"
Two days ago I purchased one of only two
Nintendo PowerFest 94 cartridges known to exist. The purchase took 74 emails, 27 months, 6 phone calls, 5 failed meeting attempts, 1 sack of cash, and some additional twists and turns to finally complete."
posted by gilrain
on Jul 19, 2012 -
42 comments
"I still buy books faster than I can read them. But this feels completely normal. How weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life." Julian Barnes reflects on his
life as a bibliophile, the disappearance of secondhand bookshops and the precarious survival of the physical book.
posted by verstegan
on Jun 30, 2012 -
89 comments
This is
Argyrol! (here's their
Facebook page (12 people like it!)) A colloidal silver topical anti-microbial ointment, it was used extensively in the first half of the 20th century, mostly for the treatment of gonorrhea. It also bankrolled one of the finest art collections of the 20th century.
[more inside]
posted by From Bklyn
on Jun 3, 2012 -
21 comments
Through a Glass, Smartly Larry Sherk is one of the world's foremost brewerianists, a collector of beer stuff who over 40 years has amassed the country's second-largest private collection of beer labels (about 3,000), many of which date to the late 1800s.
[more inside]
posted by modernnomad
on Feb 4, 2012 -
4 comments
During the US Civil War, metal monies were hoarded for their value, resulting in a shortage of available coins. The Union government issued
official "paper coins" that weren't backed by by gold or silver. This "faith paper" lost value quickly, and for a short while,
stamps were official currency. That didn't take, either, so enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to mint their own coinage. These are now known as
Civil War Tokens (CTWs), and were made and used between late 1862 and mid 1864. On April 22, 1864,
Congress set the weight of coins and
set punishment for counterfeiting coins of up to one thousand dollars and imprisonment up to five years.
Yet there are over ten thousand varieties of tokens, representing 22 states, 400 towns and about 1500 individual merchants.
Melvin and his son Dr. George Fuld wrote
key books in the CWT field, creating the
rarity scale and composition key used by most numismatists. Given sheer number of CWTs, starting a collection might be daunting. Enter
collector Ken Bauer, whose
method breaks down the vast world into
smaller collections, from
anvils to
watches and
so much
more.
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 20, 2011 -
9 comments
For more than 50 years,
Mr. Potato Head toys have been a hit among American children - and increasingly, collectors. This collector's website has everything Potato Headian, whether you want to see
2008 Presidential Candidates holding Mr P or the "psychedelic"
Mr. Potato Bug, Bird, and Fish from the early 1970s or read about how it almost became a forgotten
cereal premium instead of a "funny face kit" for unused fruits and vegetables. Then there are the
pictures from 2002 when Rhode Island distributed 5 foot fiberglass Mr. Potato Head statues which were decorated by artists through the state. There's more. A lot more.
posted by julen
on Jul 14, 2011 -
21 comments
AMASSBLOG my name is james phillips williams. most everyone calls me jp. i have been a designer in new york for 20 years. i started this blog at the urging of my friends and fellow designers who were familiar with my manic collecting. my collections are varied but generally have to do with typography or design.
posted by OmieWise
on Aug 31, 2009 -
11 comments
The Baseball Card Movie is a short documentary set in a baseball card shop frequented by collectors. Showcases the customers' different styles of collecting and the strange ways the card manufactures mange to sell packs for $100+. It's not for kids anymore, but it's not all bad. (
Via)
posted by The Devil Tesla
on May 12, 2009 -
32 comments
Public Collectors is an eclectic archive of off-line and on-line collections to which anyone can contribute. It is "founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible."
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 27, 2009 -
9 comments
MeFi Trainspotting Dept.: While most music consumers long ago traded up their sonically dodgy, graphically threadbare, non-bonus-enhanced early CD pressings of their favorite albums, a subculture has naturally arisen to absorb their discarded digital detritus. Witness
"Target CDs", a family which encompasses certain early West German and Japanese pressings on the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic (
WEA) labels.
So named for their
distinctive label design, Target CDs - unlike, say,
MFSL Gold CDs - make no particular claim to superior fidelity or longevity; in fact, due to their notorious "flat transfer" process from whatever version of the album happened to be lying around, it seems
quite the opposite. (Further evidence for the purely nostalgic and/or aesthetic value of these discs can be seen in the
"hypothetical Target CDs" threads.) Even so, as within any oddball subculture of collectordom, one can now expect to lay out
serious bucks for certain of these shiny little period pieces.
posted by mykescipark
on Jun 3, 2007 -
6 comments
How Marvel convinced us to cut up our comics “The program destroyed the value of countless Marvel comics of this era, and missing value stamps are the bane of serious Bronze Age collectors.”
¶ I was ten years old and I collected all 100 Series A
Marvel Value Stamps, so I totally grooved on this remarkably comprehensive site. Ironically, the coolest artifacts are the
empty collector’s books, which show off the artwork best, in glorius black & white & red, without the crappy colour printing of the era.
posted by KS
on Jun 7, 2005 -
5 comments
For 36 years, Harold Gray has been on an extraordinary mission -- to recover what may be the most famous stolen coin collection in the United States. Since October 1967, when five hooded gunmen invaded the Coconut Grove estate of chemical empire heir Willis Harrington duPont, binding the family with silk neckties and stealing the valuable coin collection from duPont's safe, Gray has been on the case.
''We remain,'' he says today, ``in hot pursuit.''
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 5, 2004 -
4 comments
Heraldic Bookplates While everybody knows about book collecting, bookplate (
ex libris) collecting has a somewhat lower profile. But those seemingly utilitarian bookplates can be a source of endless fascination, whether for the aesthetics or the owner association. For images, see
Early American Fiction (U. of Virginia),
Estonian Bookplates, the
Murray Collection (U. of British Columbia), and the
Bookplate Directory (Notre Dame). Joseph Manzano has proposed
ex Webis (some female nudes, possibly NSFW). For more information, visit the
American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers, which among other things links to a site devoted to
Beethoven bookplates (warning: prepare to hear the Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major). Or go ahead and read some
articles.
posted by thomas j wise
on Jun 2, 2003 -
3 comments
A 63-year old Norwegian bus company owner has
amassed one of the worlds
largest collections of ancient manuscripts valued at over 110 million dollars. His story, how the collection is used and his plans for the sale proceeds are all first-class and an inspiration to private collectors of antiquities.
posted by stbalbach
on Aug 25, 2002 -
15 comments
Here’s a nice addition to your movie memorabilia collection. Would that I had the spare £15,000 lying around. If you could owe one little piece of a favorite cult film, what would it be?
posted by Fenriss
on Mar 12, 2002 -
51 comments
