The Collector's Room
My collections and collectibles
Ooooo, this is going to be big. Where to start, where to start...

Antiques       Oil Lamps      Tea Services      King's Crown

Dragons      Dr Who      Star Trek      Cocktail Shakers

PEZ      Metropolis      Comics

Silver flatware      CCG



Antiques

King's Crown bud vase
Antiques of all kinds have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mom would re-upholster antique furniture after my dad had refinished it. We had items given to us by grandparents and great-grandparents. There were salt bowls, scuttle mugs (shaving) , and those crystal bars to rest dirty knives on. School house desks, books and home decor.

In our house, antiques were not just something to be respected and cared for, they were also to be used. I sat on sturdy antique furniture every day, and my sister and I were taught to respect and take care of "things". To this day, I still respect inanimate objects and take care not to damage anything. Maybe it is just newspaper on the floor, but that doesn't mean I'm going to walk all over it. Glasses always go on a coaster, never on magazines of some handy bit of perceived trash. I stil have a heart attack any time someone is about to put their glass on a wood surface. Water ring damage is a pain to get out. And damaging a magazine is the same level of sin to me. I've always made sure that my books and magazines always remained in the same condition I received them, and never got any worse. I hte lending books out to people - i'm always sure they won't treat them with the respect I do. There is never to be bent spines, or bent covers, or dog-eared pages, or rips or tears or marks inside. Maybe it sounds a bit anal, but I like to keep everything in mint condition.

My own collection of antiques started slowly - I didn't have the pocket change to jump right into things as a child. Some of my collections are listed below. Other antiques are in the form of furniture. I have refinished one radio cabinet, and have another from 1912 awaiting its eventual restoration. Garth will eventually inherit a working Victrola. And, to garth's dismay, I'm always on the lookout for something new, or rather, something very old, to add to my collections. As long as it's usable - there's nothing work than some unusable piece of junk cluttering up space.




Oil Lamps


An oil lamp seems to have been a constant fixture of my family's homes. One grandmother had one in the common bathroom -- and I'm sure it got used but sometimes I really think the same amber oil has been in that lamp for over 30 years now. My parents had one in the dining room or above the fireplace, and it was always used when the east coast storms kicked up and the power went out.

My collection probably started with a purchase at the local antique store, and every six months or so, there usually seemed to be anotehr lamp joining the collection. One of the best stories I have about collecting them is finding a hex shaped lamp with gold trim at the base. It looked pretty cool and I didn't have one like it, so I got it. Not 15 minutes later at another antique store down the road, I found another one exactly like it - so I had to buy it so i could have a matched set.

When I lived in Chicago, there was a wide window in my dining room, and I was able to line up all the lamps there. It looked spectacular when all of them were lit up, glowing in the various chimney shapes and frostings.

Oil lamps are just great - I like them as decoration, as functional items, and as a bit of history.





Silver Tea Pots and Services


Tea, hot or cold, is one of my favorite beverages. Coffee never held much appeal for me but tea was always welcome - I must have some English roots in me somewhere.

My teapots are another example of my collectibles being attractive as decoration but also fully functional. Every one of the pots is usable, if not always polished. My first teapot was a chrome English pot from an antique store in Nashville, Tennessee. I was still a poor college kid at the time, but I just had to have that teapot. Since then, I've managed to add at least a dozen more - no thanks to the very evil people at Transpack, Inc, a moving company in Chicago.

When I moved to the Seattle area, these idiots managed to "lose" about 15 boxes of my stuff, as well as a TV. The whole episode was a complete nightmare and I wish there was some revenge I could take against Shikar, Chip and the other people of the company (Transpack was abandoned and these people started a new company in the same location and same phone number. All completely legal, although not ethical. I just hope they all die a horrible and painful death).

Anyway, my collection covers various styles and eras, all silver or silverplate. It's fun, it's elegant, it's attractive, and I can pull one down anytime I need one.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine have determined there is a strong link between drinking black tea and healthy arteries in patients who already have heart disease. Black tea is ordinary tea--the kind of tea bags you most likely have in your kitchen cupboard. Turns out, black tea contains powerful antioxidants that help prevent the build-up of cholesterol on the walls of your arteries. The BU doctors have shown that drinking tea also improves the layer of cells that line the walls of blood vessels, which in turn contributes to the way the blood vessels behave.

However, when heart disease patients drank black tea regularly, the function of the cells lining the vessel walls was significantly improved. "The results suggest that black tea acted to reverse the cell layer dysfunction," concluded Dr. Joseph Vita, the senior author of the study. "Our findings fit well with the growing appreciation that diet and lifestyle modifications are important to help prevent and treat artherosclerosis."

Cheers!



King's Crown

My maternal grandmother got me started on collecting this glass pattern when she gave me six water tumblers during one of my summer visits. I had them for years without thinking much about it.

Then I bought an antique dining room table, started refinishing it, and wondered what kind of plates and such i should get to go with it. I scoured through planty of antique stores and even checked out new patterns. Then I realized what I wanted was staring at me the whole time.

It started innocently enough, collecting the cheaper, common pieces, getting enough (or slightly more than enough) for a full place setting. First a setting for four, then eight, then twelve, then getting "spares", then looking for the harder to find accessory pieces. Oh, yeah, it was another collecting addiction, and ebay helped tremendously to find the missing pieces and spend my money on them.

Often referred to as patterned glass or pressed glass, Adam's Co. began manufacturing the ruby pattern in the 1890's in a very dark ruby red color. Since then, it has been reproduced by Tiffin and Indiana in successively lighter cranberry colors, ranging from red to a light blush. The pattern was even done in other solid colors like blue, green, amber, milk glass (White) and iridescent.

The King's Crown patern is distinctive - circular to oval indentations , often called "thumbprint", with a jagged sawtooth band above and below the thumbprints -- giving the effect of a "king's crown" with pointy tips above the jewels. The other striking feature of King's crown is the (usually) red flashing on the upper band of glassware and the outer edge of plates and bowls.

The flashing is not colored glass bonded to the rest of the item, but rather a kind of stain or paint applied to the finished glass. Since it isn't colored glass, the flashing is prone to chipping or flaking off during use, and discoloring in direct sunlight. I've tried to find a resource to reflash some of my glassware, or even find something I could apply myself, but I have not located anything yet.



King's Crown candelabra

King's Crown Cone Bowl


King's Crown Cruet Set

King's Crown Bonbon Dish


I'm always looking for some of the more obscure pieces - if you know of a 3 tiered tid bit tray, or the square butter dish, or even replacement caps for the castor bottles, which needs a new home, please let me know - [email protected]

King's Crown Collection
Tiffin Glass Collector's Club
Official Tiffin Glass club
Yahoo Tiffin glass club



Dragons






Doctor Who
With my strong interest in the British science fiction television show, Doctor Who, it was only a matter of time before I started collecting all the toys and books. Over the years, I picked up some books, and more books, and pins and action figures and...

One of my very favorite items is the hard to find Tardis Console from Dapol in England. The console was included as part of one the playsets (which also included the Tardis, the third Doctor, a companion and one or two villains - I think). The playsets eventually were hard to get as well, but the tragic part of the console's history is that Dapol suffered a fire in their warehouse and the mold used to create the console parts was damaged. It was quite expensive to make another one, and as a result, that didn't happen and no more consoles were made. Instant collector's item!


Tardis Console from Dapol

About 3 years ago, a console showed up for sale on Ebay, and I was the leading bidder - until literally the last 10 seconds of bidding when some sniping jerk outbid me. Oooooo, I was so mad. I was furious. I was depressed. I had the console at my fingertips and it was greedily snatched away from me. What's a guy to do?

Get in touch with the manufacturer direct.

I emailed the people at Dapol, explained what happened, and inquired if any more would be made or if any were in stock at all. The people there were very nice, and maybe they felt sorry for me, but one of the reps emailed me back and mentioned they had a console on the warehouse shelves but it might not be in working condition. Still, if I played with it, maybe I could get it to work.

Well, I was just ecstatic! I charged that item so fast my credit card almost melted, and I eagerly awaited its arrival. It didn't take long, and soon I had my very own console to aid my own own little Timelord delusions, um, daydreams.I had it almost a month before I really took a good look at it - I suppose I was just happy to have it. Finally, though, I opened the battery compartment and squeezed in the batteries.

WIDE EYED SURPRISE! A set of lights came on. With held breath and an adrenalaine surge, I slipped in the second set of batteries. I looked at it a moment, and tentatively flipped the power switch.

GGGGRRRRRIIIINNNDDDD and a small vibration and it was working! All of the lights came on, and the central time rotor started rising and falling. If I was ecstatic before, I was positively .... well, more than ecstatic. I just watched it grinding away, rotor moving up and down..... Life was complete, and I could now die happy.

Until I saw a talking Dalek from Palitoy.


Talking Dalek from Palitoy

Daleks are just cool, and I knew I HAD to have this one, too. It has 4 phrases contained on a tiny little record inside -- it essentially was a small record player in the shape of a Dalek. Pressing the button on top of the dome started up the player and the needle would play one of the tracks. I suppose it's supposed to move directly to the next track, but given the age of mine, sometimes the needle gets stuck and plays the smae track over and over. It needs some weekly or monthly maintenance - pressing the button to play the sounds. The constant playing of the sounds keeps things in working order. I can always tell if I should have been more attentive in previous weeks when I press the button and the phrases come out very s l o w l y. Oops.

Attack, Attack, Attack!
What are your orders?
You will obeeeeyyy!
Exterminate! Exterminate!

Now there is a new generation of talking Daleks which came out in September, 2001, using the latest in technology and phrases recorded on a microchip. I currently have them all! (But feel free to get me more as presents!)

Product Enterprise
Third Zone
Dr Who Store




Star Trek


OK, Star Trek is the same as Doctor Who as far as collecting. It started with watching all of the original series on TV, then getting one of the book novelizations. Then came the models. I am sure I built them all, too. The Enterprise, the Klingon and Romulan ships, even the special glow in the dark UFO alien ship. I like that one a lot - I had all of them suspended from my ceiling and this one glowed just long enough for me to fall asleep.

While I have bought some of the Radcliffe pewter ships, I haven't really gone overboard in getting much of the Trek paraphenalia -- and there certainly is a lot of it out there. People could, and probably have, gone broke buying everything ever produced for the franchise. I would like to get one of the 3D chess sets from the original series. I had downloaded the plans and rules for it once from the internet and even made one from cardboard, but the official set looks pretty cool.









Cocktail Shakers


My first shaker came from the same grandmother who gave me the King's Crown glasses. It was a great Christmas present, and while I haven't gone overboard in rounding up several dozen sets of shakers and glasses, I have picked up a few which have caught my eye.

How did the shaker come about? In a nutshell, there were gourds used in ancient egypt to hold drinks for a journey, but it was mostly a tool of the bartending trade in the late 1800's. The big revolution in shaker design came when the 1920s New Yorkers began to change the English custom of serving 5 o'clock tea to become the 5 o'clock martini hour. Shakers went from being a simple standard item to being lavishly designed, a work of art made from precious metals. Sterling silver abounded on the high end models, glass and chrome for the lower end.

Shaker History
Webtender's Shaker History




PEZ


It all started so simply with one Darth Vader PEZ dispenser - it was only $1 and it looked really cool. The co-workers got me Santa Claus for Christmas. And Spiderman for my birthday. And Garfield for being such a nice manager. When I changed jobs, my new co-workers, Zeta adn Divina, seemed to bring a new one in at least once a month.

Of course, with dispenser all around, they had to be filled with candy, and inevitably Divina and Zeta would come buy for their daily dose of PEZ.

It was an accidental collection, but it is fun to have. Until they all fall down. One of the worst times was a Seattle area earthquake in March 2001. When it first started, i thought it was the movers upstairs in the office building, but then the rumbling didn't stop. I wasn't too concerned and didn't even think about moving to a safer sppot - until the first PEZ fell over. Then I thought maybe I should move into the doorway. Eh, it can't be that bad, right?


The word PEZ comes from the German word for peppermint (pfefferminz).

PEZ Central
PEZ Official site
unofficial PEZ site





Metropolis






Comics


Ahh, comics, for so long seen as the literary candy to rot one's brain. The colorful pulps that mother's regularly threw into the trash, much to their children's consternation.

I don't even recall what my first comic book was, i'm sure it must have been something that someone gave to me, but I do recall one of the first ones I ever bought with my own pocket money, carefully saved for weeks, was the Flash (the orginal, Barry Allen, not his stuck up nephew who took over later). I went to the local Clover department store, now long closed, and carefully reviewed the selection before making my choice. It was entertaining, fun, exciting, and it ended in a cliff hanger.

It was years before I found the next issue at a used comic book store to find out how the story ended.

In the years which followed my collection has grown to a modest 3,000 issues, covering titles from DC and Marvel, Dark Horse and a host of other independent publishers. While Spiderman caught on with a majority of people, i never found him all that interesting. For me it was the Flash, able to run at super fast speeds; Superman, all powerful and kind (the world's oldest boy scout); The Legion of Super Heroes, initially a group of teenagers banding together to save the universe; Ka-Zar, Millionaire (?) man of the jungle fighting a wide variety of opponents.

As I got older, some of my tastes changed, there were new titles, mini-series and special editions. I collected the small compact multi story books, and the large oversize special editions. I added new titles, traded some away. And always wanted more.

Once I was officially an adult with my own job and income, I could afford to buy all the issues i wanted, and I could fill in gaps for the titles and stories I really wanted. I could buy new titles like The X-Files, and in time, I became intrigued with The Batman.

For so long, comics were aimed at kids, and had simple kids stories. As those kids grew up, though, not all of them left comic books behind. As readers matured, so did some of the story lines. There were comics still meant for kids, but others had characters who got (somewhat) older, too, and the story themes matured. Some took on serious issues of the day, like drug abuse, alcoholism, and in the 1990's and 2000's, stories reflected the changing face of America - there were strong female characters, more ethnic characters, and homosexual characters, too.

Comic book characters became role models, examples of how people should be, they were the best of what everyone of us could be. They were something to aspire to, someone to learn from. Maybe we could leap tall buildings ina single bound, or be invisible, or read minds, but everyone of us could try to be the best we could be, to find something we were good at and become even better.

Batman is just a guy, one with a lot of money and some really cool toys, and totally buff, but he's just a guy. Green Arrow is another one, he's a great shot with an arrow, but just a guy with a special talent. There are more examples of plain people with some special talent they developed, something inherent within them, and they used it for the greater good.

And I'm sure that comics fueled more than one wet dream. Women, and men, in tight and skimpy outfits. And on occassion there was a bit of comic book skin showing. Somewhere in my youth I knew I always liked muscles - from the first body building contest I saw on tv, to reading the pages of Superman. Superman wasn't just a great role model, he was totally HOT! Dark hair, blue eyes and big, BIG muscles. And totally unattainable. Oh well, comics were just a diversion from the real world anyway.

In the mid 1990's, though, I went cold turkey on comics. Partly because they had gotten expensive, and partly because I really didn't like the artwork. I prefered realistic artwork, lots of detail, but the style seemed to be shifting to something more cartoonish, silly, or to something abstract and minimalistic. maybe some people really liked it, as an artistic style, but i thought it was crap. Maybe the story was still good, but the artwork was bad. And that ended my buying of new comics. if I get any more now, they will have to be older ones, when artwork was still good, and stories meant something.

Comic Book Resources
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Comic book network
Listing of comic book stores
New releases list
Comic Book Conventions
Comic Book history
Marvel Comics
DC Comics
Dark Horse
Publisher links

Legion of Super Heroes
Legion Bios
Legion Links
Legion custom figures
Action Comics covers
Superman in the Ages
Superman homepage
Superman Super site
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List of Comic Book Publishers
AC Comics
Acid Colors Comics
Adventure Comics
Alternative Comics
America's Best Comics
Anarchy Studios Comics
Angry Naked Comics
Antarctic Press Comics
Archie Comics
Astonish Comics
Avatar Comics
Beyond Comics
Bongo Comics
Broadsword Comics
Capital Comics
Charlton Comics
Claypool Comics
Cliffhanger Comics
Coamix Comics
Comico Comics
Comics One Comics
CrossGen Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Darkchylde Comics
DC Comics
Dell Comics
Digital Webbing Comics
Disney Comics
Drawn and Quarterly Comics
Dream Weaver Press Comics
Dreamwave Comics
Epic Comics
Epic Proportions Comics
Eternity Comics
First Publishing Comics
Funk-O-Tron Comics
Fusebox Comics
Future Comics
Genesis West Comics
Gold Key Comics
Graphic-sha Publishing Comics
Homage Comics
Hurricane Entertainment Comics
IDW Comics
Image Comics
Impact Comics
Keenspot Entertainment Comics
Kenzer and Company Comics
King Comics
Kitchen Sink Comics
Marvel Comics
Max Comics
Mirage Studios Comics
Moonstone Comics
NBM Comics
Now Comics
Oni Press Comics
Pacific Comics
Personality Comics
Peter Four Productions Comics
Piranha Press Comics
Red Sky Comics
Renaissance Press Comics
Rocket Comics
Second 2 Some Studios Comics
Serve Man Press Comics
Slave Labor Graphics Comics
Sony Comics
Tidal Wave Studios Comics
Tokyopop Comics
Top Cow Comics
TSC Comics
Vertigo Comics
Wildstorm Comics
Wizard Comics





Silver Flatware - Skyline - Skycrest pattern

King's Crown bud vase
Replacements





CCG (Collectible Card Game)

First Floor
Foyer Kitchen Living Dining Conservatory Greenhouse Garden
Media Game SciFi Collectors Library Gallery Computer Workout
Tower Lab Crypt Secret Garage Office Outside

Second Floor
Spirituality Power Gay Crafts Work Egypt
Bedroom Geneology HTML Tower Castle
Family Mike Danny Randy Jon Michael Garth

This page last updated on November 14, 2003
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