[-photo-essay-]

Ways to Organize your Chaos Collections

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[-photo essay-]

by collector, Mikey Walters

All my life I’ve been a collector. When I was young, I collected action figures, bubblegum cards (only movie and TV show cards, no sports), and even stamps for a while. As I grew older I stuck with comic books, and sometimes made an effort to own an entire series of videos or books, but my favorite and longest lingering collection is my PEZ.

Just like everyone, I had eaten PEZ as a kid, but I don’t think I saved any of the toy dispensers. One Christmas, Mom bought a Santa Claus dispenser that are in the stores every year for my stocking (I get a stocking full of candy to this day!), and I thought it was great - it made me think it would be fun to pick up a new PEZ whenever I saw one at the grocery store, and that’s just what I did.

Soon I had around 30 dispensers, all bought randomly one at a time, and it started getting tough to find anything I didn’t own. I started looking for PEZ info on the web, and found tons of sites - I realized that PEZ collecting was a huge hobby, with some dispensers going for $1,000! At that point, I actually became a real collector, and started going to different stores to “hunt the heads” that I needed.

Soon I had every US dispenser in production, so the next step was to buy European and Canadian PEZ (which include other characters not available in the US). I started ordering PEZ from web sites and spending some real cash, and when I went to Canada I bought every dispenser I could find.

From there I could only move into “antique” PEZ, which slowed me down quite a bit, as the average dispenser goes for $25-$50 bucks! I haven’t bought one at this price in a long time, since there are several new lines of characters out (I bought lots of them while I was in Japan).

My PEZ are displayed on actual PEZ racks mounted on the wall. The best part of PEZ collecting is seeing how cool hundreds of little heads look all together! I now have well over 250 different dispensers. People always ask about my oldest and favorite ones - my oldest and favorite is Batman with Cape from 1966 (my only dispenser older than me!), which is worth $150! A few older old ones are Elephant with Hair (worth up to $200.00) and Maharajah from the early 70s. One year for my birthday, my amazing friends surprised me with a Captain America dispenser, which started up a fun buying spree for me!

For a while I was a total fanatic, reading PEZ newsletters and dying to hear the latest rumors about new characters, but now I have fun just enjoying my collection and buying new ones as I find them - just the way I started out.

By the way, my favorite PEZ website is PEZ Central, and my collection is featured on the site, here. Here’s mikey’s site

Originally published in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections

[-essay, survey, collecting-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

- Originally published as an editorial for the October 25 issue of The Practically Creative Quarter, theme: collections - This version was edited slightly to reflect the new context -

When we came up with the idea of COLLECTIONS as a theme for this issue, it seemed like a good fit. Collections are visually interesting and mentally stimulating and collecting is an activity that a lot of creative people - whether they mean to or not - engage in.

I didn’t have a clue that putting together an issue on collections would teach me so much. A zine, I quickly realized, is itself a collection.

Collecting is often thought of as a self-indulgent need to accumulate things but I began to notice - and soon couldn’t help but see - that many of our everyday activities are about collecting. On a personal level, we are collecting when we bookmark web pages, sort emails, gather contacts on Facebook or Flickr, put our recipes in boxes or notebooks, journal our daily experiences, file our papers, hang art on the walls, maintain bulletin boards, blog our thoughts. On an organizational level scientific laboratories gather data, corporations gather customers, libraries, museums and fashion designers - well - they either acquire or create collections, don’t they?

As human beings we seem hardwired to gather things into categories. It’s part of how we make sense of our complicated world, allowing us to claim some special relationship to certain things or people and keep others at arms length. Our relationships with our collections aren’t always comfortable but on some level, they do make sense to us.

Collecting can be divided into two main types. The first is the collection that we purposefully add to, keep, treasure, trade, display but have no intention of using - or - using up. The other kind is the collection we can’t help. It is usually some functional (the accent on fun!) thing that we love to use and therefore cannot help but acquire. And so we acquire and acquire and acquire it until we have so much that we could never use it up! Art and office supplies, books and cds are tops among this kind of collections.

Be sure to check out our these links to our other Collections issue articles and photo essays. I ask your forgiveness in advance for missing your favorite collectible. Putting in every kind of collection is like putting in the WORLD!

• Art supplies (and an interview) with Teesha Moore
• Ephemera
• Toys
• PEZ heads can head here
• Ways to organize collections

We asked our collecting contributors about their habits a short survey and their responses are enthusiastic and fun to read! The survey is below with links to the results. The first three questions are grouped on the same page; the others each have their own post-page. To add your answers and responses, click on the questions, have fun reading the answers and leave your comments after the posts.

Collectors Survey

1. How many collections do you have?

10. What has collecting taught you about people or life?

a good gathering link:
ibiblio - a ‘collection of collections’

In doing this survey, I found out that people are very passionate about their collections so don’t hold back!

A special thank you to all our generous contributors! Please click on their links to see more of their work and play.

Originally published in the October 25 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections

[-practices, tip-]

a Quick Creative Practice
~simple practices have profound impacts~

Schedule Creative Time

Of course you know this, but do you do it? If you don’t schedule time for being creative, no one else will. Whether you are overly busy or have lots of *free* time, your day will fill up with anything but creative pursuits if you don’t get it on your list. Literally write it down on your calendar, day book, computer, palm pilot or whatever you use to organize your life. Be specific and be serious about taking the time you saved just to be creative.

Originally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarter, theme: inspiration