collect

Only collect!

Unusual collectibles on the Web

By Stephany Aulenback

Back when British author E.M. Forster urged people to "Only connect!" the Internet was still the stuff of science fiction. Now, people all over the planet are "connected" and ready to share. But share what? We've got the connection, now we need good content. Here are six quirky netizens whose response to the eternal content question is to "only collect." Thankfully, they also display what they collect.

Old telephones

http://www.moonworks.com/~abryant/phones.html

Alan Bryant collects and restores old telephones and displays photos of them on his cleanly designed Web site. He explains the root of his obsession: "I've always been fascinated by telephones since I first took one apart when I was a kid. Throughout my childhood I'd disassemble the darned things in an effort to figure them out. I'd put them back together--and most of the time they'd work. I also made it my personal mission to ensure we had good, clean phones in our house." He goes on to say that "true appreciation of Phones phones for their aesthetic value came later."

The first photo on the site is of a 1940 Western Electric Series deskphone he restored. It's a classic black telephone, heavy and substantial looking. In his book Collecting: An Unruly Passion, psychoanalyst Werner Muensterberger says collectors tend to use their objects as "stand-ins for themselves." If this is a stand-in for Alan, he must be a pretty solid sort of guy.

However, the other phones in his collection may represent different aspects of his personality. What, for example, is symbolized by a beige pay phone hanging on Bryant's basement wall? "The phone is working," he says, "though coins are not required to place a call--something I choose not to tell my friends and other visitors."

Bryant also owns three princess phones, one beige, one hot pink, one turquoise, and he is looking for more. I'm not sure what Muensterberger would make of this.

Candy wrappers

http://www.bradkent.com/wrappers/

Bradley Kent displays his collection of candy bar wrappers on his Web site, The Quasi-Comprehensive Candy Bar Wrapper Image Archive. There are 277 wrappers in his online collection, and more waiting to be scanned in. The images, organized both alphabetically and by candy company, are accompanied by the "nutritional information" on the label. And yes, Kent has eaten most of the candy bars the wrappers once contained, although he has begun to accept submissions of wrappers.

If you want to contribute, send him the wrapper, not the whole bar--he doesn't take candy from strangers. And if you're willing to donate the elusive wrapper to the now extinct "Marathon" bar, Kent will be forever in your debt.

Macaroni and cheese

http://www.wenet.net/~iandg/mac&chse.htm

Ian Golder displays 20 scans of boxes of generic macaroni and cheese on his Spoons From the Right: The Generic Macaroni & Cheese Box Gallery Web site. This is just the tip of Golder's iceberg--he still has 150 boxes from all over the United States that he intends to scan and include.

On the Web site, Ian does not feel the need to explain or justify his interest, simply allowing the collection to speak for itself. But in an email exchange, Golder revealed to me that, "My two favorite collections are actually of things that I did NOT get to eat as a child--cereal boxes and boxed macaroni & cheese. My parents raised me on a healthy diet, which should be a warning to other parents that they might as well not bother."

Once you get him going, Ian really gets into an analysis of his collection. At first, he says he was drawn to packaged macaroni and cheese because he immediately saw what he calls its cultural value. "It's as close to being a purely American food product as you can get," says Golder, "and doesn't resemble the home-made version of macaroni and cheese in the slightest."

Golder is also intrigued by the different ways the box designers have chosen to display a bowl of macaroni and a spoon. "They're sort of like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike, but they all adhere to basic structural rules. Rule number one, the ideal cover portrays a bowl of macaroni and cheese but never any human body part or people, just a spoon stuck in the bowl, usually from the right. Rule number two, the words 'Serving Suggestion' appear even when nothing at all has been done to the macaroni."

One of Golder's favorite items is a box with a solid wall of macaroni and cheese, as if someone had been buried alive in it, with the words "serving suggestion" superimposed on the photo. Another is a box done in what he describes as the most disgusting shade of green he has ever seen in his life. He says it is "enough to make the average consumer gag when spying it on the grocery shelf." (This box is picture #2 on his Web site.)

Ian is also fond of a box that says "gourmet version." It has the same ingredients as any other box, but the recipe instructs users to add more butter.

Lunchboxes Lunch boxes

http://www.echonyc.com/~steven/lunchbox.html

Steven Levy, a technology journalist, collects steel lunchboxes from the 1960s. He explains that he started to collect them as "a way to hold 3.5-inch floppies but just got to like them." His Web site displays a photo of his Man from U.N.C.L.E. lunchbox, one of his favorites. On his Web site I learned that Levy's main claim to fame as a journalist is that he found Einstein's brain. I'm not sure what this means in relation to his lunchbox collection, but it's very cool.

Firecracker labels

http://www.sky.net/~redzone/labels/

At this site, a nameless mystery collector's beautiful antique firecracker labels are tastefully and sensibly displayed on a page with frames that allow you to load one scanned image at a time. The oldest label is the General Zit from 1935, while the newest is the 1967 Red Leaf. During this time period, all firecrackers were produced in Portuguese Macau.

Firecracker1 The mystery collector is very specific about the collection: in the accompanying FAQ, the collector declares no interested in "full packs, sparkler boxes, cap pistols, Uncle Sam piggy banks, and newer (DOT) labels." And this is expressed defensively: "If you think the scope of my collection is narrow, I know a guy in New Jersey who only collects variations of LION GLOBE brand." In response to the question, "Why do you collect labels?" the collector says, "To pick up chicks. They can't keep their hands off firecracker label collectors. It's a well known fact."

Air sickness bags

http://rampages.onramp.net/~stevebo/airsick.html

Steve Silberberg, an Internet collector with a similarly silly sense of humor, also told me he started collecting, "to pick up chicks." Furthermore, Steve feels his particular collection reveals that he is "a brilliant, yet sensitive hunk of a man who loves animals." This is odd, since Steve owns one of the Internet's many collections of air sickness bags. His collection is called The Virtual Air Sickness Bag Museum.

Silberberg, who started collecting the bags back in 1981 when he flew from Boston to San Francisco on United Airlines, has about 200 bags from airlines all over the world in his collection. His says his favorite is the McDonald's bag "because it's so appropriate."

"I also like a 1982 Continental that says, 'Bowser' on it. Bowser is ostensibly the dog you take your meal home to, but it is also the sound you make when throwing up."

When asked if he takes more pleasure in tracking down the bags or displaying them, Silberberg quipped, "Mostly, I just like the attention." Steve often receives donations from Web surfers, and he tells me he'd be eternally grateful to anyone who'd send him an airsickness bag from the Space Shuttle.

That'd make his collection right out of this world.

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TCP Online November 1998 Issue
(updated Oct. 27, 1998)