Collectors’ Quotes

“I collect old portraits. They're all just interesting pictures of people, and you just kind of wonder who they were and what they were. There's a guy - I don't know who he is, but he's wearing a suit. He's got his arms folded, and he looks like he sold insurance or something. I'm just wondering why someone painted him.
”Ellen DeGeneres

 

“I collect records. And cats. I don't have any cats right now. But if I'm taking a walk and I see a cat, I'm happy.”
"Haruki Murakami

 

“I don't collect any memorabilia. I wish I'd have kept everything I had. But who knew you had to keep it. Just gave it away. And we lost so much and we didn't look after a lot of it.”
Ringo Starr

 

“But in truth, should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.”
Christopher Columbus

 

“I collect watches because I'm always late, and I need to know exactly how late I'm going to be - in order to come up with a good excuse.”
Colin Hanks

 

“I've always been an obsessive collector of things. Richard Briers collects stamps. I collect cars and guns, which are much more expensive, and much more difficult to store.”
Michael Gambon

- - -

I spent a weekend out at the House again. Two years we’ve spent rummaging through that house, and there are still surprises hiding… I’ve told you before that I found lots of still valid stamps 1½-2 years ago while going through dad’s study. About three months ago I decided to use those for postcrossing (link to my first post about that back in May).  

This weekend I decided to look through some boxes we found later, also related to dad’s stamp collection. They seemed to contain mostly first-day covers and foreign stamps. The main reason I started looking through them was that I was curious if there might also be some postcards. Very few of those – BUT in among all the envelopes of foreign stamps (mostly from the rest of the Nordic countries) I found more unused Swedish stamps as well. And when I say more, I mean lots. Probably at least as many more as those already found!

I can maybe (sort of) understand the kind of stamp collecting where you put “one of each” into albums in some sort of order. Here, however, we are talking stamps kept in their original little semitransparent envelopes (usually two of each issue/booklet), each stored with the brochure they were ordered from, in the envelope they came in; and the envelopes in boxes; and the boxes stacked in a wardrobe…

I’m not a stamp collector. I may be committing some kind of sacrilege, but what I do with stamps is (re)sort  them according to nominal value, and some perhaps according to topic – so that I know where to find them when I want to use them.

Now please excuse me. I have some postcards to write…

Postcrossing – The First Card

Postcrossing is a project/website that allows people to randomly exchange postcards all across the globe, for free – “well, almost free!” – i.e. no extra cost besides the cards and stamps you have to buy in order to be able to send your own.

The main idea is that if you send a postcard, you will receive one back from another registered Postcrosser somewhere in the world, but not the same person that you sent your own card to.

(For details about how it works, click the link at the top of this post to the Postcrossing website.)

Friend and fellow blogger Scriptor Senex in England has been writing enthusiastically about the fun of postcrossing for over a year now, and more recently I noticed that Doreen had joined too. I’ve been thinking about it for a while but finally decided a couple of weeks ago.

Since 15 May I’ve sent eleven cards off out into the world and today I received my first one back:

Thatched roof cottage in Süderdeich, North Frisia (postcard)

I do not have the ambition to blog every card received but I decided to wait to write about this at all until I had received my first card (and then I would). So I was delighted when it dropped in today and turned out to be such a lovely one and absolutely blogworthy! :)

I put a few different suggestions on my PC profile and doors/windows one of them, since they were always among my favourites; so it was very fitting that the first card I received through postcrossing had both! Many thanks to Hanna in Germany! (who is not likely to read this, as I have not linked my blog to my PC profile; but I did sent her a thank you message via the website when registering the card as received)

What made me decide to join was really all the stamps I found while going through my father’s study after he died. In the past he collected stamps and it turned out he continued to subscribe to new releases long after he’d lost the energy to ‘do’ anything with them when they arrived (like organize them into albums etc).

So I took home all such stamps that I found  (i.e. the ones from the last decade or so that had not been put into albums) and put them in a drawer of my own… Then recently I sat down and started sorting them out according to value rather than any other system; and realised I had A LOT that could be used for foreign postage.

As in my opinion stamps were made to travel, and I also quite enjoy buying postcards but feel the same about those (i.e. that they were made to travel) – and at the same time email (and blogging) seems to have taken over most of my regular correspondence these days – well, Postcrossing seemed like the answer. Let the stamps go travelling and collect the recieved postcards instead :) … I think that suits me better!

Question: Do you collect anything? What?

A Nice Pot Of Tea – Or Two

I have been maintaining lately* that I’m not really a collector of anything, but it seems I may have been mistaken. As from today, I have to admit myself a collector of shiny brown teapots. Not that I intend to add further to the collection, mind you! I hope two will be sufficient for a while…

The thing is, I wanted a new small “tea for two” teapot to replace an old one (of different kind) that recently got a crack in it.

Visiting my favourite tea shop today, I spied with my little eye a small pot high up on the top shelf, which looked like a miniature version of my bigger old brown one (which I’ve had for 35 years, if I’m not mistaken). And I thought: That might be nice, a big one and a small one of the same kind…

When I got the “little one” home I had to laugh though, because it was really hard to tell any difference between them. Looking at the picture above, which one do you think looks bigger? Actually the new one was bigger than it had seemed to me in the shop; while the old one was smaller than I remembered it. There is a slight difference in size, though. The new one holds three mugs of tea, the old one four! (The one closest to the camera is the new one! Perspective plays its part too, in the photo...)

Ah well. At least the new one fits on the low shelf in the cupboard (which the “big” one doesn’t, with the lid on).

* Friday My Town Shoot Out, Feb 4th – Collections

Linking to Weekend Reflections # 72