Down the Lane

....... all sorts of things really. That you could find or acquire free.
Trevs slingshot thread reminded me of my sister collecting rubber bands. Mind you that was collecting to use (for a Chinese skipping rope).
At the top end of junior school people collected a lot of 'free' things.
Stamps - you could get them from envelopes or ask people with foreign letters to save them. And there were adverts in Children's Newspaper for free stamps if you sent for their approvals (and ended up spending, but got loads free) From the free ones you got 'swaps' to trade with friends. Put your name down at the library to borrow the Stanley Gibbons cataloge to arrange them in date order. Learn the names of countries in their own language.
Match box tops (not me)
Cheese labels off the triangles of cheese spread.(not me either)
silver paper. Smoothed out with a finger nail. (not a serious collection, but it was pretty)
Woolly mats - at one time there was a craze for picking fluff off cardigans and spreading & flattening it to make a multicoloured sheet. Probably lots of thread-bare clothes. I didn't do that!

Now the collecting seems to involve spending - at least, my grandson's football cards do.

My brother, in the late 70's I think it was, collected the stickers off bananas (maybe other fruit too, not sure) and they all got stuck on the inside of the door on one of the kitchen wall units! What a strange one to collect - it didn't matter that there were copies, he seems to have just needed to fill the door up!

Yes, I've found fruit stickers on odd surfaces around the house, not sure who put them there.

MEXICO 70 Football stickers and I remember putting a postcard in the local CO-OP (If I remember correctly) to get swaps to complete my collection. All I recall is Bobby Moore was on the front of the sticker book, not sure if the sticker packs were free or you had to buy them.

Around the same time I think ESSO/Exxon garages were issuing silver coins/discs and I managed to get a few of them but not sure what they were for now either.

My memory, where did it go?

Hi , My looker at work is covered with fruit label stickers . Not me ,my work force . Mainly over the key hole ... My other file cabinet was dumped as dangerous had more sticky labels on it from the last 40 years , tradition I think carried on by new owners.
Bob

Trev I had the whole set of the Esso coins in a nice cardboard book which I lost over the years I do have battlestar galactica and star wars bubble gum cards which I have very safe in a shoe box.

I had load of cigarette cards. Some sets in books, some in cigarette packets. Old ones that my mothers cousin collected - Coronation of George (memory said V but google says the dates are wrong so it must have been VI), military uniforms, flags, maybe cricketers + nature subjects. Then in the late 50s Lyons tea started doing them, so we changed brand and I collected them. You could send for a book to stick them in that had the words from the back of the card printed round the space for cards. I think I must still have them somewhere.

The only thing I seem to collect these days are more and more jobs to the "Things to do" list, I obviously took a wrong turn in life somewhere!!!

sandy - out of interest do you recall what them coins were for? Tried a Google search but came up with nothing relevant.

That rings very true.

I don't think the coins were 'for' anything. Just collecting. I have one to commemorate the first moon landing. Not sure what it was given away with.

Since June thinks we are too quiet her I'll revive this with memories of cardboard houses on the back of detergent packets (Rinso?)- you had to wait till the packet was empty before you could cut them out to make the model. You could see what you were getting there, though the cornershop might only have one sort.
And plastic figures in the bottom of cornflakes etc. We started opening the packet from the wrong end to get those.

Mo wrote:Since June thinks we are too quiet her I'll revive this with memories of cardboard houses on the back of detergent packets (Rinso?)- you had to wait till the packet was empty before you could cut them out to make the model. You could see what you were getting there, though the cornershop might only have one sort.
And plastic figures in the bottom of cornflakes etc. We started opening the packet from the wrong end to get those.

Quite busy in general today Mo. I'm so busy answering that it is getting dark and the fire needs a log on it

My brother and I collected stamps when we were young. You could buy a packet of Indian stamps very cheaply. Don't remember what happened to my stamp album.

I am an avid reader, and bought books, mainly second hand, for years. I still have them, and re-read them.

My Grannie's button tin lives in my cupboard, but I have not really added to it, so can't own that as a collection.

Thanks for reviving this thread.

I collected marbles, glittery, sparkly, colourful glass marbles, all sizes. Think in the future I will lose mine.

ilona

Ilona

MQ. I had marbles, didn't like to play 'keepsies' in case I lost any.
My stamp collection was swelled by my father asking all sorts of people for stamps. He worked as a hospital cook and there were lots of maids from Europe (at the time unless you were Commonwealth you could only do domestic work here). And he asked people at church too, so I was given a couple of albums that people had collected when they were children. lots of good stamps but I think collecting lost a bit of its attraction then, when I just had a few I knew them all by name. My mother took over my collection keeping it up to date for me when I went to college, bought all the new issues, the local Post Office knew her and saved a set of World Cup stamps - 'but I've got those' - 'these are overprinted England Winners'. I don't think there was enough for all who wanted them. My children had albums and some of my old stamps, (the swaps I think, leaving the albums intact) and I remember making up packets of stamps for the primary school Christmas Fayre bran tub - word went round and the boys who collected dug and felt around to pick them out. They were very common stamps in the 50s (like a purple American one), less so in the 70s. My mother eventually gave my collection to a charity to sell.