Collecting things other then comics.

[Hepcat]

Here is my Aurora P-38 Lightning kit with fabulous Jo Kotula box art:

 

 

It was the first plane model I built as a kid. My buddy Paul suggested I paint it so I did, entirely in blue with visible brush strokes. An absolutely terrible job to be sure. As a result, I never attempted to paint another model until I assembled a Mummy some four years later.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of my bigger and more sophisticated Monogram Lightning kit as well:

 

 

 

Here are photos of some of my other warplane model kits:

 

 

I was delighted to find the above Revell Dam Buster on Fleabay eleven or so years ago. I believe it was the second model airplane kit I built as a kid. I first saw the Dam Buster kit in late 1963 or early 1964 at McCormick's Hobby Shop clear on the other side of downtown on Oxford Street in London, Ontario. It was run from a small counter at the back of a slightly larger room jam packed with model kits by a pleasant middle aged lady. She ran the shop until sometime in the mid nineties. What I failed to realize all those years though is that she had a treasure trove of unsold back stock in the rear room behind the counter, everything from unsold figure kits to slot car kits! The fellows that bought her out scored big time on the back stock.

 

The Dam Buster started me on a tear of building warplanes and warships. Included among these were a half dozen Hawk WWII fighters in boxes with the hawk's head logo that my corner store, Les' Variety, stocked on the upper shelf across from the cash register. I recall building Hurricane, Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf kits for sure, and then maybe Spitfire, Mustang, Thunderbolt, Warhawk, Zero and Fokker Triplane kits. It's possible that some of these may have been Aurora kits but I believe most were Hawk. My military model kit building spree ended when my sister vacuum cleaned my built kits thus sucking up some tiny parts here and there. This of course broke my heart and caused me to lose interest. My father probably pitched them all when I went off to boarding school in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine.

 

Here are the Hawk warplane kits I currently have in my model kit collection:

 

 

My focus is on the ones with the hawk's head logo. I don't yet have any of the Hawk planes I built as a kid though. Quite simply, the Hawk kits were never as popular as Aurora or Revell kits and as a result they're much more difficult to find these days.

 

The two model airplane kits I most clearly remember from my school days are the Aurora MIG-19 and CF-105. They were the two finished models I had suspended from my bedroom ceiling with scotch tape and thread. Once again, I can't remember when they disappeared but I believe it was sometime after my high school years when I moved into the bigger bedroom that my older sister vacated.

 

Because I so clearly remember the two, I snapped up the CF-105 as soon as I stumbled across one at a toy show here in Toronto some thirty years ago. Because the CF-105 is a Canadian designed fighter, this Aurora kit is particularly popular here in Canada. The MIG-19 I thought was one of those things forever lost in the mists of time until the advent of the internet and Ebay when I realized it was relatively easy to find.

 

Here are some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

[Hepcat]

Here are my Aurora WWI airplane kits:

 

 

 

That's an Albatross in the top picture.

 

Given how many WWII plane kits I built as a kid, I have surprisingly few Aurora WWII model plane kits in my collection these days. Here they are:

 

 

 

 

[Hepcat]

Here are pictures of my Aurora model kits of early U.S. military jet planes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I used to collect 12" Vinyl EP's, especially if they had live tracks on it.

 

 

 

Box sets, imports, apecial releases, and promos also if they were intetesting to me.

 

 

 

 

Motorhead - No Remorse (Leather Edition)

 

 

I gave away most of my vinyl about 10 years atgo. I only kept things that would be a pain to replace.

 

DG

 

 

[Hepcat]

Here are a few model ships from my collection:

 

 

 

 

One of the very first model kits I ever built was a Graf Spee, but it was one of those really little six inch Revell model ships. So now I have not only a much bigger Aurora Graf Spee model kit with fabulous Jo Kotula box art, I have two different releases of the same kit!

 

 

It was the above German "Wolfpack" U-Boat which really lured me into building a number of military models in 1964. I mean wolfpack? Talk about cool!

 

 

I don't remember ever building a Bismarck as a kid, but I have one now!

 

[ashsaytr]

that Motorhead is awesome!

[ThoseBackPages]

NICE!

[originalisbest]

Really sweet Impala! I love the idea of tinkering with it until paint, tire and wheel combo is just right, and replacing engine, seats etc as it's a base model and no great worries about #'s not matching, etc.

 

Depending, it might not be a bad idea to mothball the old engine, if you ever do replace it, so the vehicle could be #'s matching again one day -- even though it is a base model it's still a V8. Depends on cost and what room you do or don't have, I suppose.

[vaillant]

I know the name by fame but did not remind what an Impala was – that is a great car, Balls, I really like it! (thumbs u

 

Beautiful photos of the kitten with the Disney vintage bottles, love ’em Hepcat!

 

@Doug: I’m not an AC/DC fan but these vinyls were lovely. What did you kept?

I guess my only "rare" vinyl is the first Killing Joke single in all its incarnations (/", 10", 12") and a pair of uncommon albums of italian new wave.

[mintcollector]

I have been a collector for awhile now and i was thinking about what other people collect.

 

I collect:

Comics

Vintage TV Trays (found a sweet NM Pac-man 1980 TV tray at a flea market today)

stamps

Vintage Lunch Boxes

boardgames

 

 

I get asked this a lot and don't always answer because it is a lot. Here is the abbreviated list and I am sure I am missing some stuff, but I will do my best. This is listed in NO particular order:

 

Contemporary and vintage art

Art glass (antique and contemporary)

Marbles

Antique bottles

Coins and currency

Historical documents

Vintage toys and antique toys

Video games

Coin op games (vintage and antique)

Comic books

Art pottery (antique)

Vintage watches and antique jewelry

Model antique and vintage toy trains

Vintage hot wheels

Lego

PEZ

Advertising (antique and vintage)

Antique tools

Posters (vintage and antique; movie and other kinds)

Vintage and antique postcards

Slot cars (sparsely)

Magic Cards (very few, Alpha and Beta only)

Antique furniture

Antique clocks

Walking canes and sticks (antique)

 

And more...I will think of more as soon as I walk upstairs, but for now that is it.

 

 

 

[dgarthwaite-migration]

that Motorhead is awesome!

 

I only saw them live once and the was after they went to 4 members. I picked up a concert t-shirt and in the following years I had more than one person try to buy the shirt off my back.

 

In the early 90's I used to hang out at a local rock 'n roll club. One night I'd been chatting with the bouncer at the door. Lemmy walks in. He sees all the local poser musicians hanging out with their puffed up 80's hairstyles. He shakes his head in disgust and walks out. I couldn't help but laugh.

 

DG

[The Kaptain]

 

[Hepcat]

I have been a collector for awhile now and i was thinking about what other people collect.

 

I collect:

Comics

Vintage TV Trays (found a sweet NM Pac-man 1980 TV tray at a flea market today)

stamps

Vintage Lunch Boxes

boardgames

 

 

I get asked this a lot and don't always answer because it is a lot. Here is the abbreviated list and I am sure I am missing some stuff, but I will do my best. This is listed in NO particular order:

 

Contemporary and vintage art

Art glass (antique and contemporary)

Marbles

Antique bottles

Coins and currency

Historical documents

Vintage toys and antique toys

Video games

Coin op games (vintage and antique)

Comic books

Art pottery (antique)

Vintage watches and antique jewelry

Model antique and vintage toy trains

Vintage hot wheels

Lego

PEZ

Advertising (antique and vintage)

Antique tools

Posters (vintage and antique; movie and other kinds)

Vintage and antique postcards

Slot cars (sparsely)

Magic Cards (very few, Alpha and Beta only)

Antique furniture

Antique clocks

Walking canes and sticks (antique)

 

And more...I will think of more as soon as I walk upstairs, but for now that is it.

 

Cool! Now that's what I like to hear! I like a fellow with expansive tastes.

 

 

[CAHokie]

In addition to comic books I like to collect items from the Revolutionary War time period, historical documents, Presidential items (especially as it relates to Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers) and cool stuff related to Virginia Tech

[GeneticNinja]

I got an X-Men Noir print yesterday. I might start collecting these limited prints. But I'm not sure I want the headache from the random drops that they usually have.

[freshcollect]

My general line (as my wife rolls her eyes) is that I collect collections. I generally over focus on one at a time, and let the others grow old in a corner, and then change focus again in another year or two. Focus is now back on comics for the first time in years, but other collections include:

 

Hockey Cards

Non-Sport Cards

Coca-Cola Bottles

Lapel Pins - primarily Olympic Coke pins, but also other Coke, Olympic, Disney and Hard Rock pins

Statues

Toys

I'm sure i've missed something else

[Hepcat]

My general line (as my wife rolls her eyes) is that I collect collections. I generally over focus on one at a time, and let the others grow old in a corner, and then change focus again in another year or two.

 

I'm the same but my rotation is faster. I try to cycle through all my collecting passions every few months.

 

When it comes to trading card part of my collecting activities, I'm a completist, a set builder of the sharpest, whitest, brightest cards I can find. I'm tough on corners and toning but I'm easy on centering. I'll accept cards that are well off center so long as they are not miscut.

 

I collect them raw and unslabbed for three reasons. The first is that I've always collected cards raw ever since I was a little kid. Secondly, they're too bulky to store or even handle when slabbed. Thirdly, my grading priorities are not the same as those of the grading companies. I'm very tough on toning which they seem to ignore, but I'm easy on centering while they penalize off-center cards heavily.

 

My collection of non-sports cards ranges from the late forties to the mid-seventies - but the sets I most treasure are typically from the 1957-1965 period which coincides with those cards I remember accumulating as a kid.

 

The first cards to which I was exposed were the 1956 Hit Stars. My older sister had brought a few home. She was looking for Yul Brynner, a search doomed to frustration since there was no Yul Brynner card in the set. The first cards I ever owned were four 1958-59 Topps hockey cards which I gathered off the street one December day in 1958. The first three were Detroit Red Wings, but the last was a Chicago Blackhawk. When I saw that big Indian head on the red uniform, I knew that was my favourite team - even though I couldn't read the name yet!

 

 

I admired the 1959 baseball cards in the schoolyard, but the first cards I ever bought were the 1959 CFL cards like this one I have today:

 

 

These first few cards to which I was exposed left a lifelong imprint upon me. I ended up collecting the CFL, hockey and baseball cards most years thereafter until I graduated from grade eight in 1965.

 

I was well aware of the various non-sport sets such as You'll Die Laughing, Funny Valentines, TV Westerns and Flags of the World that O-Pee-Chee was marketing in my corner of London, Ontario at the time (the Flags were probably remainders from 1956 that OPC had decided to redistribute), but the first non-sport cards I collected in a big way were the 1961 Leaf Spook Stories. The 1962 Civil War News cards came next.

 

The summer of 1963 was when I went big time, however. One of my buddies Anthony proposed that we pool our efforts and collections and just collect any card we could get our hands on. This was initially to his benefit because the 1963 baseball cards I had lying around dwarfed his meager stock. Nonetheless, over the ensuing two years Anthony and I amassed close to 4500 different cards. Needless to say, sheer numbers as opposed to condition was our defining priority.

 

Strangely enough though, we succeeded in gathering up most of the sports cards issued in our neck of the woods back to the 1960-1961 hockey cards. But any cards older than these were very tough to find and we only had a very few examples from even sets as large as the 1960 baseball. In fact, coming across any pre-1961 cards in the schoolyard was such an uncommon occurrence that it seemed to be an almost magical event. And even today I feel the same sense of wonder, the same sense of magic, perusing the pre-1961 cards that I have even if they number in the hundreds and fill a binder!

 

Among the cards we managed to acquire was a wild but very curious one called "Hairy Fiend" which we got in a generic pack while trick or treating on Halloween. We'd never encountered any of this set before and somehow just weren't bright enough to read the caption on the back that would have identified the set. Nonetheless, it became our favourite card.

 

When I went off to boarding school in grade nine, I just turned my half interest in the cards we'd accumulated over to Anthony who was a grade behind me. Bad mistake. Within six months or so he too lost interest in the cards which were approaching 6500 in number at the time and gave them to Billy, the snot-nosed kid across the street. Anthony's thinking was that Billy would carry the torch so to speak and continue to build on the collection. To Anthony's horror and dismay though, Billy went and scrambled the cards in front of his eyes! That's right, he tossed the contents of the whole box up into the air just to watch every other little kid on the street scramble to get as many as he could! Anthony still grouses about that to this very day some 47 years later.

 

I also collected the premium coins that were issued in jelly desserts and potato chips up until I graduated from grade school. The plastic Shirriff/Salada hockey coins, the Shirriff plastic baseball coins, the Jell-O/Hostess Airplane Wheels, the Krun-Chee Warships and the Humpty Dumpty CFL coins were the ones that drew my most avid interest - and dimes.

 

But you know the memory of these cards never left me. I'd often think back to my collecting days and wish I still had my cards even when I was in my late teens but I thought that there was no way I could ever reassemble what I'd had as a kid. Then came an article in the "Canadian Magazine" Saturday supplement to the newspaper. It featured Angelo Savelli of Hamilton, who was described as the world's biggest card collector. Angelo had evidently started buying sports cards in 1948 and never stopped. The article filled me with an incredible longing for the cards I'd once had, cards that I thought were now lost in the mists of time.

 

Flash forward a few years to 1979. I had finished university and had been working in Toronto for a couple of years. I discovered that the big city had four comic shops. Two of them carried old gum cards as well! The first sets I bought at the comic shops were Man from UNCLE, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the first two Funny Valentine sets. Shortly thereafter I discovered that the main comic shop in Hamilton also carried cards. When the proprietor Paul pulled out NM (or so I thought at the time) sets of the 1959, 1960, 1963 and 1964 CFL cards, I could not reach for my wallet quickly enough! Prizes beyond belief! As was the Civil War News set he had and the You'll Die Laughing set I picked up a few weeks later at a comic show.

 

When I bought the first edition of Chris Benjamin's Non-Sport Price Guide in the mid-eighties, I realized that the "Hairy Fiend" card we'd had twenty years before belonged to the notorious Mars Attacks set.

 

I've never stopped collecting. I now have a fabulous collection of non-sports, CFL and hockey cards and I've even made inroads into baseball cards from the 1954-1965 period as well. I've also amassed one of the better collections around of those premium coins to which I referred earlier e.g. Shirriff hockey and baseball, Warships, etc.

 

I used to feel an incredible sense of longing whenever I saw the type of old variety store at which I used to buy my cards and comics as a kid. No more though. My collection now of most cards is so far beyond what I dreamed of having as a kid that I've shed that sense of loss.

 

I eventually met Angelo Savelli in the mid-eighties at a collectibles show in Toronto where he had set up to sell card and he's now a friend of mine. It was at the big annual Toronto Sportcard and Memorabilia Expo in 2002 or so where I saved one of his binders full of expensive hockey cards from the thirties and forties from a thief. I noticed that a tall young fellow at the other end of Angie's table had scooped up what appeared to be one of Angie's binders and walked off briskly down the aisle. Angie himself was on the other side of the table and was in no position to give chase (besides I'm a lot fleeter of foot than Angie is nowadays) so I set off after the fellow myself. I caught him before he got to the door of the hall and said "Excuse me, but is that your binder?" Much to my surprise, the fellow just said no and shoved the binder into my hands. While I stood there gawking for a second or two, he swiftly made his exit through the door. Oh well. I'm not in the business of apprehending thieves anyway, but I'd managed the most important detail which was getting Angie's binder back for him.

 

Since Angie sold almost all his cards other than the hockey and CFL around the turn of the century and I've accumulated so many cards myself in the last thirty years, I no longer envy Angie for his cards. How the circle turns!

 

But you know I still don't have a NM "Hairy Fiend" card.

 

 

[mintcollector]

I have been a collector for awhile now and i was thinking about what other people collect.

 

I collect:

Comics

Vintage TV Trays (found a sweet NM Pac-man 1980 TV tray at a flea market today)

stamps

Vintage Lunch Boxes

boardgames

 

 

I get asked this a lot and don't always answer because it is a lot. Here is the abbreviated list and I am sure I am missing some stuff, but I will do my best. This is listed in NO particular order:

 

Contemporary and vintage art

Art glass (antique and contemporary)

Marbles

Antique bottles

Coins and currency

Historical documents

Vintage toys and antique toys

Video games

Coin op games (vintage and antique)

Comic books

Art pottery (antique)

Vintage watches and antique jewelry

Model antique and vintage toy trains

Vintage hot wheels

Lego

PEZ

Advertising (antique and vintage)

Antique tools

Posters (vintage and antique; movie and other kinds)

Vintage and antique postcards

Slot cars (sparsely)

Magic Cards (very few, Alpha and Beta only)

Antique furniture

Antique clocks

Walking canes and sticks (antique)

 

And more...I will think of more as soon as I walk upstairs, but for now that is it.

 

Cool! Now that's what I like to hear! I like a fellow with expansive tastes.

 

 

(thumbs u

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I know the name by fame but did not remind what an Impala was – that is a great car, Balls, I really like it! (thumbs u

 

Beautiful photos of the kitten with the Disney vintage bottles, love ’em Hepcat!

 

@Doug: I’m not an AC/DC fan but these vinyls were lovely. What did you kept?

I guess my only "rare" vinyl is the first Killing Joke single in all its incarnations (/", 10", 12") and a pair of uncommon albums of italian new wave.

 

I kept mainly 12" import singles that had live "rare" B-Side recordings on them. I kept radio broadcast albums. I kept pictures discs, but many are yellowing, so they don't have the appeal they once had. My tastes revolved more around heavy metal when I was younger.

 

A quick look and I see some less heavy stuff like Big Country, Bow Wow Wow, Duran Duran, U2...

 

 

 

 

 

I don't collect cereal boxes, but I saved a couple of this one...

 

 

DG

 

[dupont2005]

This is one of my favorite threads. Awesome stuff and so many completely unique collections I've never heard of anyone collecting before. (thumbs u