What non paper items do you collect

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Posted By: Mike

I'm a vintage card collector who began with a passion in the late seventies. Like a lot of us I always collected vintage, but was suckered in my the lure of making a fortune from Mike Greenwell, Don Mattingly, and Greg Jeffries rookie cards. In fact I traded a NM Nolan Ryan Rookie for a Don Mattingly and Tony Gwynn rookie back in 1987 (Yes...I was an idiot...but at the time it looked like a good deal). Fortunately I didn't have any similar lapses in judgement and continued to collect the old with the new. In the early 90s however I lost a great deal of interest in cards (if you can call refractors, double inverted sumo duck squat idols, and triple platinum dog turds cards)and began collecting gloves, bats, pennants, old photos and anything oddball. I really enjoy the display possibities and variety available. I still purchase cards from time to time, but prefer memorabilia (only vintage). I'm curious what you all like to collect other than baseball cards.

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Posted By: jay behrens

although I don't collect any non-card items, per se, I used to have a massive felt pennant collection and fairly decent WS and AS game press pin collection. Other than that, I didn't collect many non-card items. I had a number of Sports Impressions statues, but sold all of them off, except for my Will Clark which is #1 of 1200. Should have sold the damn thing for $2k when I got offered it, but he was still looking like a future HOFer. Besides, I owned all the other single digit ones and made a handsome sum off them, so I could afford to be greedy. The Josh Gibson UD statue is really impressive. Only bad thing, if you can call it that, is that they don't fit in my old Sports Impression glass cases.

Jay

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Posted By: warshawlaw

1971, specifically.

I still remember how much fun it was to pull them from the packs.

Other than that, I've mostly gotten out of non-paper stuff in favor of cards.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Just for fun, I collect different $1 chips when I go to Vegas each year. They are very colorful and attractive and make nice cheap souvenirs of the trip (since the craps tables eat up the rest of my money, I usually don't have more than a buck or two for souvenirs anyway )

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Posted By: hankron

I think I know my Topps and Bowmans and SSPCs as well as anyone, but I collect almost exclusively rare fashion photos and fashion advertising display pieces.

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Posted By: Julie

1955 Brooklyn Dodgers World Series Press Pin(A Dodger's cap on a white baseball)
1974 As World Series Pin( three leaf clover with wins in '72, '73 '74)
1989 As World Series Pin (elephant and stuff--not too original)
Pin put out when Henderson broke the stolen base record. (henderson holding base above head)
Lovely Dummy Hoy pin (from when he was inducted into the Ohio hall of fame? Very pretty.)


1 1955 Jackie Robinson Topps red metal pin.
1 Domino Disk Christy Mathewson--whoops--paper center.
1 P2 Jennings (large)
1 Diamond Gum Eddie Plank pin.
1) '30s Gehrig pin--"National Game"?
2 baseballs: 1 signed by Willy Mays and Juan Marachal--and then Al Lopez. Then someone told me it was no good anymore because the damned Yankee had been added. One of the '49 Yankees, fading rapidly. Joe D on thr sweet spot.

Lots of beautiful opals, ivory, tiny rubies and diamonds, some turquiose, garnets, amathysts, tourmaline, carnelian, and a small emerald, a tiny emerald and a citrine. Set in gold and silver.

A rock collection with crystal and amathyst geodes, garnet, an ivory carving, foolsgold, opal, agates, etc. And things I have forgotten the names of!

Paintings and drawings by my friends Ben Fisher (baseball and otherwise), Alex Peter, Carolyn McLauchlin, and somewhat more famous friends of my Mom's; my mother's great photos, especially of black people in Selma, Alabama in 1937 (but also of her kids--mostly naked!). Many baseball photos, including 10 or more original Conlons.
My mom was a geologist and a photographer, and also loved beautiful jewelry.

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Posted By: Gary B.

Actually, getting into vintage card collecting is a very new thing for me after years being out of card collecting.

Besides card I collect late 60's psychedelic and 70's progressive music, and late 60's psychedelic posters. I also dabble in old American coins, definitely a type collector with those.

I'm also into collecting all manner of rocks, crystals, stones, etc. - this is especially nice as it's the one collection I share with my wife. My wife isn't into baseball, but I did recently buy a book called something like "100 Greatest Baseball Heros" that lives in the bathroom so she actually has starting reading it (ahem) sporadically, and actually finds it interesting, especially the older players, and as the book is from 73 or so, there are no modern day players at all...

i have a large collection of beanie baby bears and pokemon cards (long story) in several boxes in my garage, so if anyone wants to buy them at a good price for your kids or whatever, drop me a line...

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Posted By: Max Weder

I collect baseball, particularly early fiction, and am determined to keep Hal's interest in baseball books limited to non-fiction (unless he wants to buy my doubles)

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Posted By: leon

I collect tobacco stuff where it relates to cards. I also collect other things that relate to the companies that made cards ie... a Croft's bottle, a Blomes Chocolate bag, some Schutter Johnson stuff, a Briggs box, some Fro-Joy stuff, a George C Miller tin...ya'll get the idea....best regards

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Other than cards I'm working on the BF2 Felt Pennant set and have a decent collection of signed photos as well as an ever expanding library of baseball books. I also have an Al Simmons game used bat, and would eventually like to pick up some from other players that are personal favorites (Foxx, Speaker, Heilmann, George Brett).

Other than baseball memoribilia, I also collect games from the original Nintendo system - I never got rid of the ones I had as a kid and I started buying them again once I discovered EBay.

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Posted By: jay behrens

bah, Nintendo is too new. You need to collect old Atari and Coleco games

Jay

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Posted By: Gary B.

but I also collect short story collections by sci-fi writer R.A. Lafferty - brilliantly demented stuff.

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Posted By: jay behrens

(raises his hand and nods in agreement). When you own a gaming and comic book store you tend to have a lot of people who read more than most people, especially sci-fi, fantasy and horror. Many of our customers were big fans of Zelazny, Lovecraft and Lafferty. I had never heard of lafferty until then and am better for it. Great reads.


Jay

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Posted By: Julie

"The Dunwitch Horror." Also Machen: "The Novel of the White Powder" "The Great God Pan."

Really KINKY stuff!

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Posted By: Julie

..afew of them.

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Posted By: Scott M

Baseball wise, a lot of the ones already mentioned here... P-2 pins (need 5 more to go), Topps Coins, a jersey or two.

I had a neat collection of shot glasses from different NHL and MLB venues I've visited in the past but most of them broke during a move and I had to throw them out. I particularly liked the ones which had measures listed as single, double, triple, home run or 1st period, 2nd period, 3rd period, overtime

Leon, if you are reading this and don't mind sharing, I would love to see a picture/scan of your Crofts bottle.

Scott

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Posted By: nickinvegas

I also collect:

-Coins-Mostly because my Dad collects them and he knows nothing about baseball.
-Vintage Tin Toys & curious george stuff(supposedly for my kids)
-Nascar Die Cast
-Leave it to Beaver stuff

I know, that is a crazy list of stuff!

Nick

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Posted By: jay behrens

Non-baseball stuff, I have massive collection of action figures. At one point I had all the vintage Star Wars figures and vehicles. The whole collection of assorted toys topped out at over 2,000 figures at one point. Now I just have all the cool anime robots, Simpsons figures and a few other assorted toys I still love. My old Banana Splits collection is almost nonexistant now. Most of it ended up in the Hana-Barbera archives. And then there is collection of DVDs that is pushing almost 250 movies now.

Jay

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Well, the passes are plastic, anyway.

My Dad's company used to be outside PR counsel for the Academy, and since he was the head of the LA office, he not only went to the Oscars every year, I got hired to clean out the archives periodically and as a bonus I got to pick through all of the leftover press and other materials and scavenge what I wanted. The first year he did this, I went through forty file cabinets of "junk" and went home with my car filled to the roof with stuff, which I gradually have sold or traded off for cards. At one point I owned two of THE envelopes (best picture Chariots of Fire and best actress Katharine Hepburn), a complete run of programs for the 40 years after WWII, a few dozen tickets and hundreds of other passes, ribbons, buttons, etc. Today, I am down to several programs with my Dad's name in them (which I am saving for my daughter), a nice ticket collection, a nice run of invitations, and many rare buttons and press passes. Oh, and hundreds of photographs, negatives,slides and transparencies. Then there are the autographs: my Dad got me backstage for a couple of Oscars rehearsals and I got a lot of nice sigs--Johnny Carson, Gene Hackman, Roger Moore, Gene Kelly, Cheech and Chong, Sylvester Stallone, etc.

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Posted By: Kevin O

I love vintage bats, especially the handmade/homemade variety. Most of them I've picked up for around $10-25. I have hundreds of them, and the wild idea that someday I'm going to use them to build a fishing cabin on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, eh. I'll probably have to go insane first, but I really don't see that as much of a problem.

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Posted By: hankron

Kevin, my mom was born and raised in the UP (Munising) and many of my relatives are still there. My grandfather was a fisherman on Lake Superior. I visited every summer growing up.

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Posted By: Rich Klein

I personally collect items relating to my birthday, where I went to school and all sorts of hobby junk.

This does not include the 4 bookcases of autographed books.

And while not a collection, I am such an accumulator that I have way too many CD's and radio "air-checks". And if you all want to go into a hobby with good fiscal constraint, trust me -- radio "air-checks" is a good one

Rich

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Posted By: ramram

I collect civil war diaries as well as other historically interesting diaries. Funny thing, I got into them at the time of Rucker's auction about ten years ago when I won a civil war diary that had baseball content (played by the soldiers). At that time I had been collecting a few OJ's and other 19th century baseball for a couple of years. I then quit the baseball collecting and began heavily collecting civil war diaries and images. I have since got out of the images but still collect all kinds of original handwritten diaries. I've been through well over a hundred but have slowed down some now that I have jumped back into vintage baseball.

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Posted By: Aaron M.

I collect unused vintage ONL and OAL baseballs from the 1920's - 1940's. Also have several game used jerseys and caps from the 1940's - 1960's, along with an assortment of vintage pinbacks and a various oddball items (pennants, dishes, Hartlands, etc.). My favorites, however, are my collection of built-up 1960's Aurora "Greatest Moments in Sports" models.