder, if not possible for others to access.
Gosh, do books count? I’ve got so many! (Thank goodness for my Kindle.) well, over the years I have been accumulation what might considered collections (not sNooks, but actual phisical books you can hold in your hands) that I would never want to part with From authors David McCullough and Joseph Ellis to Ron Chernow, John Meacham and Doris Goodwin, I have been fascinated by great
books about our founding fathers and presidents. Adams, Hamilton, Lincoln, Franklin, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Clinton. These leaders were all truly exceptional thinkers and doers.
And since college I have picked up fiction, history, poetry, oral history, and literary studies by black and white writers and about African American culture and race relations in the US that, collectively, has been a priceless education. Rich art, fierce scolarship and depth of humanity. Deep questions asked and many answered. I have so many notes in the margins of these books, I have to chuckle. Lawrence Levine, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., David Roediger, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, Nathan McCall, Nikki Giovanni, Andrew Young, Howell Raines…
Giovanni, Walter Mosley, and many more.
Ah, I see a few typos. Not smart to do a long reply from my iPhone! Sorry Laurie!
I have had many different phases of things I collect through my life – stamps, “ziggy” coffee cups, pins/buttons, all of which are in plastic boxes in the attic. The things that have always been a constant…
1 – Coins – I think I started with the bicentennial quarters and silver dollars as a kid and I still collect silver coins, old pennies, you name it. My husband actually had done the same so we have quite a lot and it is fun to think about how long they have been around and who had them, etc.
2 – Purses! – I just can’t get enough of them! I know it is a sickness and I have cut back a little, but I have to say it is mostly because my purse tub (yes I bought a huge plastic tub to store them in) is full.
3 – Milk glass and old bottles – I have some old pieces of milk glass (vases, candy dish…) from grandparents, etc. When I got married, I kinda inherited my husbands bottle collection and joined the bandwagon. He started digging them up from the woods when he was a kid and it just amazes me that something can be buried in the 1800’s and early 1900’s and come out all in one piece. When we first got married he took me to his old PA hometown and out for bottle hunting (sounds funny, right?), I was kinda bored until I started digging with a stick and found one myself. No cracks, just like new! Since then I have seen bottles, jars, cups, toys, you name it come out of old coalminers outhouses and garbage jumps. That sounds gross, but it really isn’t. The grounds are all just sand and dirt now. One time we found a tiny perfume bottle and it still had perfume in it! It must been dropped down the hole by accident! My mother in law always finds me great pieces of milk glass too! I like the history of it all!
My gosh, I sound like a hoarder! I am not, I swear – in fact, I hate clutter! Only some of the stuff is displayed, my husbands stuff is in the garage, haha!!
Oh my gosh, I loved hearing about your collections! C — I do sort of know of your coins, but you’ve probably got a lot of cool stuff that we don’t even realize. We should frame some!
Barbara — The entire collection of George? Very cool! And yeah, I’ll bet you have lots and lots and lots of books all over. … 🙂 (P.S. No worries about typos here — this is a safe zone!)
Debi — The bottle collection sounds very cool! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Do people go “bottle hunting” all in the same places? And the perfume bottle with perfume — wow, there must be a story attached to that, huh?
Yeah Laurie, the bottle are cool! All different colors, shapes, some with labels, etc. I don’t ever hear of people bottle digging around here, but I know several of Johns friends and/or people from his hometown do collect them. He is from an old coal mining town and there are acres and acres of woods that we go riding through (on quads). There are old railroad beds, closed up mines, foundations….you just got to have an idea where to search. The last couple of years there has been so much building, etc that we really haven’t found much. Alot of people collect them and put them on ebay – some are worth quite a bit of money!
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