Featured How Long Have You Been Collecting?

I think I've been collecting one thing or another my whole life. Some of my earliest memories as a small child are of roaming Arizona rock collecting with my dad, fool's gold, sand rubies (garnets) etc. Heady stuff for a kid!

I didn't allow myself to spend much money on following my interests in collecting until the internet made it easier to find the unusual things I was interested in so that part of collecting started about 2000.

 

I want see the set!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hi Marie! *smiles* Thank you! I'll post up a picture and tag you on it as soon as I can.

 

Oh my! Where to start.

I was about 7 when my parents bought their first house. On the next street over was an older priest who was a rock hound. He would cut and polish what he found. He threw all of his broken or unacceptable pieces in a pile that the neighborhood kids were allowed to dig through and take 1 or 2 pieces. Not more because we had to leave some for the next kids. We could come back a week later and take another couple. I still have a box somewhere with little broken crosses that I pulled out of his pile. That was the start of the rock collecting.

You know what is interesting, and I bet a lot of you have done it. We collect rocks and shells and put some of them in the garden. Yet when we move, we take those rocks and shells out of the garden and move them with us. My husband thought I was nuts when I had him move my garden rocks. I have found I'm not the only one who does this. Any of you?

I have too many collections to list everything.
I did start going to antique stores with my mother in the 4th or 5th grade. My first purchased collection was demitasse cups and saucers.

 

Hi Pat,
I move certain rocks when I move. I moved broken slates from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn to Plainfield to South Plainfield to Sea Isle City to South Plainfield to Brick They were originally 150 year old roofing slates that became a sidewalk then garden walls then a patio and then garden walls again. They moved from Vermont to Pennsylvania to New York to New Jersey. I have shells from all over the world collected and put into clear glass lamp bases.
greg

 

We won't tell

 

My garden rocks go with me when I move as well. A lot have been collected in my travels through the US (Like Lucy!). Many are unique to the area they came from. Have some that are large enough that I can only move with some difficulty. Rocks are hard to come by here in cornfield country. Get the occasional glacial boulder but we have no ready supply of rock here. The garden centers bring rock in and charge big money for landscape rock.

 

Oh for shame! You stole their chance of their wish coming true! ! !

 

I concur...
And many such things are collected from for charities.

 

Hi,
The only coins in the fountain are in Rome and that is hoping you will return some day. The rest are thrown into wishing wells hoping you will get lucky. The rest are just money makers. So people that throw money into fountains just make money for others. Like Davey!!
greg

 

I want a job as a fountain !!!

 

Hmmmmmm, Really?

At 4 1/2 you were left alone to wander into a hotel courtyard water fountain?

 

The first thing I've collected and is in my possesion is a bronce axe found I was 8 years old near the lake of Neuchâtel when I was fishing, now it's not more possible to hold things from the bronce age, but it was about 50 years ago and it's always on my desktop(since i have one…).

 

now THAT brings back childhood memories. the 500 pesetas coins, the first corrida etc.

 

I always seem to have been collecting and started with the usual coins and stamps as a boy. Became addicted to a weekly American Civil War illustrated comic magazine and card series (odd for an Ausie boy) which probably accounts for my year living in America and more than 20 business trips. This was all before I was 10 years old and in 1964 I bought my first item, a painted traymobile (double tray on wheels you served afternoon tea from) which I restored to its original wood and on which I kept my typewriter in my bedroom, much to the disgust of my patents who saw it as junk! I guess I have never stopped collecting and have gone through many periods including Victorian furniture to match a 1900 house I renovated and art deco furniture which I still have in my current 130-year-old renovated railway workers cottage. Oh, I still have the coins and the stamps and a storage shed of collectibles.

 

As I said in my previous post, I've been fixing and collecting more or less my whole life. It became 'official' in 2005 when I finished highschool.

In 2015, I also started selling antiques (and I do alright with that, I reckon).

Things I collect:

Silverware,
Brassware,
Telescopes, opera glasses, binoculars,
Fountain pens, dip pens,
Writing accessories,
Writing boxes/cases,
Pocketwatches,
Bells,
Whistles,
Pocketknives.
Ivory and Bone,
Razors,
Coins,
Straits-Chinese/Peranakan antiques...
Sewing machines.

...God knows how many other things. I don't think I could list them all.

Things that I fix/restore:

Fountain pens,
Writing boxes and cases,
Inkwells,
Sewing machines,
Telescopes, binoculars,
Dent-removal from metalware (if I can reach it, I can generally remove or reduce a dent).

...and probably most other things besides, if I put my mind to it.

 

I LOVE your grandmother!