What's the strangest thing you collect?

Some people collect stamps, or coins, or kitten figurines, or comic books, or action figures, or minerals, or... There are lots of things that are considered "normal" (if perhaps nerdy) to collect.

I collect sequins and confetti (the metallic plastic sort, not paper or dessert sprinkles)—as many different interesting shapes as I can manage. I tell myself it's for crafts, but I seem to accumulate them far faster than I use them. And while I periodically go through my other craft supplies and give away or toss the ones I don't seem to be using, the little sparkly shapes just remain, filling up an entire drawer in my craft dresser.

What's your weird collection?

1.) Motel directories. You know, those little booklets that they hand out at motels that list every location in the chain. My best get was a 1970 Holiday Inn one. I won it on eBay quite literally at the last second. Also, an on-and-off internet friend just offered me his entire collection, which I'm of course accepting. He also has a huge collection of AAA Tourbooks that he wants to get rid of. He was originally going to recycle them, but I insisted that he find a way to get them from St. Louis to northern Michigan without spending a zillion dollars on postage. The current plan is to have another friend in St. Louis hang onto them for me until I can find a way to get down there myself.

2.) Phone books. I've collected these ever since I found a whole bunch at a library sale when I was 5. Back then, I was only interested in the ones that have road maps in them, but now I see them as historical documents. Want to know where every McDonald's in inner Detroit was in 1992? Whether the nearest Wendy's to me was already in business in 1976? How many Motel 6s were in Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo in 1993? I have the answer!

3.) Hymnals. I've been a church organist since I was 16, so I've picked up a ton of these over the years. It's interesting to see how different denominations and compilers choose to arrange certain hymns. Lutherans make some baffling lyrical changes for some odd reason. Methodists apparently like arrangements full of complex chords and dissonance, and were apparently gutsy enough to put a freaking Duke Ellington song in a hymnal in 1989. Catholics like songs where a songleader sings the verses, and the congregation does the refrain. Episcopalians apparently like creating their own hymns from scratch, or setting existing words to a new unfamiliar melody no one else has ever used. First Baptists apparently love a good mix of the old and the new — it's not unheard of to hear a 19th century chestnut, an Andraé Crouch or Bill and Gloria Gaither song, and something less than 15 years old in the same week. New Apostolics apparently favor the slowest, dullest, most boring hymns ever, and make even more inexplicable lyrical changes. (What the hell do you need to change about "Blessed Assurance" anyway? It's perfect as-is.)

I also have a fairly small, scattered collection of crayons. That's also been a lifelong fascination of mine. Crayola is always the gold standard for me, but it's fun to see how other crayon companies handle certain colors. I always hated the companies that were so cheap that they didn't even put names on the colors. These were often the same companies that couldn't be bothered to put shiny stuff in the silver, gold, and copper crayons, so they'd just be a dull gray, yellow, and brown respectively.

edited 16th Apr '14 7:12:06 PM by Twentington

Cicada Shells, San Pelligrino bottles, Cockatoo feathers and figurines of Lunes/Chikadees for my odd stuff.

Most of my other stuff is pretty bog standard though. Monster High, My Little Pony and Equestria Girls, Pinkie Cooper, Novi Stars, Axis Powers Hetalia merch (Really only Russia). The list goes on.

edited 16th Apr '14 11:05:49 PM by PippingFool

Pieces of shiny metal I find on the street.

Bouncy balls from gumball machines. Yeah, probably not the weirdest thing, but that's what I tend to collect (other than various Nintendo-related merchandise and stuff). I'm just about at 300. The majority of them come from my home state, while about 60 are from a nearby state, while four others that know for sure are from other states. I've gotten at least one from another country as well. (A souvenier bouncy ball from the Cayman Islands.)

• Unlicensed Games: Because they're awesome. I only collect the ROMs right now (because, hey, I can't steal something with no legal protection anyway.), but I plan to start seeking out cartridges when I have a stable source of income. It's mostly Bile Fascination, but it helps that a pleasant few actually turn out to be mainly original, very playable, and actually fun (i.e. Kart Fighter, Fantasy War X, Pokémon Stadium (SNES)).
• Household junk that can potentially be used as weapons: I'm a total "smacking things around" nut. The broken-off head of a spade? A small bit of rusty chain? I practice with that shit, man.
• Unusual sticks: I don't know why, but sometimes I just see a random stick and go "I've gotta' have that."

edited 17th Apr '14 2:05:54 PM by BaffleBlend

I collect scotch and masking tape to make tape balls with. I once got one of a decent size, but someone tossed it out after I was called away. Geez, people have no respect for art.

Old losing lotto/Powerball/Mega Millions tickets. One day I swear I'm going to do a statistical analysis of them but I keep putting it off. I must have like 350 of them under my keyboard.

Wasted hours on this site.

;~~~~~;

the skulls of my victims

The fur that collects on the brush when I brush my cat.

My reasoning for this is I want to learn spinning eventually and it might be fun to see if I can incorporate some cat fur into a yarn. I mean, people have done it with dog fur so why not a wool/kitty blend?

Other more "normal" things I collect are frog plushies, shot glasses, polyhedral dice, and spiders. Spiders can be anything from jewelry to plushies to Halloween decorations. (Actually some people might think the spider stuff is strange too.)

That's a tough question, because nothing I collect is really too out-of-the-ordinary. Nintendo gear and coins are the things I collect, along with college invitations we get in the mail...

Let's go with that. College advertisements that we get in the mail.

...I'll presume for the sake of everyone's sanity you mean in a fictional setting.

I don't collect much. Not counting trading cards, which isn't strange, I actually try to collect odd game materials. Not many collect stuff from Quest 64, and there's little to get. I've been able to get the Game Guide, all 3 American games in the series, and its own special memory card(one of the only two that released for the N64). I also collect unique N64 controllers. I have an Arcade Stick, more than one Superpad(one is similar to the Game Cube), a regular Superpad, and even a see-through controller. The first two controllers are not common or even really sought after because they're not high-quality in general.

edited 18th Apr '14 5:46:39 AM by Irene

I also have a decent sized collection of old shopping mall maps from a friend. Those are a hard thing to collect, by the way.

It totally works. My grandmother used to have a sweater made from her cats' shed hair. They were white Persians.

Oh, awesome! I'll definitely keep collecting the fur then.

Pens. I have one that's a foot long, and another that's half an inch long. I'm trying to get a two meter long pencil from Great Big Stuff, but it's pricey.

Marbles too.

For a while I tried collecting oddball aquatic organisms like macrocellular algae, amoebic slime mold, cyanobacteria, and chemotrophic bacteria. Right now I only have cyanobacteria though.

Scented candles. I'm particularly fond of Yankee Candles.

Dice. Dice, dice dice. What do you expect, I'm a gamer.

Swords!

Hi there, fellow dice collector!

Well hello! What's the weirdest die you own?

I collect memories. I didn't mean to, but it just kinda happened one day. I am not sure where they come from, and not all of them are nice, but what can you do? It's tough to lose a bad memory.

I tend to lose the good ones on accident, but they always show up again, usually right before I go to bed.

Oh. I also collect black widow spiders. They are like the exact opposite of memories though. Little bastards take forever to feed. lol

This sounds like a really cool thing to collect! The sort of collection I’d want to look through.

I collect old editions of the Guinness Book of [World] Records. I believe I have all the US-released hardcover editions from 1964-1986. I have one UK edition, but I forget what year it’s from (some time in the 70s).