I got the idea to write about collecting things from It’s Nice That's second issue. They had a feature about George Hardie who collects rulers which I thought was pretty awesome. This got me thinking, collecting things is fun, interesting and your friends will always know what to buy you for your birthday… I should start collecting something! But what? Nothing seemed cool enough or interesting enough to really start collecting. So I did what every responsible girl my age would do. I turned to the internet.
It’s a sick world out there. I’m always reminded of that when I try to look something up on the internet. This time I was looking for really cool collections, people collection kind of strange, but still nice things. What I found was disturbing… There are people collecting Navel fluff, genital casts, celebrity hair and murderabilia (works of art made by murderers). I found these crazy collections with the help of Cracked, which should have tipped me off about the insane creepiness behind these things. To find the things I was looking for I turned to a family-friendlier search-engine, namely The Guinnes book of World Records. This is what I found:
The largest collection of bookmarks: Owned by Dutchman Frank Divendal. He owns 103,009 different bookmarks at the time of his world record and even wrote a book about it.
Gary and Nancy Doss own all 550+ Pez dispensers ever made. This one made me a bit nostalgic, because I used to really like Pez dispensers. I miss seeing them in stores and eating those kind of awful candies.
Other world records were 'won' by Queen Snovari, who ownes the largest collection of snow globes and Jean-Guy Laquerre who hoards over 25,104 Santa Claus items.
The outcome of my search for largest collection wasn’t as interesting as I hoped. Everyone likes stamps or crushed pennies, but it just didn’t get me excited. I wanted something like the rulers or something like Jonathan Safran Foer, who collects blank pages of the notebooks of famous authors (if you don't think that's awesome, one of us is wrong).
But all of this was nowhere to be found on the internet. That’s why I decided to make up some cool collections!
How awesome would it be to collect miniature animals! I got the idea from a tweet by Julia Pott (who makes awesome art by the way). She tweeted a link about the Top 10 miniature animals from Time Magazine
I would love to have all these animals, and because they are so tiny, you can easily keep hundreds of them in and around the house!
A collection of Superman comics. I’m sure many people own this, but my lack of internet skills permitted me from finding a cool collector. I know Lotte would like to start this one, but only when Superman has a good jawline.
Collecting books by 1 specific author or just 1 specific title. I would try to get all the different versions in all kinds of languages. Looking for special editions, paperback and hardcover and that first print issue. I got this idea from Jasper Fforde who collects all the different versions of his own books, which looks really nice! If I would write a book, I would do this as well.
Maybe I could collect clothing from a specific area or year? Or maybe all the clothing from one specific designer? This does seem like a rather expensive hobby, so I have my doubts.
Globes, how cool would it be to fill an entire room with them?! I would look so smart!
Pictures of people I don’t know. Especially old ones of polaroids. It’s like peeping into someones life!
It might be a bit creepy, but it just sounds really neat! I could hang them on the walls on an entire room and use it as weird conceptional art about how life is a fleeting moment that someone else can take over. Or just to show you how to shake it like a polaroid picture.
So many options, but what to do? I'm still not sure what I should collect.
If you have any ideas or you collect something yourself, please leave a comment. I would love to hear all about them!
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