collecting madness Fourteen people who collect unusual items reveal their secret lusts — lusts that can never be satisfied!

Winnie Bauman
Angels of the World

Q: Which is your favorite?
A: A stained glass angel made by a friend.
Q: Any tales to tell?
A: We have a large angel cookie from Germany on our dining room wall.
Q: Where do you find angels?
A: I like to find angels that represent the area, such as a stained glass angel outlined in copper from Utah.
Q: Do you collect anything else?
A: My major interest is angels.
Q: What do people say?
A: How do you clean them?
Q: What have angels taught you?
A: That most of the people who collect angels are angelic.

Belva Green
Antique Comb Collectors Club
90 S. Highland, No. 1204, Tarpon Springs, FL 34689
[contact is now Theresa Bagasra]

Q: How did you begin?
A: I received my first one in 1947, then I found a pretty comb in 1951 in a $3 junk box.
Q: What's your favorite comb?
A: I prize the hair ornament that belonged to my mother.
Q: What happens when you die?
A: Who would want it? I'd like to donate it to a museum in my village in Michigan.
Q: How are the combs stored?
A: They're displayed on glass shelves. Everything is cataloged, sketched, photocopied, photographed and numbered.
Q: Any good stories?
A: I visited a comb museum in France once.
Q: Anything else?
A: I've learned about ancient world history from researching headdresses and have compiled a book, "The Comb Collectors Companion."
Q: What are you looking for?
A: An ivory fancy comb!
Q: What would you collect if you were starting over?
A: Something smaller, indestructible, less expensive and easier to care for. Maybe buttons?

Dwight Young
National Avon Collectors
P.O. Box 7006; Kansas City, MO 64134
[contact is now Connie Clark]
14,000 items

Q: How did you get started?
A: My wife Vera bought the Avon Gold Cadillac aftershave decanter for me in 1969.
Q: What happens when you die?
A: Our four children will take the collection.
Q: How are the items stored?
A: They're displayed in lighted show cases.
Q: What was your best find?
A: A California Perfume Company bottle (the original Avon name) at a flea market in Maine.
Q: Do you collect anything else?
A: Teddy bears, coins, bricks, barbed wire, miniature booze bottles and car banks.
Q: What do your friends say?
A: Most think it is a total waste of time and money.
Q: What has Avon taught you?
A: My dearest friends have been found through Avon collecting.
Q: Anything someone could give you that would make them a friend for life?
A: I do not establish friends from gifts.

Barb Brownlee
International Brick Collectors
3265 Hood Ct., Wichita, KS 67204
[contact is now Jim Graves]
4000 bricks

Q: How did you begin?
A: My husband Bill and I began collecting bricks in 1980. We were in Lawrence, Kansas, and found a brick in his father's garden.
Q: What's your favorite brick?
A: One that says "Don't Spit on the Sidewalk."
Q: What happens when you die?
A: It's a heavy hobby. When we moved, it cost more to move the bricks than our furniture. We plan to put them into our patio.
Q: What keeps you going?
A: We love to tell stories about liberating bricks. When hunting bricks you are usually in a rundown area of a city and strange people are wondering what you are up to.
Q: Any life lessons learned from bricks?
A: If you think you are the only one collecting a certain thing, there is always someone else out there thinking the same thing.

Merelaine Haskett
International Frog Collectors Club
P.O. Box 201413, Bloomington, MN 55420
[contact is now Linda Maher]
1500 items

Q: How did you begin?
A: I wrote a college research paper on frogs in 1961 and a friend gave me a frog that attached to a car's brake lights (the eyes lit up). My friends began calling me Froggy.
Q: How are the frogs stored?
A: I have them perched in bookcases and window sills and hanging from doorway frames in my living room, hall and kitchen.
Q: What will happen to your frogs when you die?
A: My brothers and nephews and niece may have it as part of their inheritance.
Q: Boast a little...
A: The Frog Fantasies Frog Museum and Gift Shop in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, has a pond named after me.
Q: What do people say?
A: Why frogs?
Q: What else would you collect?
A: Maybe teapots.

Chris Cutlass JeRue
Redline Hot Wheels
P.O. Box 14099, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
75 vehicles

Q: When did you get started with Hot Wheels?
A: 1968. That was the first Christmas they were released. I had a Blue Silhouette, but my mom threw it out.
Q: Which is your favorite?
A: Purple '32 Ford Vicky.
Q: How are they stored?
A: In a carpeted drawer in a closet of drawers. They're displayed by color as they best complement each other.
Q: Any good anecdotes?
A: I do not share those thoughts.
Q: Learn any life lessons from Hot Wheels?
A: I am reminded that people are more valuable than material objects as I witness others being hurt and causing pain.

Jo Ann Todd
American Collectors of Infant Feeders
215 Crepe Myrtle Ct., Greenville, SC 29607
[contact is now Teresa Davis]
7000 licenses

Q: What exactly do you collect?
A: Infant nursers, old infant food jars and tins, drugstore display cases, and items with baby bottles on them: postcards, advertising, figurines, wallpaper.
Q: How did you begin?
A: I started in 1973 when I asked at an antique shop to see an old clear glass turtle nurser from around 1890.
Q: What's your favorite item?
A: A Faultless Nipple Jar is the most expensive item. It held nipples for sale on the druggist's counter.
Q: What happens when you die?
A: A member of our group left instructions that her collection be sold as a whole. Her family wasn't able to do it.
Q: Does your groups have a newsletter?
A: It's called Keeping Abreast.
Q: How is your collection stored?
A: I have display cases in five rooms.
Q: Can you tell me a story?
A: The first artificial infant feeder was probably a cow's horn. A hole was made and a rag, chamois or sponge was tied on for the baby to suck on. Calves' teats also were used. This was 1000 to 2000 B.C.
Q: Do you collect anything else?
A: Early on it was dolls, then cats, then stamps, coins, owls, rocks. I'm a born gatherer.
Q: What do people say?
A: People are amazed because they have no idea of our history of infant feeding.
Q: What are you still looking for?
A: A clear glass turtle bottle with Mother's Darling I.D.CO (Indianapolis Drug Co).

Henry Keyes
International Society of Animal License Collectors
928 SR 2206, Clinton, KY 42031
[contact is now William J. Bone]
7000 licenses

Q: How did you get started?
A: We began in 1981 while looking for a collectible for my son. Then a friend gave me an older dog tag for Christmas.
Q: How are your tags stored?
A: They're kept in loose leaf binders in coin pockets.
Q: What do people say?
A: I used to get strange looks. Dog tags are more established now.
Q: What have dog tags taught you?
A: Collecting satisfies some itch, but it certainly isn't greed. No one will get rich collecting dog tags.
Q: What tags are you looking for?
A: Old metal tags, especially before 1900, and old dog collars, especially with fancy brass locks, clasps and studs.
Q: What else would you collect?
A: Nothing. I am well pleased.

Joyce Spontak
Associated Collectors of Planters Peanut Memorabilia
32 E. Diaz Ave., Nesquehoning, PA 18240
[contac is now Tony Scola]
2000 items

Q: How did you begin?
A: My grandmother sent away for a plastic Mr. Peanut bank for each grandchild in 1957. Thirty years later, I found my second Mr. Peanut item and began searching.
Q: What's your favorite Planters item?
A: The bank. I also love my papier-resin Mr. Peanut Roaster Rider from a long-closed Atlantic City peanut store. It's worth $2000.
Q: How it your collection stored?
A: Everything is located in the Peanut Museum Room. It is cataloged on computer and videotape.
Q: What do people say?
A: Everyone thinks I'm nutty, but then, everyone loves a nut.
Q: What has Mr. Peanut taught you?
A: Mr. Peanut is always there, giving us a sense of pride.
Q: What item could someone give you to make them your friend for life?
A: An electric Mr. Peanut who taps his cane on the window.

William Diefenbach
International Sand Collectors
P.O. Box 117, North Haven, CT 06473
450 vials of sand

Q: Does your group have a newsletter?
A: It's called The Sand Paper.
Q: Is 450 vials a lot?
A: It's nothing compared to one Dutch collector who has more than 4000. But mine all mean something to me.
Q: How did you get started?
A: I brought back sand from the Caribbean.
Q: How much is sand worth?
A: The sample that cost the most to get is from the Pacific Depths, 17,000 feet down, brought up by the Glomar Explorer, the CIA cover-up ship. One of my favorites is sand from the Green River Valley in Nepal. It's purple and on the trail to Mount Everest.
Q: How is your sand stored?
A: Six large custom-built spice racks, and shoe boxes with 25-cent coin containers.
Q: Any good stories?
A: I drove a friend an hour out of Bombay just to get some sand. When we arrived, my friend jumped out, scooped up a film container full, and found himself staring into the barrel of a guard's rifle. Our driver quickly translated and the guard smiled and with a wave of his hand let the sample be taken!
Q: What would complete your collection?
A: Moon sand.

Suzanne Lipschitz
Smurf Collectors Club
24 Cabot Road W., Massapequa, NY 11758

Q: How many members does your group have?
A: About 1000. Ninety percent are adults.
Q: How did you hook up with Smurfs?
A: I started collecting for my five-year-old son in 1979 as a reward for doing well in school.
Q: What happens when you die?
A: My grandson will get them, if he shows interest. If not, my best Smurfy friend.
Q: Any good stories?
A: I appeared on News 12 as the Smurf Lady.
Q: What have Smurfs taught you?
A: As my son said during the TV taping: "It keeps her out of trouble."
Q: What are you still looking for?
A: A paint variation I don't have!
Q: Would you do anything differently?
A: I would have set aside more room.

Bill Bond
Spark Plug Collectors of America
P.O. Box 2229, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
2000 plugs

Q: How did you get started?
A: My interest in 1972 in antique hit & miss engines led to need for right plugs.
Q: Any favorite plug?
A: W.B. Handee Quick Detachable, worth about $500.
Q: How do people react?
A: Tell everyone you collect spark plugs, and they look at you like you have 13 ounces to the pound, until you tell them about the 4000 brands and types.
Q: What have spark plugs taught you?
A: That man is a natural pack rat.

Warren Harris
Thermometer Collectors Club
6130 Rampart Dr., Carmichael, CA 95608
500 thermometers

Q: Which is your favorite?
A: I have five exquisite, intricately carved ivory English thermometers.
Q: Who gets the thermometers when you die?
A: After I'm pushing daisies, I doubt my sons will be fighting over the spoils.
Q: How are they stored?
A: I keep them locked in file drawers. I don't want some drug-crazed burglar to trash them.
Q: Tell us a good story.
A: A public relations firm asked me for a portrait of Gabriel Fahrenheit (1636-1736). I couldn't find even so much as a tracing. So I cut out a portrait from an old book, framed it, labeled it, and sent it to the company. They couldn't thank me enough.
Q: Where do you find thermometers?
A: Many are from England or France. Few made it over the Rockies at the turn of the century.
Q: Do you collect anything else?
A: My wife won't let me.
Q: What do people say?
A: My friends think I have a collection of rectal thermometers. But they're assholes anyway (ha!).
Q: What are always looking for?
A: Any old thermometer with mercury in it.

Link: History of Thermometry

The Rev. John M. Coffee
American Vecturist Association
P.O. Box 1204, Boston, MA 02104
20,000 metal and plastic fare tokens

Q: How did you get started?
A: I collected coins and was a trolley fan when I lived in Washington, D.C., in 1943.
Q: What's your most prized token?
A: An 1861 horsecar token of the Chestnut & Walnut Passenger Railway in Philadelphia. It's worth $4000. Only three are known to exist.
Q: Any good stories?
A: A woman wrote me from Weatherford, Texas. Her father had run a horse-drawn line from 1879 to 1923. Two years later I visited Weatherford. Turned out she was the most prominent resident of the town (age 90 then). I was met by newspaper reporters, cameras, the state representative, the mayor, and whisked to her house for a banquet.
Q: Any tokens you'd love to find?
A: I'm looking for the Gibbs U.S. Mail Stage Token of New York City. It was issued about 1838 and is worth about $15,000. It's made of brass, 23mm in diameter, inscribed Good for One Ride/To the Bearer.