Entertainment For Lively Minds
Where will you be when the Antiques Roadshow rolls into town?
I read with amusement recently, that former Blake's 7 star Paul Darrow buys and sells Whimsies over the internet.
Remember Whimsies? They were poorly made ceramic miniature animals that your sister collected and that relatives gave you at Christmases and birthdays. We were drowning under them at one time, but we never actually collected them.
But I have been a collector of all sorts of things in my time: stamps, matchboxes, sugar wrappers, international Coke cans, sweet wrappers, records, books, advertising displays - you name it, I've embarked on it, but I've never seen anything through, and so have a houseful of bits of things but no full collection of anything to curate. I've never felt that committed.
I've got hundreds of records and I've done a lot of buying and selling and it is a collection, but I don't specialise in any particular artist or genre so I couldn't legitimately call myself a collector.
What about you? Proud of your prize collection of fruit and veg pencil-top men? Your china thimbles the talk of the town? Are you a Tremeloes completist? Or perhaps you've taken your 1970s crisp packets onto The One Show?
Please share.
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Matchboxes as well....
phillumenist of the first class I was. Used to go to trade fairs and everything. Still got a nice little collection somewhere in the loft.
My sister didn't collect Whimsies...
I did! Although only got to about 15 before I got bored. My niece has some of them now (the ones that weren't broken or used as bridesmaids when Sindy and Action Man got married). She proudly shows them to her friends (and I quote directly): "Look at what my lame Aunt used to do when she was little!" Cue huges gales of teen laughter and back to the happy slapping or whatever the little ones do nowadays.
Are they worth anything? If so, I'm going to claim them back.
I looked on eBay
Really not worth getting out of bed for I'm afraid.
15
This means 15 Whimsies, not that I reached the age of 15 before stopping collecting them. That would be bizarre.
Besides, by the time I was 15 I had already discovered John Players and snogging.
Records mostly
But I've done matchboxes, shaped soaps, badges, bubblegum cards. Although since the age of 3, American comics have gripped me as much as music.
Superhero stuff, DC, Marvel and other publishers. I've still got the first Batman comic I was given although the covers are missing (yes, I have bought a replacement copy with covers intact)..and certain panels unlock retro-neural pathways in the same way hearing a long forgotten song does.
Just a section of the collection - five decades worth of Green Lantern...
One my greatest scoops happened, last year. After being spooked by a New English Library hardback called Dracula I swapped it with someone in '75. Regretted it the minute it had gone and spent 30 years looking for a copy. There's not a sniff of Dracula in it, but it's a anthology of heavy-seventies, post-hippie horror. Two days after locating a copy on eBay, I found all original 12 issues just up the road at Comicana (with posters and bagged them for £40). You can grab a peek at the panels here...
http://vaultofevil.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi?board=tomb&action=print&n...
Unlock retro-neural pathways
What a wonderfully expressive phrase - can I pinch it for appropriate nostalgic conversations please!
It's just the feeling I had when I opened up a Playhour Annual from a about 1962 and saw the story about Gulliver the Guinea Pig preparing to blast off into space in his spaceship made from a tin can. The memory of it pinged a door open and transported me straight back to my 5 year old self.
American comics
Another two-year affair with me too and they were quite hard to find in those days. Sold loads on eBay and they went really well, unsurprisngly.
Ruth - feel free, it's all yours....
FC - did you ever dip into Forbidden Planet on Denmark St or Comic Showcase, Monmouth St?
The amount of bargains I passed by back then! The Green Lantern crucifixion cover - had me cringing a shoulder in 84, when I paid the high-end price of £2.95 for it (it now goes for £15 upwards). This was at a time when I would buy bagfuls of 60s/70s comics at 20p a pop - now selling at roughly £5-8 a-piece.
My biggest mistake though was outing all of my 2000ADs prog's 1 - 60 (with gifts) for a set of trading cards in the early 90s
Do you remember..
"Dark they were and golden eyed" shop in st annes court,round the corner from the Marquee. Had "Shades" record shop next door.
I used to go there!!!
I used to visit DTWAGE in the seventies, it was a must visit after seeing my Gran and Grandad who lived in Islington. It seeems like yesterday when I bought the giant-size Superman VS Spiderman.
It has a wiki page but I can't seem to get the link to work from here.
I remember...
buying a copy of the classic "Alternative London" in there around '78.Used to buy bootlegs in Shades as well. Remember the paintings of dead rock stars on the walls? Good memories.
I went to DTWAGE for the first time in the late 70s...
as my aunt knew a longhair who worked there. I bought a badge. It might have been this one...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvk/45387549/
DTWAGE
I remember shades and American CDs in long boxes, but not DTWAGE. There was another upstairs shop tucked in a small court yard off of Denmark St, where they took your bag (security reasons) and gave you half a playing card as a ticket...
On the subject of Treasury Editions 'Superman and Spiderman' There's a website celebrating them here...
http://www.treasurycomics.com/index.htm
PS have you checked the web for CBR/CBZ files. Almost every comic ever printed seems to have been scanned and saved as a CBR or CBZ file.
So you can replace all those missing/lost/sold issue on the net. Then download a Comic Reader for viewing these files on a PC. Or better yet an Android versh for reading on the move..
Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street
Ooh yes. As teenagers, me and my mates would travel up there once or twice a year to load up on US import Del Rey and Ace fantasy novels otherwise unobtainable to us.
I sold my comics there when I was 13 or so...
and that was how I started my record collection. I got £100, which was more money than I'd ever seen in my life or dreamt of possessing. I bought an OMD album, I seem to remember, amongst others.
"Everyone we know loves The Beano!"
I've a modest collection of Beano annuals taking up space at Mam and Dad's. Think I've got every one from the seventies, eighties and ninetie, plus one or two older ones. I started to lose interst when I realised just how blimmin' expensive the pre-seventies editions are. Plus, I think part of the thrill of collecting is finding a hidden treasure, getting a bargain from someone who doesn't know what they're selling. These days, everyone seems to know Beanos are collectible and slap a hefty price tag on as a result.
Oh, and...
several years ago I happily eBayed my childhood collections of Star Wars and Transformers figures to help bolster my Yamaha DTXplorer fund. Absolutely no regrets.
Buying and selling Whimsies...
is Avon's calling.
Cookery books.
I have well over two hundred. I do actually cook from them as well. OK, not all of them (I once bought a cookbook that was actually written in Swiss, which I don't even vaguely speak), and some certainly more than others.
You should meet my wife
She's not up to 200, but it's close. Picked up around the world, in foreign languages etc. But the good thing is we do use them.
She's a hoarder too. Our house is like a junk shop. But a good one.
I'm a hoarder too.
My house is like a junk shop. But a bad one. So I've been thoroughly decluttering recently, and actually it's a bit of a relief.
Delightfully, I'm in a recipe exchange programme with Ola Claesson*'s mother.
*OC being another poster on the board for anyone puzzled by the name
This decluttering project...
...no sign of the passports yet, I suppose?
You never know...
Not yet
However - excitingly - this morning I found the car handbooks and service books (they've been missing for two years, we've been unable to sell the car without them).
I will be
well out of town.