Good Morning.
I am always interested in what people collect besides the junk they throw in their closets, basements, and attics. I refer to the items that are hunted down in antique stores, at estate sales, through dealers, and on ebay and deliberately displayed in the living areas of the home. People fill albums with stamps and baseball cards. They line their curio cabinets with old perfume bottles, music boxes, or rag dolls and show off their vintage telephones, cameras, and radios. They cover a wall with college pennants or English plates. They hang travel posters, silver spoons, and menus from around the world. They stuff jars with matchbooks, shells, ticket stubs, and campaign buttons. They collect farm life things - watering cans, wooden buckets, and milk jugs. The more brazen among us decline to actually purchase what they want and make off with hotel towels and road and retail signage. These individuals tend to be between the ages of 15 and 25 and are not true collectors.
Some people build garages to house various forms of transportation, including tractors or cars from a specific decade. Those in the chillier parts of the country may favor old sleds or even horse-drawn sleighs. The deal here is to keep the vehicles in working order and drive them in parades. These are the folks who like to use their collections to participate in an event
rather than have them remain stationary. Other participatory items include marionettes, walking sticks, period costumes, and beer steins. The history buffs often have a room specifically dedicated to a certain era, and here we find war memorabilia like documents, uniforms, photographs, and miniature figures arranged in battle formation.
When I have my annual blood work done, I'm in a lab decorated from top to bottom with every conceivable kind of Disney character and overseen by a phlebotomist who plans to work at Disneyworld after she retires. I once stayed at a bed and breakfast in Ohio where the owner got out his old recordings of Caruso and played them on a hand-cranked record player. A former boss scoured the countryside for porcelain teapots and displayed them on shelves around his living room. The wine collector will spend a great deal more to have a temperature-controlled cellar and the bottled grape itself.
Then there are the folks who have seasonal dinnerwear, every form of Santa and snowman, crystal tree ornaments, old cookie cutters, villages laid out on ping pong tables, nativity sets, and caroling figures decked out in their Dickens finery. The Christmas types wear red and green for a solid month but not necessarily sweaters with reindeer or earrings that blink on and off. Here's the deal about them and about collectors in general: they celebrate stuff - the holidays, the 1950s, or the family farm. They do the unique and the colorful, and they're probably not as grumpy as other people. I'd rather have my tea in a room stacked with English plates and three or four Corgis running around or a glass of wine I've never heard of after having my blood drawn by a woman wearing large black ears.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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