Libraries are neat. The New York Public Library has uploaded a collection of menus dating from 1851 to 1956 thanks largely to the efforts of collector Miss Frank E. Buttolph, a "mysterious and passionate figure whose mission in life was to collect menus" and whose unique collection aroused the interest of the NYT of her day (1, 2).
posted on Jul 30, 2008 - View this thread

So lemony and wonderful. Of course I searched the Metafilter Archives. I wanted to be sure I was not reposting a link. But I did find one reference to moist towelettes from machaus

"Many individuals have asked me in past months, Why moist towelette collecting? Why not stamp collecting, or numismatics? To be different, perhaps? " posted by machaus (12 comments total) back in 2001.

Well -- Machaus -- now you know where you can leave your collection when preparing your will.
posted on Jul 29, 2008 - View this thread

The following is a list of over 3600 titles recorded from my collection of 78 rpm records....Right now, there are over 2,450 titles on this page linked to mp3's....I have about 2500 more records to record, so I'll be adding more titles as time permits over the next hundred years or so....I loaded a searchable ACCESS database for this list HERE. [.mdb] I don't know if it will work for everyone. Good luck!
posted on Jul 24, 2008 - View this thread

The Historic American Sheet Music archive at the Duke University Library has over 3000 pieces published in the United States available online, from the 1850s up to 1920. Composers represented include well-known names such as Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, and John Philip Sousa. All the music is now in the public domain, and may be printed and performed freely. [Note: Language or stereotypes may occasionally be NSFW.]
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

"New Deal Programs: Selected Library of Congress Resources was created to serve as a starting point for research using Library of Congress collections of New Deal program materials." Includes links to numerous collections of digitized materials, including photos, posters, music, manuscripts and more.
posted on Jul 15, 2008 - View this thread

The Sidney D Gamble Photograph Collection at Duke University consists of about 5,000 newly digitised pictures, taken predominantly in China between 1917 and 1932. Browse by subject, category or location tags. Photos taken in 1908 are to be added in the future. [via]
posted on Jul 9, 2008 - View this thread

I Love My Life The Way It Is. A collection-in-progress of unscratched scratch-off lottery tickets, the project is the brainchild of Ali Alvarez, who hopes to collect at least 8000 tickets, enough to fill a 12x12 room from floor to ceiling. Alvarez is soliciting donations of unscratched tickets from volunteers around the world, and has posted pictures of some of the ones received so far. The idea of an unscratched lottery ticket makes some people "a little crazy," but Alvarez hopes the collection will cause people to explore the ideas of "getting your hopes high, dreaming, escaping, and then usually being let down." Via.
posted on Jun 14, 2008 - View this thread

From a .com to a .info netting the price of a Westinghouse (R-Skirt) "Telluride" Type B. SB (part of the Greatest Insulator Find in the History of the Hobby). via Zoltan Drinoczi. [previously]
posted on May 21, 2008 - View this thread

From Aircraft to Zodiac, from Tricks to Trucks, the Zippo Gallery has something for everyone. (Well, everyone who likes Zippos, anyway.)
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - View this thread

Do you love music? Do you have at least 3 million dollars? If you answered "yes" to these questions then you may be interested in bidding on "The World's Greatest Music Collection." (single link to ebay auction)
posted on Feb 18, 2008 - View this thread

Club Little Gun, a bunch of tiny guns built into things from rings to crosses. Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones, the whip pistol. via
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

DDR-Modell Autos.info meticulously catalogs radio controlled and flywheel powered cars made by East German (DDR) toy makers such as Presu, Elmes, MSW, Anker, Piko, Gevo, Plasticart and Sommermeyer.
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

The Ephemera Society was glancingly mentioned prior, but deserves a better mention. It includes:
—An exhibit, an article, and links to Michael Ragsdale's 9/11 ephemera.
—A history of Coca-cola print ephemera.
—An article by Will Shortz on the ephemeral history of the crossword.
—Articles from the Louisiana Library Association's journal issue on ephemera, including Principles for Organizing an Ephemera Collection and an Overview of Political Ephemera.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

Man, this guy really likes pencils.
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

The Art of Sharpening the Pencil (You've GOT to check out the bizarre pencil sharpener at the bottom of the page. "You'll poke your eye out!").
posted on Oct 23, 2007 - View this thread

This is James Savage's spare room, which contains one hundred Apple computers. He has more than 150 in his house and all of them are working perfectly, from an Apple II+ and a Lisa to the latest MacBook Pro. (One entrant among many in Gizmodo's Best Computer Rig contest.)
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

"My Star Wars Collection" A devoted fan made tiny pixel illustrations of his collection of over 500 Star Wars action figures. [via]
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Mutatoes is a photographic collection by artist Uli Westphal of non-standard fruits and vegetables found at Berlin groceries and farmers' markets. The distorted, the discolored, the bumpy, the stumpy, the coiled and the conjoined all get star treatment. (Flash site)
posted on Jul 27, 2007 - View this thread

CRUD CRUD, brief reviews from a thrift store record collection. Also, Gibble Gabble, spoken-word record reviews, from the same collector.
posted on Jun 8, 2007 - View this thread

On-board Safety Cards Collection ...and don't miss The international women of aircraft safety cards. [via Travelers Diagram]
posted on Mar 22, 2007 - View this thread

The Rare Book Room presents about 400 of the world's greatest books from a variety of libraries in high resolution format. For some samples, check out: Apianus (Astronomicum Caesareum); Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience); Braccelli (Bizzarie di Varie Figure); Catesby (The Natural History of Carolina...); Dürer (De Symmetria...); Colonna (Hypnerotomachia Poliphili). And on and on. The interface is great (use arrow far left at top for larger page image) but there's a slight browser resize in FFox. A couple of author names are placeholders for future uploads it seems. [via]
posted on Mar 12, 2007 - View this thread

Esquire sends out 250 napkins to writers across America - from prolific novelists to those finishing off first works. Nearly a hundred respond back - from sex to frustration, poetry to twisted liaisons, even a mini book and plans for murder.
posted on Feb 27, 2007 - View this thread

Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1
posted on Jan 24, 2007 - View this thread

A periodic table of visualization methods.
posted on Jan 7, 2007 - View this thread

Boris Plotnikoff's Gasmask Collection, Heavy Rubber.
posted on Nov 11, 2006 - View this thread

Please throw this away! Vintage photo collector finds cache of 1950s-era spanking fetish photos. Collection included newspaper clippings about spanking and a letter from a very naughty girl. Most of the images are pretty innocent by modern standards, but at the bottom of the last link some are NSFW. Enjoy!
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales asks: Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license? Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it. And they do.
posted on Oct 22, 2006 - View this thread

Picture-History.com has "thousands of the most important photographs of the last 150 years", organised by collections and themes.
posted on Sep 21, 2006 - View this thread

Inspired by a convention in 1999, First Day covers, and his grandfather's autograph collection, Jeremy Adolphson sends off 4x6 index cards to various artists with return postage, hoping for a doodle. 5 years on, he has sixty-five galleries (some NSFW) worth of art to share.
posted on Aug 29, 2006 - View this thread

Sechtl-Vosecek. A collection of photographs taken over the last 150 years are in the process of being digitized. Check out the Sokol costume ball Šibřinky or take a trip from Bechyně to Tábor. Also available is a selection concentrating on Bukhara from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection. And much, much, more.
posted on Apr 17, 2006 - View this thread

For some, it's an obsession. For others it's just a hobby. Some people just buy it, others make it. Some live to consume it, but sometimes it's not made to consume; just to collect. It's funny, racy, generic and specific. In any case, it's an interesting reflection of current events and popular culture.
posted on Apr 2, 2006 - View this thread

Igor Sergeev has been collecting full, unopened cigarette packs from all over the world since 1976. His site now features over 21,000 photos, arranged in alphabetical order by brand name. Some are fascinating simply for the way they differ from what we're used to seeing at the 7-11; others are straight-up nine kinds of awesome.
posted on Mar 20, 2006 - View this thread

Limited Edition Candy. By our very own interrobang
posted on Feb 8, 2006 - View this thread

The Roots Music Listening Room for Collectors of American Roots Music. We feature Old-Time Strings Bands, Ballads & Breakdowns, Early Blues & Gospel, some Early Jazz, Vintage Country Gospel, Early Bluegrass and various Ethnic Musics played by immigrants to America. Most of this material was originally recorded in the 1920s through the early 1950s and was first issued on 78 RPM Records. (Out of consideration for others only download about 15-20 songs in one day.)
posted on Feb 7, 2006 - View this thread

comic pinbacks : a free reference and research guide for vintage comic pinbacks from the 1890s to the 1950s.
posted on Nov 16, 2005 - View this thread

Odd Books dedicated to that constant source of delight and wonder, the second-hand bookshop. (via)
posted on Jul 15, 2005 - View this thread

I LOVE SHREDDED WHEAT: A collectible site for The shredded Wheat Company, niagara Falls, NY - and its predecessors and successors - [A collectors’ Site, with no connection to any corporation]
posted on Apr 2, 2005 - View this thread

Collect Britain 'presents 90,000 images and sounds from the British Library, chosen to evoke places in the UK and beyond.' Dialects, gardens, sketches, stamps, and all kinds of stuff.
posted on Mar 4, 2005 - View this thread

"Behold, I am the Collector! ...And I have come to add you to my collection!"
posted on Feb 24, 2005 - View this thread

Imitation chicken. Kennedy Fried Chicken, JFK Fried Chicken, J. F. Kennedy Fried Chicken, Kantacky Fried Chicken, et al. [via cardhouse]
posted on Dec 30, 2004 - View this thread

Miss Abigail's Time Warp "old advice for contemporary dilemmas"...
posted on Dec 28, 2004 - View this thread

Australian Snapshots is one of those "give lots of people disposable cameras to take photos of their lives during a particular time" photo collections. In this case, the pictures were taken by Australians in regional areas during the 2004 Olympics. I know there are lots of these projects around, but they can often turn the ordinary into interesting or capture those things iconic to that community.
posted on Dec 10, 2004 - View this thread

The Golden Age of Iron Men - Online Physical Culture Musem

Complete scans of an odd and very large collection of muscle/fitness publications and profiles of the authors, all from the early part of the century.
posted on Oct 9, 2004 - View this thread

*Quite too Utterly Utter!* We all know about the Victoria & Albert Museum site, but did you know about the online V&A Access to Images? I didn't, and I've just spent a couple of happy hours poring over it. Type in any search term, and you are likely to get some interesting results. "Woodblock", for example, returns 16 pages, and "fairytale" nets you three pages of interesting 19th century marionettes. Here's somthing amusing to kick you off...
posted on Sep 3, 2004 - View this thread

The AOL CD Preservation Guild & Museum
posted on Aug 31, 2004 - View this thread

Banner Ad Museum Can't get enough of those 'hit the bullseye' banner ads? Don't feel you've seen enough ads today? Head on over to the internet banner ad collection!
posted on Aug 24, 2004 - View this thread

Stewardess Uniform Collection.
posted on Jul 26, 2004 - View this thread

This should get your goat: Insanely hard sliding block puzzles. (Can't take the heat? Maybe you'd like to try an insanely hard sliding door maze instead?)
posted on Jun 22, 2004 - View this thread

The Old Car Manual Project
posted on Jun 1, 2004 - View this thread

the candy wrapper museum
posted on May 31, 2004 - View this thread