I was a nerd (still am), and I think the first thing I really got into collecting was Star Trek cards!
What was your first thing you actively collected? Baseball cards? POGs?
Let’s go out to the fort we built in the woods from discarded things left out for garbage pickup and trade with each other. Come on, let’s grab our bikes!
I still have mine in a binder. They can pry them from my cold, dead hands! My parents owned a small florist/gift shop when the GPK first came out. They went to a trade show and got a free GPK balloon on a stick featuring Messy Tessy and brought it home for me, thinking it was Cabbage Patch Kids . . . They didn’t even notice all the snot. And thus began my obsession.
Some of the originals are worth a lot of money now.
Which is downright hilarious to me. It's like vinyl records - in the early 90s you couldn't give them away. I still have a boatload of them somewhere.
I recently joined some GPK facebook group just to get my fix (I don't buy anything of course). I gotta say, the humor on those cards (and the card backs) has held up. They are so subversive, sarcastic, and deeply funny. No wonder some parents hated them!
Oh my goodness I had a binder of them too I found it a couple years ago in my parents garage and pretty sure my parents housekeeper threw them out
Was a sad day when we had to move and had to take all the garbage pail stickers off the wood paneling
I was absolutely obsessed with comic-art as a kid, I loved humor and parody, and the mystique of them being a little inappropriate sold young me on them. They functioned as a cultural gateway to a lot of celebrities and pop topics I otherwise wouldn't know at the time. I was becoming educated through parody.
They started making those again a couple years ago. Plenty on Ebay too.
I believe this was my first collecting endeavor.
Garbage Pail Kids in 1986. The 7-Eleven where my dad bought my first pack still exists in my hometown.
My parents let me cover my bedroom door in them!
I would get a new one every time we went to the mall
This. The local drụg store carried them. It wasn't far from our neighborhood, and it was the nicer/safer shopping center in our town. We were allowed to walk or ride our bikes there if we went in pairs or a group. Especially if a slightly older kid went along.
My neighbors and I would buy new packs, then get together at home and trade. Their mom stopped allowing them to buy. We would go to the store, buy more packs, I'd take them all home and sneak them in with my stuff the next time I was over.
Stickers. Scratch and sniff FTW.
Scratch n sniff, glitter, puffy ones...I loved my stickers.
Soooo many sticker books!
Yes. I thought maybe rocks were my first collection, but I’m pretty sure stickers came first.
Anxiety producing life memories. I have some really sweet vintage ones from the early 80’s.
Hi friend nice to meet you !
Rocks and crystals
Rock Tumbler anyone? 🤣
I wanted one SO BAD but my mom said it would be too loud!
They were loud and had to run non stop for weeks on end. My folks hated it
Ha the slowness killed me. Fortunately my parents are nerds and were even more into rock tumbling than I was. 🪨
We ran ours in the garage, and yeah, very loud.
I got one but it took too long so I immediately gave it up.
This was me as well.
This was me too, everywhere I went I’d bring back stones, still have quite a few of them, continued into fossils hunting.
I somehow figured out if I broke open them big rocks 🪨 I found in the back yard there was quarts crystals inside, I’d pick them out, then grind them down, kept it in a little bottle. Was my magic dust for wishes to give people.
You have brought back a forgotten memory lol I need to start making magic dust for wishes again
Geodes were the best find! I still bring home a cool rock if I find one. That crystal dust is a great idea, wish I had thought of that as a kid.
What was that nature/stone/crystal/rain stick store in the mall back then? I always went, always spent some allowance on some worthless pretty hard thing too
Baseball cards for me. My mom would buy me a pack of ‘88 Topps cards at the grocery store if I didn’t whine when she was shopping.
Those 87 Topps with the wood grain live rent free in my head.
This is one of my strongest childhood memories too. I used to base my understanding of time on this card design.
I started with the 86 collection.
Jesus, I had enough 87 Topps to start my own card shop.
It's funny because this morning I had a memory of collecting baseball cards and I learned about the game through the 1985 tops set. By the time the 87 set came out, I was full on. My father collected more seriously, so I was lucky enough to go to several card shows and see the more serious side of collecting beyond the wax packs. Great memories.
Topps, Donruss, Score. The holy trinity at the time
If you were uppity you would have Upper Deck. I was a Topps guy with some donruss.
Was Topps the one that gave you the gum that was hard as a rock?
Yes
If you were really uppity, you got Fleer Ultra, Score Select, or Bowman!
My mom let me buy pack after pack of cards from a dealer while I was looking for the infamous “fuck face” Billy Ripken card. And I got it!
Wonder where it is now…
Topps and Donruss were my favorites of the late 80s. I especially loved the 87 Topps with the wood grain border. I still have some complete sets from the early 90s. I know I have Fleer 92 and Topps 91.
I have the whole 92 Topps set too
Charms! My grandmother bought me one of those plastic bracelets that had plastic charms you could collect and clip to it. It was very popular with elementary aged girls in the 80s.
And boys. I had multiple necklaces with a charm on each link. I remember going to Osco Drug and sitting there trying to decide which to buy with my meager charm budget while my mom shopped lol
There were also gacha machines with them at like every store. They were huge for awhile.
Memory unlocked! I had forgotten about those! I had a bracelet and a necklace.
My Little Pony.
I had a giant laundry basket full of them plus a few of the play sets (I remember the nursery the most). Big ponies, small ponies (some as big as your head), extra small ponies, knockoff ponies, unicorn ponies, pegasus ponies…well over 300 by the time I outgrew them and donated them to a women’s shelter.
Then came the Trolls…
Yep, My Little Pony for me too! I had a ton of the regular MLP, some of the “kid” and “teen” smaller-sized MLP, some seahorse MLP to play with in the bath, some unicorn and Pegasus MLP, and some “boy” MLP (the plastic by their hooves was made to look shaggy, like Clydesdales). I had some of the playsets like the dance studio and the ice cream shop. I had lots of clothes. I would organize them all so carefully on a shelf in my bedroom.
Yep! My uncle even handmade a huge stable for me because I had soooo many! My parents saved them all for me. I was devastated when I opened the boxes (yes, plural) and found most of them ruined. All stuck together and gross from heat waves over the years. My son then helped me start my collection anew. I have 7 now and the pretty salon. Now I stop at every vintage toy store I find and scour them for my favorites.
I had the salon too! I feel like most of my collection came from yard sales when I was a kid
My Little Pony was my obsession! I collected them well into adulthood. I had about 600 and sold some online. I still have quite a few and am keeping some (trying to get it down to 50 but it’s tough) and will sell more online. I have a few set aside that I let my little nieces play with.
Stamps (🚨 nerrrrrrrrrrd alert 🚨 )
This was one of mine.
I was handed down both a stamp and coin collection. Sadly my mother stole it when I was a teenager.
Ugh I’m so sorry! My mom didn’t steal from me, but she did “ask” which of my precious things were okay to sell.
Stamps too. Some of mine and my siblings' have survived at my parents' over the years and it's always fun to go through them every now and then. I learnt quite a bit of geography from them, and some were also my introduction to art.
Yes! Between stamps and “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” I was a geography queen!!
I’ve just started collecting stamps. Love them! Tiny works of art capturing the history, pride, geography, contributions, flora & fauna and propaganda of nations. And it fits on the bookshelf. My favorite xmas present last year was a jeweler’s loupe…. so I guess I’ll acquiesce to nerdom too.
Stamps were the best! Tiny little works of art. Boring ass forever stickers now mostly.
Coins 🤷🏻♀️
Me too! Old pennies especially, And I had a couple of those folders with holes that you press them in. Aww I wonder what happened to them!
Me too! I’ve recently gotten back into it, trying to nudge my kids to it!
Loved collecting coins and bills. I was super lucky to be able to visit Europe once in high school and once in college and had fun trying to collect as many different types of coin as possible. It was especially interesting to first collect French and Irish coins, then almost a decade later collect Euros from each country that used the old country’s designs on one side.
Scrolled 5-6 dozen comments and no mention of POGs other than the OP post?!
Common folks - POGs!!!!!
Honestly I'm surprised Beanie Babies have yet to enter the chat
I think xennials were either too young or too old to care much for beanie babies when they hit the market
Shhhh! Clearly you did not drive around to every McDonald’s in the county with your mom, trying to find all the teeny beanies.
I only knew adults that bought them. It was weird lol
Yeah I think I was “into” them because my mom was. I only liked them if I liked the animal or it was significant in some way, I didn’t like just collecting them like other stuff.
I remember a neighborhood restaurant that had a gift shop (New England seafood tourist stuff) that “released” the new beanie babies on Wednesdays like new comics.
I was dating someone in the late 90s. They had an aunt who was into beanie babies. She made goodie bags at Easter for all of the nieces and nephews. Everyone got a beanie baby.
I feel like I didn't see pogs until 95 or 96 and by then I was already collecting other things
I didn’t encounter pogs until I was visiting my older sister in Virginia and her neighbor had them. They just didn’t catch on in rural Ohio.
Rocks.
Ya still got some of them ? I do lol
Still collecting. Just learned about hag stones. Now.must.find.
I found one recently that looks like a skull!
And sticks. Any proper Xennial boy had to find the absolute best sticks.
I collect spores, molds and fungus.
Print is dead.
Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
Well that’s what I heard!
You're very handy, I can tell.
Erasers!
Ooo that’s a good one! The cool shapes they had and didn’t actually erase anything!
My best friend Laura had a massive tub of novelty erasers under her bed, whenever I was at her house all I wanted to do was tip this tub out and sort through them all, they had such a distinctive smell that I loved.
Same! I gifted all 2,000+ of them to my niece & I’m regretting that decision. (Joking of course, kind of).
My mom started this creepy porcelain doll collection for me. The kind that are only found collecting dust in thrift and antique stores. They had these metal stands and were displayed on my dresser. That is until the movie Chuckie came out and my mom accidentally let us watch it.
I had them too and now I’m thinking that porcelain dolls were my first collection because my grandmothers bought them for me when I was a literal baby.
Someone bought me one of those too because I liked dolls but the porcelain ones were lame, couldn’t change their clothes or fix their hair they were meant ONLY to stand in those stupid little metal frames
They were lame! I wasn’t really into dolls and very soon after they were banished to my closet for fear of them becoming animated and attacking me Chuckie style, I abolished all girly stuff from my room.
Ooh, mine too. She loved to watch the home shopping network & ordered all these dolls. She thought we'd all want to inherit them one day. I don't even think the grandkids want them. Sorry mom. 😞
Business cards! Not sure why but I was like 4 or 5 when I started. And my mom would always remind me to get one wherever we went. Then I moved on to the more typical baseball and hockey cards. Collected shot glasses for a while but they take up too much space… Now I collect gray hairs. Collection’s almost complete!
I had a big business card collection. I love that someone else did too 😁
There are dozens of us! Dozens!!!
I had a business card collection for a while. There was like a 3-4 year period I collected those.
This is my first time ever hearing of a business card collection, but good on ya.
Comic books. Got into them around 12 or so and kept collecting well into adulthood. Gave my collection to my son a few years back, but a lot of it had been lost over the years, either stolen or destroyed (most of those were at the hands of my mother). I still pick up the odd TPB or graphic novel, but I no longer have the patience to follow a monthly release schedule. Plus, comics have gotten stupidly expensive. $5 an issue is just too much to sub to more than a few titles at once.
About the same! Got into comics seriously around 11. Had a pull list at a local shop until the prices started to climb and then the owner outed himself as a Q weirdo, made it easy for me to finally dip.
Every once in a while I’ll sub to the marvel or DC app and do some catching up, or like you said by a trade/GN but I’m done with monthly comics. I keep a sub to the shonen jump app - at $3 a month it’s a real bargain.
I mostly don’t buy new comics because the stories aren’t interesting, but I love collecting vintage comics. I’m working on completing my Spawn initial 100 run, and I’m early into trying to complete a Spiderman Volume 1 run.
Enemies.
Fuck you, Kevin, I was next in line for the slide.
M.U.S.C.L.E Men
https://eightiesbaby.net/2019/05/08/m-u-s-c-l-e-men/
TV commercial: https://youtu.be/GHhr7tuiagU?si=bVEgklSZ9B1ZMbMY
Yes!!! I had so many of these guys. I started collecting them because when I was in second or third grade, I had a speech impediment and had to go to speech therapy every week. Whenever I was done, the therapist would give me one of these guys. And then I started to love them and go out on my own to buy them.
Oh shit totally forgot about these guys. I know what I'm 3d printing next
Marvel Universe series 2 (1991 I think). I never completed the whole set but I have most of it. And I NEVER ONCE GOT A FOIL CARD IN A PACK. Still salty about it 30+ years later.
Books. I had as many books as I could get my hands on.
I still do.
Yessss. Heartbroken that I had to sell a lot of them for food when I moved out on my own. First thing I did with my first “extra” paycheck was buy a new copy of one of my favorite children’s books I had sold (Dinotopia).
I lost most of my collection in a storage shed in my 20s over the years I've been replacing some favorites.
Happy Meal Toys. I still want them!
McNugget Buddies
Muppet Babies
Fast Macs
Changeables
Fraggle Rock.
Super Mario 3
I almost forgot Mac Tonight!
Pez dispensers. Still do!
I have a bunch I collected over the years and recently realized I have no place to show them off - and kinda don't need to show them off. For me it was mostly about the candy and I don't eat pez anymore.
I think I'm ready *re-home them now. I'll keep the old Wonder Woman one and maybe some Star Wars ones but that's it. And put more energy into my many other collections - stickers, legos, maps and postcards (including stereo-opticon postcards). Still keeping my tubes of POGs though!
Troll dolls.
Star Trek cards as in the Decipher CCG, or a different set? We had perhaps the golden age of card collecting. Heck, even Desert Storm got multiple printed card sets to collect.
I had the Desert Storm cards!!! I think I still do, somewhere, along with my Ghostbusters II trading cards.
I also had Desert Storm cards! I grew up outside Fort Hood so I got a ton for free. At one point I met Stormin Norman and was sad I didn’t have his card with me.
I can't recall. I had a huge amount of TNG ones that were mostly fan art
Nerd alert, but creatures of all descriptions. I grew up poor and didn’t really have any allowance money to get into comics or baseball cards, but going outside was free, and old food containers made great bug jars. I was lucky enough to have a second hand bike that I’d use to ride down to a local park with woods, fields, creeks, and a pair of ponds. By the time I was nine, I had taught myself all the native butterfly species and their host plants, and we had butterflies flying around our apartment before opening the windows to set them free. Same with dragonflies, and garter snakes I caught behind the building that would have babies in the spring.
By the time I was in junior high, I’d started paying attention to smaller and smaller living things thanks to a plastic microscope from one of my mom’s teacher supply stores. Flatworms, protists, and eventually bacteria.
Today I’m a professional microbiologist with a collection of reptiles, amphibians, and tarantulas that my wife tolerates and my son adores. Guess I never really grew out of it.
Jelly bracelets & charm necklaces.
Hockey cards. I was and still NOT into professional sports at all, it was purely for investment trading. I wanted to have a small amount of high value cards. Lol
Now I collect CRT tvs. 😜
Can I have one of your TV’s? I want to use my NES Blaster Gun again (stupid flat screens!)
Antique books. I would go to yard sales at 10 and find really cool old kids books from the early 1900s. I still have them and have added to my collection over the years.
Stickers. A group of us in 2nd/3rd/4th grade had sticker collections mainly consisting of the scratch n sniff variety.
Smurfs. The little Schleich figures.
Marvel cards. The ones were all nine of them made a picture
I was obsessed with those. Spent nearly every cent that I had from gifts and change jar savings on them.
The 1994 set!
Comic books and He-man figurines. Unfortunately lost them all during a move in highschool.
Ugh....lost most of my TMNT and Ghostbusters toys in a move and/or yard sale..😔😔😔
User deleted comment
28d
I was beginning to think I was the only one who collected bottle caps. I had a massive collection from all over the us and Mexico. I never got into canned beer and soda. I was into glass bottled beverage collecting. Now, I only have a few antique apothecary bottles
I still collect bottles and jars
Smurf figurines! I still have them.
I still have mine, too! My kids played with them and loved them as much as I did 💙
Best Rick ever.
Micro Machines. I cost my parents A LOT of money when I kept calling the 800# to get the gold micro Machines. Dude talked WAY too fast 😂
This. If only I knew where they all went.
I stupidly traded mine for baseball cards, and then traded my baseball cards later for pogs. Now I have nothing 😂
Hot wheels
As a kid I was addicted to baseball cards until I was maybe 13.
Unfortunately I went through this really bad self destructive phase as I entered puberty and wound up literally shredding the thousands of cards I had that were from the late 70s early 80s. I didn't just focus my destructive energy on my cards. I destroyed my collection of gi joe action figures as well.
Looking back I absolutely regret being a dumb fucking kid. It's also a reason I don't really collect anything anymore as well.
Unicorns and dragons
Lots of 80s unicorns…
My grandfather gave me some old coins when I was about 7 or 8. Then the other grandfather didn't want to be outdone, so he also gave me some of his old coins. Started off with some pretty sweet coins and went from there. Still have them all.
My cousins tried to get me into baseball cards, but I just didn't care for it because I didn't like watching baseball. Tried stamps for a little bit but just couldn't get into it.
Unicorns
GI Joes 3 3/4”
Did you have any missing limbs because you blew them up with fireworks?
That was our explosives expert. He wasn’t great at his job. RIP
I really tried to get into baseball cards because I love the Babysitters Club books, but found it super boring. I did get really into surfing magazines, and would paste the pages all over my walls because I was positive I would one day move to California and be a "super cool tan girl surfer". I DID move to San Diego but I'm sort of terrified of the ocean because it feels infinite and filled with monsters.
This is lies- I completely forgot I collected stickers first. Scratch n sniff, puffy, flat, glossy, matte, all of them.
Shells and other nature things. I had birds in the freezer, feathers, shells, rocks, bits of animal fur from different species, and all sorts of other things. This was encouraged and inspired by my father, and, moreso by some neighbors we had who were themselves naturalists and collectors and gifted me items for my collections.
That was the first. Then, later, Magic cards were a big one for me. Then books by my teens. I'm still a huge book collector.
Seashells
Toys. My parents for all their struggles bought me a lot of action figures growing up. Some series more than others but I had a ton of Masters of the Universe, real ghostbusters, and Ninja Turtles. Plus all the main figures from Inhumanoids, Thundercats, and Centutions. Had a lot of oddball stuff too like Army Ants, Battle Beasts, Food Fighters, monster in my pocket. Crazy to think about it all now.
Barbies…. Still have them. I don’t think they have much resale value, but I kept them for a reason.
Stickers and NKOTB trading cards
ALL the NKOTB merch 🤭
All I have left is my gigantic McDonald's NKOTB Magic summer collector's cup. It's my water cup at the cottage, haha.
So many fun memories!
I got rid of all my old stuff. Some of it was because I decided they weren't "cool" anymore. The rest was due to needing to clear everything I owned out after something happened at my parents' house. Good chance a lot of it was damaged. Rather than try to salvage, I got rid of a lot of things.
A few have been mentioned: rocks, stamps, business cards .... But when I was pretty little I started collecting sticks of gum and gum wrappers. The one I still do is a pin from every place I've been. I don't know how to display this in a nice way, so they're in a box in my office closet.
I have a simple cloth banner I made to hang my pins on! It also helps me remember to wear them every once in a while
Bouncy balls from quarter machines. Still have a duffel bag full of them.
Lucy and Me beat figurines. These aren’t mine in the picture but I had dozens of them.
Pocket knives from Canton Texas. I had a collection going and they were stuck in a big piece of Styrofoam on my dresser. Until I cut my finger and then my grandma took them away lol
New Kids On The Block everything. Books, action figures, magazines, posters, CDs, tee shirts, playing cards, whatever I could find.
Die-cast Matchbox fighter jets might be my earliest.
Hot wheels seem to be the norm, but I always preferred planes. Still do.
Paperclips in a soap dish, inspired by my man Bert
Homies. I'm not sure why I was so fascinated with these, but I got some from the vending machine every time I went to Kroger and ended up amassing a pretty large stash.
Comic books. So many comic books. Probably in the financial situation I am today because I would buy several at a time
I wasn’t into sports as a kid, but I was a huge comic fan. So aside from comic books, I would spend every cent of my allowance on Marvel Masterpiece cards. Anyone else?
Garbage Pail Kids
Rocks and minerals. I still collect them, too.
Keys from junk vehicles. I don't even know what happened to my collection.
Marvel and DC comic books.
Garbage Pail Kids cards
Pogs and slammers. Followed closely by Magic the Gathering
Rocks, and then shells.
Four-leaf clovers. As a child I’d find handfuls while picking clover for my rabbits and would put them in books to dry. I still spend time finding them to this day and have decided to start up my dried collection again as most of my childhood ones have been lost over the years.
Choose Your Own Adventure books! I have so many happy memories of spending lazy summer afternoons with some CYOA book, my fingers marking various "save points" where I made a choice that could go horribly wrong.
I still occasionally have dreams where I walk into a used bookstore and feel that thrill of excitement when I see the telltale red logo on the spine of a book on some hidden shelf, and discover that it's a rare out-of-print book that I hadn't found yet.
Stamps
Spoons lol
Sand dollars. I grew up in the Bay Area and on the weekends my parents would take me and my brother to the beach. I would spend hours digging through the sand and making sure I’d rinse them off in the ocean, before I put them in my little cardboard box.
My dad grew up on Vancouver Island so we had sand dollars everywhere. And oyster shell ashtrays, haha.
Thimbles and Spoons from gift stores at amusement parks or visiting centers when traveling for family vacations. My mom would get them for me when she would travel for work too. Some are pure silver and some are probably crap but I loved them all. I had display shelves and shadow boxes hung on my bedroom wall to keep them all shiney and dust free.
My granny started me a spoon collection! I had a display board in the shape of the province of British Columbia. I never added to it. I'm sure it's somewhere in the attic at my mom's house.
Tiny pencils.
Music i think. As soon as i could walk i wanted records, then tapes.
Edit: And books
Yeah I always wanted to have the biggest tape collection in my grade.
California Raisins
Garfield memorabilia.
Archies digest lol
Archie comic books
NKOTB cards
Rabbits feet.... from the quarter machine at the corner store.
Garbage Pail Kids cards