Involuntary collecting

[Miss Chicken]

Quite a while ago I bought a few giraffe figurines and then family members and friends started buying them for me for my birthday and Christmas insisting that I collected them. Same with Russian dolls. I am quite happy just to have just a handful of each but people seem to have other ideas and I don’t want to seem ungrateful when I received them.

Now I have convinced friends that I collect thimbles and bookmarks simply because they do not take up much room.

So I am asking people do you have any involuntary collections?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Nah, can’t say that I do.

Everybody in my life knows what I collect: those cards that you use to pay for subway rides in various cities that have mass transit (such as Toronto’s Presto card, NYC’s OMNY, Boston’s CharlieCard, Chicago’s Ventra card, etc.) I have whole binders full of them. In fact pretty much any kind of ticket, card, coin, paper transfer, etc. that one could possibly use to pay for a ride, I collect. And my friends and family know that’s ALL I collect. So they never give me anything I don’t want.

That said, I do prefer to collect cards/tickets that I have actually personally USED. But I’ll take what I can get. For example I have never been to London, and probably won’t get to do so anytime soon, but I’m still keen to get my hands on an Oyster card to add to my collection. My sister and her family used to live in London but she keeps forgetting to give me her old cards. #firstworldproblems

 

[Avro Arrow]

So I am asking people do you have any involuntary collections?

Does debt count?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I guess you could say my coin collection (small though it may be) began with a loonie that didn't work on my high school's soda machine. That's when I realized it wasn't a loonie at all, but a two pence coin. Since then, I have coins from India, Poland, older Canadian ones, US, and Trinidad and Tobago.

 

[Velocity]

My mother collected owl figurines and owl themed things and when she passed away I inherited many of them. I put a few out to remind me of her and since then family and friends have been giving me more for every occasion. Won't my kids be thrilled to inherit a much larger collection?

 

[bdub76]

The main character in book/TV show Neverwhere collected little Trolls.

 

[JD]

Quite a while ago I bought a few giraffe figurines and then family members and friends started buying them for me for my birthday and Christmas insisting that I collected them. Same with Russian dolls. I am quite happy just to have just a handful of each but people seem to have other ideas and I don’t want to seem ungrateful when I received them.

Now I have convinced friends that I collect thimbles and bookmarks simply because they do not take up much room.

So I am asking people do you have any involuntary collections?

Do pets count? For a while we just kind of kept ending up with animals, over the years we got 2 dogs my sister ended up giving us, a beta fish one of my roomates at college had and decided he didn't want and was going put in with another beta to watch them try to kill each other, one dog from a dog park we used to go to, and 2 ferrets from my sister, and one dog my mom took home after he'd been at the doggie day care she was working at for several months. Just to be clear there was only a little bit of overlap with these animals, they weren't all at the same time.
The two dogs we have now are the first pets we've gotten in a long time that we actually go looking for, and didn't just kind of end up with.
Oh, and if our circumstances were different, we'd probably have at least one or two pigs too, and maybe a couple horses.

 

[Mrs. Silvercrest]

I love cats and I really like Peanuts movies. And my husband does D&D and we both like Harry Potter (okay). So guess what we get! I have given many Harry Potter things away, our nephew got some things and the cat things still figuring that one out. The D&D stuff is on the new side but don't want to get anymore. We have told people we are trying to downsize. We have so much stuff now from our folks who have moved and or died. And just can't take anymore, why can't we just make food or do gift cards or hey, just get together for a movie or game night. Still working on that too. People mean well. But sometimes...

 

[Velocity]

I had a similar problem with things left by daughters who moved out and left boxes of stuff, then parents who went into nursing homes and left us with 50 years worth of their stuff, and a husband who couldn't throw anything away. I'm still working through mountains of STUFF. I don't want any more stuff! Except books. Books don't count.

 

[Ashu]

I would love to take your Matryoshka dolls off you. I am not a big doll fan but love those.

I have a weird camel and hedgehog collection myself.

 

[Victoria]

When my children were small, to deal the inevitable collection of peculiar plastic ornaments deemed by children to be suitable presents for mothers, I announced that I would like frogs. The idea being that, they may be plastic and kitsch but at least they will have a unifying theme. So what happens? Adults keep giving me frogs and frog-decorated things THAT I DON'T WANT some of which were quite expensive. Now I have to have display cabinets... Eventually got rid of the whole lot (apart from some oven gloves and a mug which were, at least, useful) when the children had left home and I downsized.

 

[PrincessWhoopAss]

Nutcrackers. When I was young, pretty much until I had my first baby at 24, I was a ballet dancer… a very disciplined and serious dancer, and yes, I was in The Nutcracker many times over the years. People always thought a nutcracker would be a very suitable gift, so I had quite a few. And I hated them. I kept them in a box and just tossed the newest one in with the rest. I gave a few away, and a few broke. I called them the buttcrackers and finally told friends and family that I actually didn’t like them much. and then one year at Christmas time, I found my box of buttcrackers and decided to put them on the fireplace mantle. Each one reminded me of the person who gave it to me, and I started to like them, and eventually I bought a new one, and then the next year got another one. Now family and friends will occasionally bring me one if it’s unique or meaningful. I have a much bigger mantle now, and the originally-involuntary collection is pretty big lol.

 

[auntiehill]

Nutcrackers. When I was young, pretty much until I had my first baby at 24, I was a ballet dancer… a very disciplined and serious dancer, and yes, I was in The Nutcracker many times over the years. People always thought a nutcracker would be a very suitable gift, so I had quite a few. And I hated them. I kept them in a box and just tossed the newest one in with the rest. I gave a few away, and a few broke. I called them the buttcrackers and finally told friends and family that I actually didn’t like them much. and then one year at Christmas time, I found my box of buttcrackers and decided to put them on the fireplace mantle. Each one reminded me of the person who gave it to me, and I started to like them, and eventually I bought a new one, and then the next year got another one. Now family and friends will occasionally bring me one if it’s unique or meaningful. I have a much bigger mantle now, and the originally-involuntary collection is pretty big lol.

Nutcrackers... don't talk to me about nutcrackers. My mom has been collecting them for YEARS. I think she must have 85-90 of them. Her house has a second garage that is just for Christmas stuff.

 

[Timofnine]

So I am asking people do you have any involuntary collections?

Star Trek things.

 

[Magic Maik]

I like collecting 50p coins and coins in general that are interesting.

In Great Britain we have these "special" 50p coins with different themes that are released every so often.