When i was a kid i collected Car magazines like Street Machine,and Holden Torana magazines, i was a big Torana
fan and i still am, i also collected matchbox cars and teenage
mutant ninja turtle paraphenalia. Now as an adult i collect and
fill my shed up with car parts ranging from HQ-HZ Holdens, i can't
help myself i have bumpers,door handles,GTS rims, Indicator lenses,
right down to simple holden factory screws alot of new old stock,
i do own a HJ Monaro but i still collect heaps of stuff i don't need
it gets very addictive my wife goes bananas and i just say i might need
that one day lol..
I used to collect wine labels! Grew up in Adelaide, parents would routinely go out to wineries to taste & buy wines. Not much for a kid to do back then so, started asking for wine labels. Had a huge collection; no idea where they are now, possibly at Mums. Dontreally collect much these days though wife and junior are avid stamp collectors.
Books. Starting as a child by reading my grandfather's collection. G. A. Henty, Zane Grey, ...
Collecting started as a teen with SF. Then computer science, maths, statistics and geology. It grew to include Fantasy. More recently astronomy and photography.
My study has a 5m long bookshelf, 2.1m high, 0.4m deep almost full of books stacked three rows deep. Then there are the coffee table books that are too big to fit.
At 7 I stated to collect and build plastic models of spacecaft and aircraft. I am still collecting, but only simetimes building aircaft sigificant to Austalia from the Airforce, Navy, Army and Civil. I now have more than 300 models and currently only 15 to collect to complete the collection.
When I was young I collected the usual things of the era WW2 era. Stamps was normal but the other more common was the cards that came in breakfast packs etc.
At the moment I am seriously collecting Meccano Manuals for scanning. I now have one of the best collections in the world of scanned manuals dating from 1906 up to the Present, some 370 manuals, involving about 40000 scans. As many of the old manuals are damaged I also process the scans to remove blemishes, tears and missing pieces so that I have as clean scans as possible while keeping the original form.
To see some of these scans a friend in NZ has most of them displayed on his web site www.nzmeccano.com
I have copied all this work onto three DVD's which are normally sold for $60 a set at the meccano exhibitions but I usually give them away to genuine requests. I have even seen some of my old out of date and incomplete discs sold on ebay for more than $60.
The picture is of one of the replicas I made for a friend to put with his restored 1910 # 5 set. Oh yes I do collect Meccano as well.
Small Arms ammunition. It started with a couple of .22 bullet shells I found on the ground on the farm. I used to comb the area with a stick trailing behind me so I could see where I had covered. I found some with different head stamps on the base and started to catalog them. Then I started finding .22 shorts, .22 magnums, .22 bird/rat shot, and the silver stingers.
When I collected lots of the same ones I traded them at school for other bullets. My teacher was a keen shooter so I would give him some coins and he would bring me different bullets one at a time. I would polish them all up with Brasso, pull the projectiles out and empty out the gunpowder. I spent hours polishing and developed metal stains on my fingers. My hands got very strong as a result and I remember doing a squeeze test in class at school with a set of bathroom scales and was the second strongest in the class. I was so stoked.
I made a long display box, lined with polystyrene and used a Stanley knife to cut out the shapes of the bullets, mount them and label them with all their info.
Once, I found a WWI artillery shell which became the centerpiece pride and joy of the collection!
I had all the shotgun shells in their shot variations, colors, sizes, calibers. I had .50 cal military rounds, Japanese WWII .303 rounds, exotic hand-crimped Zulu war cartridges, elephant gun rounds, hollow points, dum-dums, full metal jackets, armor piercing, tracer, you name it.
My walls were covered in posters from gun magazines and displays from gun shop brochures.
I even found a rifle in the bush once, all rusted and termite eaten. I oiled it up, smacked the mechanism around with a hammer until it started moving, got the firing pin moving again and cleaned it up. I test fired it and got it working with live ammunition. Mum and dad must have been watching with a mixture of trepidation, and pride, but eventually made me turn it in to the local police. I framed the receipt in the lid of my display box.
One day my mum crested the hill only to see me throw and detonate a home made explosive and took the whole collection off me and ditched it.
That was the end of that hobby.
Last edited by bloodhound31; 04-12-2009 at 09:31 AM.
I collected everything and anything - swap cards, stamps, Elvis pictures (yes, I am a fan), cloth badges, rocks and a small amount of coins, I still have them all!! I also used to collect beer mats and now I collect Christmas decorations when I travel overseas
As a kid I collected, and continue to collect, Boomerangs.
It started when I was about 10 and was given one made by the famous Bill Onus (father of the artist Lin Onus). My dad ran a hardware store and sold Bill's boomerangs so I guess that's how I came by it. Dad also tells a great story about throwing them with Bill on the Rosebud beach in winter and having to wade out to retreive his!
I still collect them and have almost 200 now. I collect all sorts - the historic (though less of these now as I have some issues about these being for sale and not repatriated), the tourist trade ones, plastic ones, bakelite ones - anything really. I even bought a broken one recently. I will generally always buy one so if you ever come across them let me know and I'll pay you back for it.
The best throw and catch boomerangs come from a company in Queensland set up by Lauren Hawes who was as Los Alamos developing the atomic bomb when he became disillusioned and moved to Australia to make boomerangs. He ran the business for many years before his dauther took over and re-named it Stones Throw. Recently she sold the business but it is still going strong and great boomerangs can be had for about $10.
My collection has fighting boomerangs, musical boomerangs, those used as awards in World War II bomber squadrons, plastic ones bought in K-Mart, tiny little ones about 10cms long, and the list goes on. I hang many of them from my ceiling in various postures.
I tried to throw them all away once but they just came back!!!!
Anyway, great Chrissie idea Mike.
Have a great Christmas everyone and here's to a safe, happy and bushfire free summer.
When I was a kid I used to collect anything on Rick Springfield! For the uninitiated, he was quite well known for his songs, Jessie's Girl, Love somebody and he acted in the original Battlestar Galactica series (as one of Adama's sons) with Lorne Greene and Richard Hatch, albeit his character was blown out of the sky by the damn cylons!! (I was certainly NOT HAPPY JAN about that!)I could dazzle you all with more Rick trivia but I think that will suffice. I was totally enamoured by Rick Springfield and as such I would collect magazine articles, posters (which completely plastered my bedroom wall). I will let you all into a wee secret, I still have every album (yes album, not CD) that he ever recorded, and ok....still some piccies as well. Please don't tell my friends! LOL.
Fossils, rocks, fossils, and more fossils. Mostly because I was intensely fascinated with them and Only because they were free for the taking,... out of the creek in the woods out back of my house. I still can't get enough of them and often find myself scanning down everywhere I walk outside just perchance there might be an ancient gem laying at my feet.
I still have most of them in boxes at my parents house, I should sift through them one day and possibly see what they are worth. Today I collect large arrays of ordinary to stranges electronic components which might come in handy someday. I also collect anything Studio Ghibli and Doctor Who. Other than that, I don't really get the time to collect anything outside my normal hobbies and work .
Bottle Lids including Pepsi, Coke and Juice etc., which I used to place on the train tracks to flatten them. It used to be my little treasure. I would make Tambourins using Plates and Plastic covers.
And a Jar full of Coins, I used to love the Italian Lira’s which really jingled, and some coins which had halls in the middle; they looked funny.
As a kid I collected, and continue to collect, Boomerangs.
...
My collection has fighting boomerangs, musical boomerangs, those used as awards in World War II bomber squadrons, plastic ones bought in K-Mart, tiny little ones about 10cms long, and the list goes on. I hang many of them from my ceiling in various postures.
Niko
Being quite ignorant about boomerangs, I'd love to hear more about those boomerangs, Niko! Like, how does a fighting boomerang differ from a "regular" one? And, what's a musical boomerang and how does it work? Do the tiny ones actually work well?
As a child, I was obsessed with military history. I built scale model ships from plans I scrounged up, but I also hated clutter, so I incorporated explosives for the day I ran out of room in my bedroom. Many ships sunk in blazing glory in the local creek.
Then, when my 11th christmas came along, a 40mm refractor appeared under the tree courtesy of my mother. First night out I saw craters on the moon, gasped with delight and my obsession with ships evaporated in an instant.
Six months later, my first job had resulted in a 200%+ increase in light gathering. A 60mm refractor. First night out, I saw a bright yellow star at 30 dregrees above the horizon. When I focused..., it had rings... and I screamed, cried with delight... and stopped sleeping.
2 years later, I built a 12in F7 newtonian and began to realise how small I was. I also learned how to be at peace during turbulent teenage times. Getting lost amongst amongst the starts on warm Summer nights was a great place to find myself.
In my early 20's I managed to visit the 200inch Hale reflector, met Clyde Tombaugh at the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference and camped 50m from the AAT with my first serious love.
Apeture fever took hold and in my mid 20's I bought one of Coulter Optics' 29 inch F4.5 newtonian mirror sets before they went broke trying to do it consistently. I owned one of the largest privately owned telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere. I taught classes through my community college in central Victoria when comet Halley came past.
Many hundreds of converts...
A little old man turned up one night at 1:00am with his great, geat grand son... climbed slowly up the ladder and looked at Halley's nucleus, (I didn't think he would make it... but he did). When he climbed down again he looked at me and said, "Thankyou son, I've waited along time to see that comet again". I cried with him.
Life got in the way after that. All the scopes went.. uni, job, family... Motor bike smashes left me a wreck in many ways but I never lost the sense of peace that astronomy gave me.
Now I am a teacher and recently rejoined the observing club. I drive a C11 on a G11... and I dont sleep much. My children look in awe at Saturns rings, Jupiters moons, craters on the moon and many other things.
My seven year old son is about to drive a Megrez 90...
Oh... what have I done!!
Mum is gone but the legacy of christmases past lives on
Those cards that came in the tea packets - think it was PG Tips, normally flags of the world, sportsmen etc. Then it was stamps and coins like so many others here, then beer mats (not the towels!), finally (and still) paper knives, kind of useless trying to open emails with those I can tell you...
I think the very first thing I remember collecting as a very young kid was different bird feathers, as we moved around the country alot I had good opportunity to collect all sorts of cool feathers.
Later on I collected football cards, then rock music posters/tshirts etc, girlfriends
Icollected Corgi cars...like Matchbox but a bit classier. Also collected Disney comic books, with lots of characters we don't see nowadays like the Beagle Boys, Uncle Scrooge, Huey Louie & Dewy, Pluto, Goofie.....kids these days wouldn't know what we're talking about...how quickly times change, eh?
At 7 I stated to collect and build plastic models of spacecaft and aircraft. I am still collecting, but only simetimes building aircaft sigificant to Austalia from the Airforce, Navy, Army and Civil. I now have more than 300 models and currently only 15 to collect to complete the collection.
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What I Collected when I was Young !!
