Several of the latest additions to my fleet.
I have, in the last few years, developed a strange obsession with toy cars. I think this has grown over time, thanks to the encouragement of CaffeineFuelled, as she has gradually joined in with my strange little collection. They have now become punctuation points around our condo: toy cars located artfully on either side of statuettes, vases and stand-up portraits.
Similarly, if you were to look around our various abodes, you would find collections throughout each. CardboardTube has Star Wars toys, comic book art and music-related detritus. Techie has obscenely-overpriced electronic equipment on a scale rivalled only be NASA. Engineerd has a basement full of African children, much like Brad and Angelina.
I think everyone has a “collection” of some sort or other. What’s yours?
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<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-GCd5szdTvTw/TkLBJe1GbSI/AAAAAAAAAlE/XOTsVEuLTzQ/s912/IMG_0527.JPG"width=500>
I've got more, but no room for display.
I have… 9 of those. Maybe, I can't remember because the majority of mine are in a box, I don't have anywhere else to put them either.
I have an old cassette rack that I took every second shelf out of, that holds 50 and looks very nice. That would be a great solution if everyone hadn't thrown all those out years ago.
You have nine of the same cars? Cool deal.
My wife has bought me the majority of the Hot Wheels you see there. When we were early in our dating, she came over with a half-gallon of my favorite ice cream and a toy car. I can't remember which car it was, but I knew then it was love.
Nice steering wheel. It looks kin of like a Model-T wheel, only deluxe.
My uncle found it in sad shape at a garage sale for a dollar. He then sanded, buffed, filled, primed, varnished, and painted until it looked like it does now, and gave it to me for my 16th birthday. We found an article about an all-original 1927 Model T, and the wheel was almost identical. "T 902" is embossed into one of the spokes.
I have had a few addictions, as I like to call them, over the years. In High School and to lesser extent College, I collected Coca-Cola stuff. The problem is none of it is really worth anything, and once people find out you have a collection, they buy you every little nik-nak even remotely related. I certainly have some treasured possesions that I will keep and eventually display, when I finish renovating, but I also have boxes in the basement, boxes in my Dad's shed, and boxes in the back of my pickup that is stored in my Dad's garage, of Coke stuff that I have little or no use for.
My latest addiction, which has thankfully been curbed by Netflix and the sort, was DVDs. I believe my collection is reaching the 800+ mark. Most of which I have watched once since I bought it and now are stored in a number of boxes in the basement. They aren't even all good movies, but I had to have them to complete a series. I mean sure the first couple Police Academies are funny and remind me of my youth, but I have all of them, and for what, just to say I have them all and because I got most of them out of the remainder bin at Walmart for $5.
I collect spores, mold, and fungus.
You need to get out more Spengler.
Lichen too…
I had a fungus I took a lichen to…
IMy boys have that Javelin. It's one of my favorites. I have a pretty vast collection of owners/repair manuals for all of the different cars I've driven into the ground over the years. Beyond that, my attention span is too short to collect anything other than tools that are supporting my latest hobby/project.I also collect bruises from my wife beating me for not working on Project House Hell during every waking moment.
Seriously, though, I think one of my most impressive collections is I still have every ticket stub from every major sporting event I've ever been to. Be it Angels, Ducks, Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, or Pistons, I've still got it in a box in my basement.
I have a bunch of crap I used to collect. Comic books, diecast cars, comic action figures, Dallas Stars memorabilia, etc. but I just got tired of trying to clean them and/or properly display them. Now it's all boxed up in the storage unit.
I'm considering using the vintage comic books to wallpaper the 1/2 bath of whichever house we buy. I haven't yet shared this dream with the Mrs……
If you still own them, then technically, you are still collecting them…
As I am no longer seeking out new items, I am no longer collecting. I do, however, have a collection.
The only thing I've really collected is music. Since almost all of it is in digital form now, it doesn't take any more physical space than what a few hard drives occupy.
I still like to have the physical copies of albums and movies; vinyl if it's a deeply loved favorite.
I have no love for vinyl to this day – I spent too many years living with the expense, fragility, surface noise, and flaws. I haven't had any vinyl or a turntable in 20+ years now. Even CD's are strictly optional these days – I haven't bought a new one in years. Hard media means nothing to me any more, especially since I maintain three full backups of my digital collection.
I like to listen to vinyl in the same way that I sometimes like to make meatballs for spaghetti from scratch. Sounds and tastes about the same, but it's a labor of love.
So how do meatballs sound other than "plop" when you drop them on the floor?
The same goes for you if you want a spotify invite.
I like the warmth of analog sound personally. No square waves, beautifully rounded analog. Plus, most vinyls come with digital downloads these days. That is cool, but not awesome as I no longer need to download most things as I have spotify in my pocket at all times. If you need a spotify invite let me know.
Thanks, but I already have Spotify. The free version is OK except for the ads and the forced and unwanted song plays. It's not good enough to pay for in my opinion, especially when there are still so many free streaming options.
I'm not going to get into the analog vs. digital debate except to say that listening is an extremely subjective experience. I'm a professional musician of long standing and the convenience of good-quality digital outweighs any perceived disadvantages. I'm quite satisfied with digital.
If you have a smartphone of limited capacity, spotify is entirely worth it. I find advantages to both digital and analog and find vinyl worth it for select bands and albums. Other then that, I have 15 million songs in my pocket when I have a good connection and 6k when I don't and select vinyls from select bands when I want to immerse myself in it. What instrument do you play?
Thanks, I got access to the free version within a day of applying. It's nice for checking out bands I can't find on Grooveshark. They missed replacing Winamp by the margin of no dinosaur .wma files and no way to separate full albums from singles from classical.
Why, yes, of course. Let me show you my collection of short lengths of wire, I keep it in this drawer…
Get out of my garage!
Short lengths of wire and screws. Lots of random screws, large and small, left over from myriad little projects over the last 21 years of married life.
My night last night:
Take apart old wooden futon bedframe. Add lumber to Random Lumber (non-burning) pile, and screws to "Screw" container (1-litre oil container with top cut off – moderately overflowing). Take new-ish particle board wardrobe apart. Add particle board to Random Lumber (to be burned) pile and screws to "Screw" container.
Take apart Bigfoot 4x4x4 Powerwheels. Replace stripped out motor screws with slightly larger screws from "Screw" container. Re-wire battery compartment for parallel 12v batteries using short lengths of wire from "Wire" container. These wires were originally from a 1986 RX-7. Make new battery hold down using 1) hanger rod from previously dismantled wardrobe and 2) 3/4" rubber doughnuts (former sway-bar end links) from "Rubber Bits" container, and 3) a few more screws from "Screw" container.
All that to say: No, YOU get out of MY garage!
SU carbs.
I'm actually becoming a little frightened by the size of the mass.
Ha! I found some sucker who hauled mine off for free. He loaded them into the back of this goofy little one-wheeled trailer and, um, oh….
Sorry, Pete.
I think that was the tipping point between the happy "Hey, I have lots of SUs" to "Oh shit".
Ewww. There is something very wrong about that. Weber's I can see, but SU's…
Lego and live steam trains. The trains (and associated tools and machinery) live in the
onezero car garage. The Lego collection shares a room with the "office". As a result, said room is known as the "Legoffice".My Lego Statue of Liberty (complete with home made pedestal), a "Super Street Sensation" Technic super car and a large rendering of my company's logo are on display in my cubicle at the office. An upcoming move to a new office building threatens the cubicle situation. Some of its content may have to find its way home…
I also keep all my CDs (~200) even though I transferred them to my computer a long time ago.
By the way, does owning two cars make me a car collector?
"…does owning two cars make me a car collector?"
With a low number like that, it depends. Did you go out and find them? Then no, you are not a car collector. At the very least your status can't be determined on that basis alone. Did they instead find you? Did they follow you home unbidden? Do they look like they'll be inviting their friends along any day now? Do you feel cornered, trapped, and yet resigned to submitting to their will as they freeload on your space, time, money, and indeed your very soul? Then yes, you are, even with just two.
Five or more, no question. You're doomed.
And how many do you have? You sound very familiar with the syndrome.
Eight. You can see the current list by hovering your pointer over my IntenseDebate icon.
I believe any car collector will recognize my description of the condition. Not admit to it, perhaps, but certainly recognize it.
Good lord, you do have it, don't you? (I went to your page.) I like the Plymouth, that era of cars is my favorite. That KV though, I've only seen them in pictures and they look like something made from a Big Boy erector set. They look like they would be frightening to drive on the highway, and I see that you have a plate on yours. You must be mad. How in the world did you get that licensed? "Worst of Show" indeed.
It looks like you have a fun hobby.
Thanks! The KV doesn't go fast enough for highway use; I keep it strictly on surface streets. The HMV, on the other hand, says "Freeway" right there in the name, so I'm good to go.
Licensing the KV was only a minor ordeal. It had been in the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum in GA, which never got around to putting it on the road in the US. They sold it at auction to a private person who also never licensed it, so when I bought it, it was still on its decades-old French paperwork. The seller gave me all that and a bill of sale (GA doesn't title cars as "old" as 1980), so the biggest difficulty was convincing WA that the ownership trail was adequate. They issued it a set of plates after I added lap and shoulder belts, emergency flashers, and a repositioned license plate light (1980 is old enough to be exempt from Federal requirements, so this was up to the state), but I had to wait three years for a title, just in case any other ownership claims were lurking out there.
Hey, you have more "cars" than me.
That actually makes me feel better.
You put "cars" in quotes? YOU did? Ouch.
Even worse, I just heard back from a guy who's looking to sell a 96. Clearly I need a third 96. Oh, and I've still got first dibs on a free Hornet….
I think Tanshanomi said this, but I can't find a way to search his comments;
"Regrets; they last forever and there's always room for more."
Beer steins. I have about two dozen in total. Most have dogs on them. They are a collection and not a hoard. Although some go unused for a while they ALL get drunk from every now and then. Talk about a good rationalization. I'm not really in the mood for a beer but Springer Spaniel is feeling a little neglected.
Most reside in the living room. This serves as a constant reminder of how the former Mrs. TiberiusWise was painfully wrong when she said "you can't keep beer steins in the living room."
<img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6061/6030505560_93111faa25_m.jpg" width="400">
Now that's kind of cool. Some steins have some incredible artwork on them and are quite striking. I don't know about the dog motif however.
This is the kind of stein I prefer: a Klein Stein:
<img src="http://www.kleinbottle.com/images/klein%20stein%20w%20label.jpg" style="border:none;" alt=" " border="0" width="480">
Eine kleine Klein stein.
Click on the picture to go to the site.
as my handle implies, I collect records (currently about 1000). I also colllect record players (got one for every room of the house and then some) and other vintage tube radios and amps, musical instruments and recording gear vintage and modern, and old car toys (mostly handed down from my dad, and some from my own childhood). My wife collects vintage barware and lunchboxes.
and going by the criteria stated above, I guess I'm a car collector too.
My actual hobby is woodworking, making fine boxes specifically. I also build various pieces of furniture when the muse attacks, and I turn wooden bowls and hollow vessels because it's fun and people like them. I've been at it for around 25 years, and I hope to actually get good at it someday. If I have an obsession, it is tools, woodworking tools in particular. I have a lot of them, and they all get used at one time or another. And there is always one more that I need. I am beyond hope or redemption.
You can never have too many tools.
Our new obsession, besides toy cars, is collecting hand-made coffee mugs. No mass-produced ones — although we do still have a lot of those as well — but hand-turned or -formed pottery pieces. I wanted to buy a welded stainless-steel mug I found in a artisan shop, but they wanted more than I paid for my first five cars combined.
I can sympathize with your recoiling against the price of the custom mug, but I can also sympathize with the artisan who made it, at least somewhat. It sounds like he was selling his mug as 'art', which is entirely a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
I am an artisan, i.e., a person who makes items of high quality by hand. I make fine boxes out of wood, primarily highly figured wood and exotics, and I'm quite good at it. But I don't make many boxes anymore, for the simple reason that most people don't want to pay a reasonable price for hand craftmanship. When I build a large jewelry box, my cost on materials runs between $400 and $500 typically, and my labor is usually 200(plus) hours, spread over 2 or 3 months. If I was to charge something like $5 an hour (which you have to admit is ridiculously low for skilled labor), a box would cost ~$1450, and not many people are willing to pay that. I can't keep my shop open on $5 an hour either, so I don't make pieces for general sale. I made my work into a hobby, and I just do contract work for people who are willing to pay at least something for my labor. Costs can be brought down by scaling up and doing volume work, but there are problems with that too. My shop is way too small for that, and I didn't get into woodworking to become a factory, that takes all the fun out of it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to complain about not being able to sell my work, I'm just telling the realities of trying to be an artisan in this era. The stuff I make goes to family and friends, and they seem to like it. (at least for free…)
I'm sure your mug artisan has a similar tale.
Do you have pictures of your work? I'm not in the market for any $1400 wooden boxes, but I do like to see craftsmanship of many forms.
Actually I have lots of pictures, but none online. I guess I need to setup a Flicker account or something. I'll get back to you when I can post my pictures here.
Well, I made a flickr account and posted some pictures, but when I try to embed the link to the photos, I get nothing. Not sure what's going, I'll try again tomorrow.
Wow… that's some seriously cool stuff.
Let's see if this works.
<img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6192/6031701664_799d21fab2_b.jpg" width="500/">
Are you sure you didn't miss your calling as an interior designer for Jaguar?
That's incredible! Very well done and worth every penny you could charge for it!
Thank you very much. I made that piece for a friend's daughter who was graduating from Princeton (feh), and the only input I got was "she wears lots of earrings". After lots of research (do you have any idea of how many different types of earrings there are? Me neither), I came up with the idea of several movable frames of different widths and different spacings between the racks to hold different sizes. I borrowed earrings from some lady friends to test it, and you can store anything from studs to hoops 3" in diameter to long danglies 5" long, all without tangling. I then I made drawers to hold what wouldn't fit on the racks. Along the inside tops of the doors are brass pins of different lengths that will store necklaces up to 30" long. It took around 3 months to make.
At the last moment, right when I was getting ready to ship it, the customer asked if I could put her daughters name on it, and could I maybe burn it in to the top or something. After I had calmed down (about 2 hours) I wrote her back and told that no, I wasn't going to burn a name in to it, and if she did, I would travel to her house and commit violence on her person with hot implements while her husband held her down. I then recommended that she go see a jeweler about getting an engraved plate made and mounting it on the inside of a door. Some people, I swear.
So anyway, tell me how you were able to post that picture, please. I'm a Flickr noobie.
One of your original replies, since deleted, had a link to your flickr photostream. I opened your photostream, and right-clicked on the picture, but the normal "copy image URL" option wasn't there. So, I chose the "view all sizes" option and once I got there, I was able to copy the URL from one of those into the standard image source format.
The reason it wouldn't let you post was that you were image linking to your photostream, not to a specific image. If your link doesn't end in an image file type (.jpg or .gif. or whatever), the image source html code won't work.
This code:
<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Nu2cDA-RbzY/TkQwKEBp4jI/AAAAAAAAAlU/axZjyzrCSN8/Image%20Source.jpg" width="500/"> will embed your image.
This code:
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-gS1t0viau6Y/TkQyHne6XuI/AAAAAAAAAlg/4NZdRcFX4ek/s800/Image%20Link.jpg"> will make your image into a link that leads back to your photostream. Sorry for the wide image – it was pretty much unreadable otherwise.
Yeah, that's where I'm having trouble. When I click on "view all sizes" and click on a picture, there is no share button on the screen, and I can't get a URL anywhere. Did I screw up my account?
Which browser are you using?
Firefox 5.0
You'll need to right-click on your image, and select "copy image location" or "copy image address" – whatever the Firefox language is. If it gives you an "all rights reserved' menu, it should also give you the option to view all sizes. If you click that, it should show you all the different sizes available and you can get the image url from one of those images.
Right, that gets me a valid URL. Thanks so much for your help. It's embarrassing to not be able to sort out this kind of thing on my own.
You learn best from experience – I left a trail of broken image links all over the place before I figured out how it works.
Mr. Howser did a great job of helping you! Though there should be a little doodad to copy and paste what you need right from flickr, I explained here:
http://hooniverse.com/2009/10/26/thats-whats-up/#…
Also fancy box, wow!
I looked at your post (thanks!) and the problem I'm having is that the 'share' gadget doesn't appear anywhere on the screen when I select 'View all sizes' or when I select any of the sizes of pictures. Flickr help tells also tells me to use the 'share' gadget, but it just isn't there.
Thanks for the compliment. I only have a few pictures in my photostream at the moment, but I'll be adding more pretty soon. Here's the URL (according to flickr). http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmilligan666/
Ooh I very much like that burl on the box for your brother!
I saw this on the faq looking for the share doodad on your gallery:
So maybe you set-up something restricted like that? But yo have a good way of doing it now anyway.
On the share gadget, just click the HTML/BB Code link, and then copy the whole text into your comment over here. It will format the image as a clickable link back to the image in your photostream.
You'll end up with this:
<img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6148/6031701668_ea602ac443.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Holly's jewelry box">
my wife gets the same reaction to her artwork. But her material costs less, typically. Before she started making jewelry for Tiffany & Co. she was traveling to art fairs attempting to sell them. She did well for a few years but then 2008 happened. Now her studio is packed up in a storage unit until we can find a house. http://flyinghammerstudio.net/
/shameless plug to wife's art
That is some fabulous work! Your wife definitely has the magic fingers. I'd love to watch her work, skills like that fascinate me, and they're being lost. That, to me, is art. I wish you both good fortune.
Some of those are beyond my ability to express in words how striking they are, very neat, never seen anything like them, almost look alive!
my wife quasi collects them. Her most recent purchase is a ceramic mug in the shape of a hand grenade. It even has a cotter pin through the handle. The artist reminded her to pull the pin before dishwashing or microwaving said mug.
One liners. I've got a million of 'em.
Seriously, I live with a borderline hoarder. In the interest of maintaining the moral high ground, I've dispensed with collecting. Plus, why have hundreds of one thing when you can have one of everything?
Ba dum dum [crash].
I'm afraid I might have crossed the hoarder line on some things. There are the Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and other die cast cars. And of course the gun collection (and associated bayonets). And the books and magazines (printed kind, not bullet kind). And the ?Lego Technic sets. Those are the things still being actively collected. Other collections include: baseball cards, GI Joe Comic books, and toy collections from childhood (Star Wars and GI Joe mostly.)
Good lord man, where do you store it all?
The basement, the attic, a couple of hundred liner feet of book shelves in the office, I have my own little secret closet in the bonus room. I really need to downsize. Keep the collections and just get rid of the junk.