What is the most random thing you collected as a child?

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1. Marbles

2. Sobe bottle caps. They always had sayings on them and I would keep them in a box

3. Refrigerator magnets. I still have them in a box, as there isn’t nearly enough room on my fridge for them all.

4. I used to go on websites in the early 20s for “paper dolls” (like Doll Palace and Dollz) and print off all of my favorite clothes and make base dolls, cut them out, and bring them to school in sandwich baggies so that my friends and I that played house at recess could have avatars… So I turned digital paper dolls into real paper avatars for roleplaying.

5. Patterned paper bags.

   I actually stuck them up in the wall!

6. when the first pirates of the caribbean came out, mcdonald’s put tiny stuffed dolls of jack, elizabeth, in will in their happy meals. i was obsessed with getting them and had my mom sew me a little sleeping bag and a pillow for my jack sparrow one. i kept them in a shoe box that i decorated as a little bedroom. was a very tiny collection but i was very passionate about it nonetheless

7. Sugar rocks. Or that was what I called them. White and sparkly and often found in gravel

8. Bouncy balls. I even arranged an after-school bouncy ball -club for my friends. My favourite ones were a tiny pink one because it was so fast, and a big clear one with a Mewtwo figure inside.

9. strands of hair. everyday i’ll pluck a few and stick it on different location of the house. ie side of the sofa, side of the mirror.

10. Leaflets (pamphlets). I had a whole box full and would peruse them on occasion.

11. Fun pens, I started collecting them when I was 3. I still collect fun pens.. I have a pen that has the game “operation” on the top of it and a pen with an “etch a sketch”….. 😆

12. I had a big drawer packed full of ugly rocks and dead crumbly maple tree seeds aka “helicopters”. I have no idea why.

13. Drawings of pigs. I had a notebook, and whenever I found a drawing of a pig (in a comic, a book, an advert, a cartoon, etc), I copied it in it as well as I could. It fascinated me how the same thing could be depicted in so many different styles, and pigs were my favourite animal back then. I was nine or ten.

14. erasers. still have a soft spot for them

15. dead bees, I’d find them on the sidewalk walking my dog and kept them in a jar

16. Officially “collected”? Milk pitchers. no idea why. Also had a lot of? Fairy furniture made of moss, sticks, and hot-glue.

17. Red Dog beer bottle caps that my parents drank. They had little cartoons and brain teasers on the inside. It was an excessive amount of caps now that I think of it.

18. The fake credit cards they’d send in the mail. Loved the clear (Amex?) ones.

19. Wedding invitations

20. My sister and I collected bouncy balls! Any time we saw a vending machine with a bouncy ball we had to get one. We literally had two fishbowls full of bouncy balls at one point lol

21. I collected rocks and put them in Doritos 3D containers. So I guess you could say I collected Doritos 3D containers at some point

22. Erasers

    Little squishy animals you’d get from gumball machines

    Bath & Body Works perfumes

23. maple story pogs. we brought it back at my elementary school despite it being the early 00’s lol

24. My dad traveled a lot for work, like every other week he was working 4+ days out of town. He would bring me souvenir sports pennants for teams, and if pennants weren’t available it would be a bumper sticker

25. Every time my mom tilled the yard for her garden I’d go behind her and collect shards of ceramics that would turn up in the soil. Like the decorative rims of plates, teacup handles, etc. I’d pretend I was an archaeologist. I still have them, too!

26. Chrysopha carnea

27. I collected eggs made out of wood, porcelain, glass, stone, etc.

28. Pipe cleaners and then I’d bend them into little animals.

29. Ores. National geographic had this collection thing where they would send you one element of the periodic table until you had them all, or a lot of them, I am not sure.

30. Pretty rocks 😁

31. Medical bracelets, I was a pretty ill kid so I had a lot of them. They’re still stored in an old cigar box with a few more “priceless” mementos from my past

32. Clowns. I had been given a clown music box, and it just snowballed. Someone saw the music box and thought, “she likes clowns; I’ll give her these clown figurines”. And then I was given clown pictures and plaster clown masks, and more and more. My whole room was a clown theme.

    I don’t care for clowns. I have never liked clowns. I was too polite to say, “Please stop gifting me clowns.”