I am a collector at heart.  Right now my biggest collecting hobby is vintage dolls, mainly 1950s dolls, such as Cosmopolitan Ginger (my favorite).  I also collect vintage and antique books, particularly children’s books with nice illustrations.

I wish I had gotten into collecting things for free, though, like the author of Collections of Nothing.  Talk about inventive collectors and unique collections!  Food labels?  Who would have thought?

I remember as a preteen or teenager when I started to collect the rings off of soda cans.  That didn’t last very long, probably owing to the fact that I only went through a short period where I drank soda at all.  And then during my senior year of college, my roommate and I decided to start the obligatory beer cap collection.  We pressed about a half a dozen into the ceiling before we gave up on that one.  It’s hard to get a healthy collection of beer caps going when you usually drink what’s on tap!

I can think of all kinds of weird collections you could start that wouldn’t cost a lot of money, but would require a lot of hunting (the best part, for me).  For instance, you could collect discarded vintage or antique gauges, such as flow meters — not those fancy new unit mass flow controllers, but the old ones with the big dials, like what you find on the water lines in old houses.  Another possibility is to collect interesting bottles, such as liquor bottles or perfume bottles.  Many people also collect everyday things, such as movie tickets or odd coins they come across.

Collecting doesn’t require money, although if you choose an expensive collection, it can create quite the dent in your finances!

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