What Else Do You Collect?

growing up, I had a small stamp collection (gave away).
On family vacations, I used to get a ball cap from all the places (in a box at Mom's)

But only collect coins now.

I have a classic car (you may guess what it is from my user name, I have written about it on the CFF before), and I have a faceted gemstone collection.

There are about 100 rare facet gem species in my collection, including cut and uncut diamonds, and sapphires of all colours. Brilliant yellow is my favourite for cutting. Quite a few rare ones like dermantoid and tsarovite garnets, which are emerald green, tourmaline, emerald, in fact all of the beryl family. I have andulusite, and alexandrite, which changes colour under different light. Alexandrite, which is a form of chrysoberyl, changes colour from red under incandescent light to green under fluorescent light, and is one of the rarest gemstone species on the planet, coming from one mine only, long since worked out.

A large part of my gemstone collection came from my father's estate, and I have expanded that collection. I have a library of about 30 books in support of the collection. I have cut about a third of the number (about 80) of the faceted gems in the collection myself.

I also have a reasonably large collection of man made faceted gemsrones, all of which I have faceted myself.

When I was a kid a collected baseball cards and beer cans. My bedroom wall was full of empty beer cans! Sadly, I gave my collection away when I moved away as I had no room to store them. Now, I collect coins, but have a box or two of assorted stamps that may get my attention someday...

I collect Israeli stamps - 99.5% complete back to first issue. I stopped my US collection a few years back. I was tired of overly expensive, self-adhesive poster art!. I have collected for my kids: football cards and beanie babies (oh yes, I do own a couple hundred of those little creatures). But my OFEC collection is number one in usage of my expendable income

I have gone through phases of collecting at various points in life. Baseball cards, comic books (and original comic book art & sketches), stamps ( inherited a US collection, also collect Czech stamps), screen printed posters, books (especially Harlan Ellison), and of course coins. It gets a little out of hand, but I really do cycle though them. I was BIG into comic books for a while, then HUGE into baseball cards...most recently coins have held my interest. All of the collections are still here and when I get the urge, I'll pick up something else for a while.

There are a few other things that I think of more as "accumulations" than collections such as DVDs. I have a lot of them, but I don't "collect" them...just buy what I want to see.

Penn State football memorabilia and autographed cards/photos of former PSU players. Use to collect football,baseball, basketball cards, Starting Lineups and McFarlane Sportpicks but just had way to much stuff, decided a few years ago to just focus on Penn State stuff. There is a link to my collection in my profile.


lol, forgot, I used to collect those high bounce supperballs for some reason. If I passed a machine and they had them I'd drop in a quarter. Still have a container full of them around here some where. gave a bunch to my Niece a few years ago.

I used to collect pens. I had a fairly large collection, but of course the value in it all is in the beholder and as I took up coin collecting my pens sorta vanished. I didnt have anything of particular value it was just an oddity thing as I liked the designs, features and whether or not they wrote well.

Thats some very interesting stuff everybody is collecting. And good idea there ikandiggit, I should have thought of that before. It would be great to see pictures as well, if you all can share.