Hobbies: Collectibles - What do you collect?

[Brian Fein]

About 4 years ago I made a post on here about collecting, and at that time, I didn't know what a spiral my life would head down from there.  Since that post, I've amassed a collection of roughly 1300 Funko Pops and a number of other "designer" toys.  Toy collecting brings me joy and sometimes sends me on a nostalgic path to my childhood.  But it has a price.  Some designer collectibles sell at retail above $100 most of them are limited in edition sizes to under 1000 made.   Some of them resell in the secondary market above $500.  And they take up a lot of space, especially if you want to display your collection to enjoy it, rather than storing them in a storage unit in plastic tote bins.

I always enjoy watching people talk about stuff they are into  So, what kind of things do you collect?  Feel free to show off your collection...  

[Tenshot13]

I used to collect comic books, baseball cards, football cards and other memorabilia.  I've got an Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, a Hank Aaron card later in his career, Frank Thomas rookie card and his autograph, Nolan Ryan autographed baseball, a common value card that looks like a Honus Wagner era card...was worth about $15 when I got it, don't know now.  

I used to have a plaque that had an autographed picture of Dan Marino with a little card holder that had his rookie card in it.  I hung it up on my wall when I lived with three other guys in college.  There were always parties and stuff, and I guess someone came in my room and stole it off my wall.  I still get sick about that one.

[Sunstroke]

I have a pretty decent-sized baseball card collection, with a few that are probably starting to get valuable. I collect bladed weapons as well...not the ornamental types, but serviceable blades and throwing knives.  I also have a small collection (25-30) of NFL jerseys of my favorite players.

I used to have a plaque that had an autographed picture of Dan Marino with a little card holder that had his rookie card in it.  I hung it up on my wall when I lived with three other guys in college.  There were always parties and stuff, and I guess someone came in my room and stole it off my wall.  I still get sick about that one.

Man, I feel your pain...

I had a pretty decent comic book collection started about the time I went active duty, and left a box filled with plastic sheathed comics in a file box in my mom's place, with a request to "please hold on to that until I get home." Yes...she forgot and tossed the box.  Included in the garbage that day: Issues #1-#5 of Peter Parker The Spectacular Spiderman and most of the Avengers comic books from the late 70's.

I'm still shaking my head over that, almost 40 years later.

[Brian Fein]

I had a pretty decent comic book collection started about the time I went active duty, and left a box filled with plastic sheathed comics in a file box in my mom's place, with a request to "please hold on to that until I get home." Yes...she forgot and tossed the box.  Included in the garbage that day: Issues #1-#5 of Peter Parker The Spectacular Spiderman and most of the Avengers comic books from the late 70's.

This hurts me to read.  Sorry bro.

Re: baseball cards - I've noticed the market has changed here.  All of them have become pretty worthless unless they are the super rare specialty inserts, or they are graded 9 or above.  I have Griffey rookies, Frank Thomas, Jeter, etc.  All of them sell on ebay for 2-5 bucks, but if you get one that's graded Gem Mint 10, it could be a few hundred.  Grading, IMO, has runied sports card collecting.

[Dave Gray]

I collect Admiral Ackbar stuff on a shelf in my office.  I don't buy new stuff very often and none of it is particularly expensive.  (Most expensive item is probably $300).  Some of the stuff is rare and cool.

I have a little collection of Star Wars ships.  I don't collect them for value -- just because the fleet looks cool.  Each ship cost about $5 and they don't make them anymore.

As for sports cards, I have a lot of stuff that I collected when I was a kid.  I gave a ton of it away a few years ago.  I recently sold some of the stuff, too.  I sold about 50 Shaq rookie cards for just over $100.  That was tough but needed to be done.  I worked so hard as a kid, and spent so much chasing that stuff down.  Now, they have essentially no value.

I really try not to collect things at this stage in my life.  ...I don't mind collecting things that I use, so long as I'm not afriad of value, wear, or things breaking.

[Dolphster]

I don't actively collect anything anymore.  But I still have a large collection of baseball cards (like several of you mentioned) that has everything from my older brother's cards from the 1950s up until around 2000.   They are in boxes in the closet of one of the spare bedrooms.  It has probably been 15 years since I even took any of them out of the boxes and looked at them.  Since we don't have any kids to pass them down to, I should probably just sell them to get rid of them, but I don't even feel like starting to go through all the work involved in selling them.  Most of them aren't in "new" condition so it isn't like they are worth a goldmine anyway. 

[Dave Gray]

Since we don't have any kids to pass them down to, I should probably just sell them to get rid of them, but I don't even feel like starting to go through all the work involved in selling them.  Most of them aren't in "new" condition so it isn't like they are worth a goldmine anyway. 

I knew there wasn't value in selling a lot of the stuff I had, but there was mental freedom from not having to cart them around anymore.

I've held on to those Shaq cards for damn near 30 years...and for what?  I was happy to rid myself of the stress of having to store them, move them, make sure they didn't get damaged, etc.

[Dolphster]

I knew there wasn't value in selling a lot of the stuff I had, but there was mental freedom from not having to cart them around anymore.

I've held on to those Shaq cards for damn near 30 years...and for what?  I was happy to rid myself of the stress of having to store them, move them, make sure they didn't get damaged, etc.

I did take notice of your post about that.  We are looking to retire and move in about 4 years so I will definitely sell or give them away by then.  I'm not going to lug them around for another move.  Especially since we are most likely going to downsize into a smaller house and won't have as much storage space. 

[Spider-Dan]

I collect retro video gaming gear.

I lost my first game system & games (Atari 2600) while I was still young, and I no longer have my original NES, but I do still have my original NES games along with every system I've gotten since then.  Over the past 5 years or so, I've spent a lot of effort restoring my original systems and making sure they're functioning properly.  I've also picked up a few games (like Super Mario All-Stars/World on SNES) that I never owned myself, but played a lot.  Although I've had access to all of these games on emulators for decades, there is something to be said for playing on the original hardware.

That brings me to another part: these old game systems are all designed to connect to analog tube TVs.  When you connect them to modern HDTVs, the video is frequently distorted and/or laggy (with a significant delay between when you push the button and when you see something happen on screen).  I've done a HUGE amount of research on not only how to display these systems with minimal lag, but also on the different types of video connections that exist and the relative quality of each.  Older gamers remember the standard RF connector where you picked channel 3/4 to play, and everyone is familiar with the standard red/white/yellow composite video connection.  Some of you may even remember S-Video.  But I've learned that in Europe, there is a type of connector called SCART that was very popular:



And it turns out that this connector is MUCH, MUCH better than what we had in the US.  With the right cables, SCART video is extremely crisp and clean; every line and pixel is crystal clear and razor sharp.  For comparison, here is a picture of SNES Zelda through a (yellow) composite cable, and here is it through a SCART cable.

Similarly, there are companies that now make replacement displays for old portable gaming consoles like the Game Boy, using the same kind of screens that are used in modern smartphones.  The LCD screens of the day had poor viewing angles and really bad blurring during movement.  I replaced the screen on my old Atari Lynx, and this is the result:

[Brian Fein]

^^^ really awesome, love seeing stuff like this.  thank you for sharing...

[Dave Gray]

I have gotten into retro gaming a bit lately.  I'm not really about having the OG system, so long as the emulation thing works really well.  I've been on the NES and SNES classic and have gotten some good playtime from them.