Show off your (non-doll) collections!

Omg that's impressive!! I have no idea about rocks (Damnit Marie, they're minerals!! -got the refference? lol) but I only know they're so beautiful! As soon as I take photos of my (little) bonsai and pre-bonsai collection I'll show them off here!! >w<

 

Let me see if I can find my business cards and take a picture. Not the most exciting, but eh. I started in middle school because it was free (pretty ironic joining this hobby now) and I was hoping it would help my pack rat nature. It didn't, but I do have a pretty impressive number, and my sisters always pass more along to me. I used to keep them in a photo album my older sister gifted me, but they would slip out and then it ran out of space. So in college I finally got a binder with proper business card sleeves. I never seem to have my binder when I need it, so I start stuffing them into random places. I really need to get it reorganized. I think I might have up to 200 now.

 

Other than BJD I collect, I collect ElfQuest comics and stuff, Final Fantasy VII playart (has almost all of them). I also have a nice coin collections that my mom keep giving me every time she comes to visit (she get them for good deal where she lives). And ample of porcliean doll collection from my childhood and Chinese dishes along with Avon red dishes. I have too many collections and I need to downsize.

 

I collect rocks and minterals too! I love your wall display! How clever

 

Ooh - love the minerals collection! Do you have a cross-polars set up to look at them under? If you don't already I recommend it, it opens up a whole surreal new world to look at wrt the thinner samples.

My own collection of not-doll related stuff is predictable and relatively boring, Bowie LPs.

However, I'll try and grab a few photos of the more interesting parts of the collection if anyone's interested. The more recent colour reissues especially look rather visually pleasing, and given the modern lack of QC at record pressing factories tend to be the earliest LPs in the modern runs to go to press ...and therefore the nicest sounding since they get first priority on the stampers before they wear the things out.

 

I collect random bits and pieces to use in artwork/creations. I guess my crafting area is pretty much my collection of odds and ends. I have a massive amount of interests, that I can't really break it down to any particular category.

I guess I just collect Inspiration. LOL

 

I also collect rocks and minerals! Love your collection! So many pretties!

Mine are displayed throughout my room like a museum. I couldn't possibly take a picture of them all, too time consuming getting them together. Dusting is a nightmare, lol. I also collect Japanese Kokeshi dolls. Wood and rocks, they go together. This is a sample of what my room looks like.

Collecting dust by SD Hampton, on Flickr

One of my other passions is cactus and succulents. I have quite a few really weird ones.

Medusa euphorbia by SD Hampton, on Flickr

 

Besides bjds, I also collect a bunch of anime figures. I'll make sure to take a few pictures when I get home.

Both hobbies are expensive so it's always hard deciding whether I want that new figure or a new doll xD

Edit:
I took some quick pictures with my phone right now.

First off is my collection of Nendoroids. I only take a few out of their boxes at a time. There's so many and yet I keep pre-ordering more.


This is the first shelf you see when walking into the room. This is the messy part of my room. Everything that doesn't have a spot gets thrown here.


This is the same shelf but right a little bit higher.


And this is my second shelf on the other side of the room.


I'm hoping to buy a detolf so I can display more figures soon.

 

I have no pictures but I collect rocks too! Not...Rocks that are pretty like yours, but plain, normal rocks.
I also hoard scarves that I always intend to use for doll stuff but then end up never actually using. So I have an entire trunk full of various scarves that I keep adding to

 

@KiyoshiSenshi Ooh, you collect tarot decks too?! High five!! I only have 3 at the moment but I'm constantly shopping for more, ha.

I used to collect rocks as a kid! It was never anything scientific though, just pretty stones that caught my eye. I threw away a bunch of them in the process of cleaning my room after I moved back in, and a bunch were just like..... especially sparkly asphalt chunks. I was a weird kid.

These days, I have a small collection of anime merchandise from favourite shows, haha. I have a couple of things from Saiyuki, and a decent chunk of the available Thunderbolt Fantasy merchandise. (I just got in the DVDs and they're gorgeous but have no english subtitles, help, aaaaaa)

But what I really try to actively collect as opposed to just grab hold of is stuff from my favourite manga ever, which is called Houshin Engi. I first read it in high school and it really made an impact on me. 5 years later, it's still just as important to me as it was then--if not moreso. So, if it exists and is somehow tangentially related to Houshin Engi, I'll own it. Sooner or later. Sooner or later....



So, here's my Shelf! This thread really gave me an excuse to show off, and I took pictures of just about everything I have. It's.... quite a bit, so I compiled them all into an Imgur album to keep things tidy. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure!

I actually... got into bjds because I realised I could shell Houshin Engi characters as bjds. My master plan is to shell my OT3 and take lots of photos of them hanging out and being lovey-dovey. Now you all know my secret.....

 

@KiyoshiSenshi Aw, thank you! You collection reminds me of all the rocks and things my alma mater has in the labs and their little museum. Must be pretty cool, like having a geology exhibit in your house.

Okay, after stuffing in about a year's worth of cards (and realizing that I need more business card sleeves), here is a small sample of my collection.









Places I get the biggest hauls are cons (lots of entrepreneurs) and small shops (small business helping small businesses advertise). And every time I look through I am reminded of all the places I went to get the cards and the many people that gave them to me. They are like tiny postcards. Some of my favorites are the reflective ones, the embossed ones, watercolor looking ones, ones with cute and cool drawings (mostly from artists), and ones with weird shapes. One of my most recent acquisitions has Braille.

And I vastly underestimated my collection, as I always do. My quick and dirty calculation is that I have well over 800 cards. Yowza.

 

@KiyoshiSenshi Waah, thank you so much!! Hearing that really means a lot to me...

I have the classic Rider-Waite, the Homestuck deck (lol), and one called The Black Cat Tarot which is, appropriately, all black cats. The Homestuck deck was actually my first deck and the reason I actually got *into* tarot as opposed to just looking at it from the sidelines. It's still my favourite of the three, the art is just so pretty.....

Which ones do you have? :3

 

Right... So instead of clogging up this thread with several hundred photos here's a link to the relevant album...

Bowie

(The weird super zoomed in images of a couple of the LPs are me trying to get the matrices/dead wax in focus, not sure how well they came out... However the UK first pressings of Bowie's stuff occasionally had weird little messages scratched in alongside the matrix numbers.)

That's not all of it, however it is the bulk of the LPs. The majority of my collection is UK time-of-initial-release pressings, with more than a handful of first pressings in there. My CD group is far more muddled, being a mixture of the ancient but arguably nicest sounding RCA CDs, the old Rykodiscs with their multitude of extras and modern remasters and two disc sets and... Well you get the idea!

The multiple Ziggy Stardust albums are interesting because of the controversy over which copy is actually the first... And the UK sleeves being inferior copies of the US sleeves all share a "crease" in the back top corner! (Though apparently wrt Bowie on vinyl, the UK first pressings overall sound nicer due to a mixture of factors. The UK generally got the master tapes first. And on the occasions when they didn't get them first, the fact that throughout most of the 70s RCA was suffering from the oil crisis and trying to cut costs with the plastic they used. Whereas the UK RCA plants had access to North Sea Oil, so the discs themselves tend to be nicer.)

The coloured vinyl looks best on the turntable, however I made the mistake of putting on my copy of Outside as I did this (the white disc with Bowie gurning in the centre label...) and well, it's a very long album spread across two discs.

 

Glad you found it interesting rather than OTT! Most of the older discs were acquired during the 00s when no one else seemed to want vinyl, for around £5 each. Though a whole bunch were 99p, and there was the odd disc that cost as much as £15 - which at the time seemed absolutely extortionate.

In hindsight that was a bit of a golden age for second hand record acquisition! People were dumping their collections to make space/for CDs, the stores themselves were competitive over who could be cheapest.

The sudden hipster influx has really made the prices ridiculous lately. I actually got one particular cash-in merchant (a very famous second hand store too) rather flustered the other day when I asked him why he was charging £100 each for a couple of Bowie discs. He claimed they were first pressings, they weren't, though they were 70s era. Both said explicitly RCA International on the covers, and had the giveaway green labels. He got quite aggressive at that point and claimed they were actually worth that much now... Um no, the First Pressings themselves from that era of his career aren't worth that much. Ahem, though I probably shouldn't have said that to him even though I did buy something else - sometimes I look back on my own behaviour and wince at how unthinkingly rude it is.

Haha! Mostly I'm relieved that they take up so little space - compared to the dolls they're incredibly compact when stored away.

 

Haha! I admit it works both ways, now new minty pressings are easily available again because of the sudden surge in interest (Hooray!) Most of the recent half of the Bowie collection was either worth stupid money despite the pressings being know to be subpar and therefore impossible to find, or... simply didn't exist on vinyl before the resurgence.

Yeah terribly it wasn't that I wanted the discs in question (proud owner of the first pressings of both albums, both for sane amounts of money) but that I just knew that some fool with more money than sense was probably going to come along and buy them and be happy. That is until they got home and actually looked them up.

 

Hah! Yeah I know that feeling - I probably paid over the odds for the weather-beaten looking US-pressing of Man Who $old the World at the time. Though on balance the price has shot up since then so...

Ooh - I wish you luck on your Godzilla quest! I've been eyeing up Sofubi longingly, but have yet to make the plunge. Like you I've noticed the prices are all over the place, but have very little idea what makes one item worth a small fortune and another worthless so have yet to dip a toe in the waters.

 

Does collecting only other language pokemon cards count? Lol. I got bored of the typical English pokemon cards and decided I would only gather other languages since they are more interesting to look at haha. I'd show a picture but they are all stored away from moving three different times in a year and a half time.

 

I have lots of collections....but clearly I'm not the only one here like that! My biggest collections are probably my dragons, my hero figures, and my bromides/photobooks.

First off my dragon collection (+1 Fenghuang). This is about 2/3 of it, I have a few that are dotted in other places in the house. Basically, if I see a dragon figure at a decent price I pick it up! I love dragons. Also the lightning is so bad in that room
Dragon Collection by Alternate Warning, on Flickr

Next is my "hero" figure collection. Mainly a lot of Green Lantern and Kamen Riders. This is only about 2/3 of them as well, I have a few in my room. Most of these are from conventions or from Tokyo! Again, sorry for the crap photo
Heroes by Alternate Warning, on Flickr

And my biggest collection, my photos. The book is full of bromides which are basically photos on a bromide, or photo paper of actors or entertainers. You can get them at stageplays or from stores in Japan. I've been collecting for a few years and this book is nearly full. There are around 5-6 photos to a page, depending on size. The shelf of books are all photobooks or magazines with, again, actors or entertainers. The photobooks include a lot of kpop stuff.
Bromide Book front by Alternate Warning, on Flickr
Bromide Book by Alternate Warning, on Flickr
Bromides by Alternate Warning, on Flickr
Photobooks by Alternate Warning, on Flickr

 

Some of the things I collect most actively include toy cars and shotglasses aside from BJDs (and only recently have I gotten active in collecting BJDs again after buying 1 in 2008). I also collected a few Pop! Vinyl figures.



Some of my favorite toy cars to collect include police patrol cars.



Shotglasses, the one collection I can try to get others to help contribute to when they travel.



Showing bookshelves because my cars and figures are on the shelves. My wife @ZucciniVeggie collects books if that counts and of course there's movies and shows between us as well as manga and comics.









Ahem, and these next shelves are where we keep most of our doll furniture (barring the studio apartment Rowen and Dorian have in our closet -- /threads/2-boys-a-studio-apartment-dz-megi-dz-mo.749448/ ).



In fact, just earlier today we went around searching for furniture pieces since we have 4 dolls incoming and plans of buying others in coming months. Our haul was 5 pieces.

 

My favorite card in my whole collection is my original Holographic Zapdos. It is in Japanese with the original back design for the "pocket monsters" collection. It is a very cool card and still in great shape.

 

So while I mostly collect books, but what avid reader doesn't? I have a weakness for mugs. Maybe it goes back to my first year of college when I only had mugs to drink out of? My current job doesn't help given I work at a Starbucks and damn our holiday collections are so freaking cute. So onto the pictures.

This is where our daily mugs get stored and normally only have like eight on the top shelf. I rotate out my holiday ones during the proper season.

And here they are all line up on our shoe shelf. Now I have some normal plain colored ones that came with dish sets, but I am just focusing my cool ones.



I also have a love of owls so have been acquiring owl presents over the years. I am glad they have been popular recently. So cute!


And that is my growing collection. Even though I have to ask before I buy more. Sigh limited space. I have been banned at certain points because lack of cabinet space in certain apartments. Ignore the messy couch. But I do buy ones if I go anywhere interesting. Thank you for looking! It is fun to see what everyone likes outside of BJDs.

 

I need to get some good photographs of my collections... since I collect so many things. (some call it being a pack rat, but I prefer to think of myself as a dragon sitting on top of an eclectic-but-selectively-chosen hoard...)

Part of my problem is that when I moved last year, I lost a lot of stuff. At least a hundred pinback buttons (though mostly old cringey mall goth ones rather than convention/fandom and original art ones, there's for small mercies) and one of my far-less-numerous-and-far-more-precious enamel pins... just gone. Most of my action figures didn't make the move, I saved maybe one single issue comic and one TPB... and I've had to restart my mineral collection completely since moving, but that one was lost way back in childhood, and has been much easier to replace, since it was never very vast, and there are some great places to get gems and minerals near where I am now. (seeing other people's collections is very 'goals!' for me, haha-- you guys have some lovely specimens!)

I also collect about anything relating to unicorns, mermaids, and dragons (choosily and a bit at a time), as well as dinosaurs (so many childhood dinos lost, again), octopodes (and other sea life), and my main thing, cats. Everything cats. Maneki neko things are a particular within the broader 'cat' collection, but anything cat-related.

I'm also re-building my coffee mug collection (mugs generally relating to one of my other obsessions), and hoping that enough of my hat collection survived the move, I collect theatre-related things... I have a SERIOUS book problem... and then there's the makeup/nail polish hoard... Yeah. I collect far too many things. On the one hand, it makes me very easy to shop for, all my relatives and close friends know if they see a random weird thing with a cat, octopus, or unicorn on it, it's a safe bet. On the other hand, I also love dolls, and have a limited income (well, I mean, don't we all?), so none of my collections can make very much progress thanks to all the others.

And @Vetinari OH WOW. I am dying, that collection... that is beautiful! Even Tin Machine! And Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence! (also I'm enamored of the dolls who've snuck into that photo album, and the perfect use of two different sets of eyes for accuracy)

 

I love these types of threads, I hope this is non-doll enough...

I have a decent collection of CDs and books, but they are in boxes at the moment as I have no where to display them. CDs are all ripped so they don't really matter; but the books packed away makes it much harder to read.

Here is most of my collection of anime figures, Pullips and Nendoroids. Please excuse the bit of distortion, the room isn't all that big, but 16mm fits it all in My house is in a bit of disarray at the moment, it would be nice to finish off the work on it so I can have a bit of order and set up another display cabinet.

And yes, sometimes it does feel like I'm being watched when I'm using the computer

 

@ZucciniVeggie loving the owl mugs too! Hee I adore your collection, especially the Belle/TARDIS mug, but I'm biased. Hrmm, I suppose I've got a defacto mug collection, I'm not hunting them out or anything, yet somehow they multiply... Especially the ones that look fancy, but are non-microwaveable and therefore never get used/have accidents.

@Anneko I'd love to see some of the creature related things if you've got any photos. Aw thanks! Really glad you liked seeing it! (Hee! Thank you! Mr B and the mini Bs are still very much a work in progress) I've got to admit, whilst intellectually I know my Bowie collection is very nearly comprehensive, it's only getting it out like this that makes it properly hit home (well... And make the few missing LPs all the more biting)

 

@Vetinari Yeah I don't actually hunt them out I am just mostly drawn to mugs. When we travel (@HEATH_RED) gets a shot glass and I find a cute mug. We have some nice mismatched tea cups too...I think my coffee shop job has ruined me. I love finding these cups and then I come to work and bang they are there.

 

I can't believe after all the time in my new place I haven't unpacked all my 'non-essentials' (or gotten some good shelves...), which means I haven't got many good collection photos. Right now I've only uncovered one maneki neko, so she's sitting on my windowsill all by herself. I really need to tackle some collection-organizing. I've found some of my sea creatures and unicorns but the dragons and dinosaurs are far less in evidence... And I could only find a couple of porcelain animals, so until more turn up I don't think there's much point there. I lost all the Hagen-Renakers in the chaotic, short-notice move but held onto at least a couple Wade animals.


My mini plush Tsum Tsums, plus one little plastic Rocket (there are other little plastic ones not pictured, and I feel like one of the plushes didn't make it into the picture, because I could swear my first tsum was Lucifer from Cinderella...)


And @KiyoshiSenshi I do have one picture of where my Lego and Pacific Rim collections intersect, thanks to a Lego Store build-your-own-minifigs thing...

(but I'll have to lay out all the PR stuff sometime-- mostly fanmade things like a print of Mako I found at a con, some stickers, and the Beyond the Breach fanbook, the only figures I have are the cord-climbers and the baby kaiju, but it makes me happy. Getting all the Lego stuff laid out would be a much taller order, but I mostly stick to collecting minifigures since I haven't got room to display big sets)

 

I have quite a few Pinky: St figures:



But my biggest collection is probably my Japanese art books. This is from a long time ago - I probably have over twice as many now, but I still need to unpack some from my last move.

 

@KiyoshiSenshi yesss my precious science nerd babies...

Ah, I backed the tarot deck kickstarter at the digital booklet level, so I don't have the physical deck, but I did get the stickers. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out for PR2, merch-wise, I've heard that they've licensed a lot more toys to happen.

(I can understand how Godzilla would push everything else aside, though-- he is the king, after all)

 

@KiyoshiSenshi I can never really choose a favorite, of the PR kaiju... they all have such interesting, unique designs. I usually just default to either Knifehead bc it's the only (erm, fully-formed adult) kaiju I have any real merch of, or Otachi... but then I just really love all of them. (oh man, a plush Muta sounds really adorable though!)

 

Ponies!
My Little Pony Collection by ☆ Flitter ☆, on Flickr

 

While I collect (and have collected... before losing interest and moving on!) a lot of things, I'm going to share pics of the majority of my maneki neko collection.

Where it all started... (Literally. The first white one sitting on a red mat came from Daimaru, a Japanese department store that had a short lived life in Melbourne. My mother won a $1000 shopping 'spree' there when I was in high school and the staff member who was taking us through the store explained the meaning behind maneki neko and, loving all things feline, I just had to have one...)

IMG_0448 by Talicat7, on Flickr

The one in the glass case is a limited edition Steiff...

IMG_0450 by Talicat7, on Flickr

While I don't really collect Hello Kitty, I do have something of knack of coming across cool ones in charity stores (that then have to come home with me!) Most of the ones on the second shelf are from Daiso - which has only recently arrived in Adelaide and which I may be just a bit obsessed by!

IMG_0446 by Talicat7, on Flickr

The plush ones here are also lucky (no pun intended!) finds from a charity store...

IMG_0454 by Talicat7, on Flickr


And... Just a few more!

IMG_0455 by Talicat7, on Flickr

Now this... This is actually my BJD 'witches' collection that, in so many ways, is a tiny snap shot of other things I like to collect! (Halloween, dragons, cats in general (with yet another sub section of Chat Noir items!) Although it's a little hard to see, they even have a Swarovski crystal maneki neko.

IMG_0456 by Talicat7, on Flickr

(I love this thread!)

 

Okay. I'll attempt to answer your question in the... typed response version of thinking aloud! (So apologies in advance if it's not all that coherent...)

- I got my first Maneki Neko 25 or so years ago, so I've been into them for quite a while.
- I don't remember a time when I didn't like all things feline (in fact, I shared my first birthday cake with my grandmother's cat!), so these are just an extension of that.
- The collecting goes in random cycles. At one point I had a friend in Japan teaching English, and she'd send them to me as gifts. Another time there was a Japanese gift shop in the city that I'd go in to every fortnight to buy a new one. Now... Well, again, Daiso are new to me and, because they're cheap and cheerful, I pretty much just buy every one I see there.
- I also, for the past 10 or so months, have had the most amazing luck straying across them in charity shops. (That said, I've also 'convinced' myself that it would be bad luck to leave them there, once spotted, so I've got a couple of doubles as well - but, hey, they're still cute and I'm supporting a charity in the process!)
- Another cycle I'm a little prone to is trawling eBay when I'm bored, so a number have come that way. I first stumbled across the Steiff one on eBay and, once I knew it existed I had to have it.
- I like them to remember holidays by and have them from the British Museum in London and Singapore airport - I even got some I'd never seen before when I was in Brisbane (another Australian city) a few weeks ago.
- I have a number of tenugui with them on it that I actually use to decorate my office at work with - a lot of designs are season specific, so I rotate them that way
- Friends and family give them to me.

Hopefully that gives a little insight in to the collection!