All right, you guys! Play nicely.
Collecting. Hmmmm.....
I don't know if I truly qualify as a "collector" because my habits are erratic and, to true collectors, confounding and maddening.
I don't have to have every single issue of something, be it a magazine, or CD/LP in a specific genre, etc. I collect the ones I "like."
I've been collecting soundtracks since 1962. On LP, I have about 1,500 film soundtracks, scores and musicals, that I truly love. I know folks with more than 6,000 LP soundtracks alone. They collect "to collect" -- have to have every single LP ever issued, including reissues, foreign issues, 45 r.p.m., DJ promo copies, the works. I know they love the music, too, but they are completists and I'm not.
Can't be bothered with that because it's the music I love to accumulate, not every occasion the music was put on a different LP. I have more than 2,000 CD soundtracks, including re-recordings, special issues by composers, etc.
In the past few years, I've acquired an interest in collecting various things from favorite films -- posters, still sets (usually, I have to buy a set one still at a time), lobby cards (ditto what I said about still sets), inserts (those 14 X 36 posters).
And I'm nuts about window cards (usually 14 X 22 posters on heavy card stock) for Broadway musicals, having among my most treasured possessions original window cards for "A Little Night Music" and "On the Twentieth Century." I have also no compunction about acquiring reproductions of posters if I like something well enough and the repro is as exact a copy as can be. I have repros from most Sondheim shows (except I cannot find one of an original -- i.e. the first --"Into the Woods," but I'm patient). A couple of months ago, I lost a bid for an original "Mack & Mabel" window card. I was beat out in the final seconds by someone who wanted it REALLY badly. Actually, I entertained ideas that the seller would contact me and tell me the highest bidder got carried away and bid higher than he meant to. I was willing to pay a lot, but I wasn't fast enough to beat the clock. To make up for the disappointment, I treated myself to an original "Dream Girls" window card at half the price I had bid for "Mack & Mabel." I've also got an original, but post-Tony, "Cabaret" card.
Every now and then, I stumble across programs from Broadway musicals, and I have a nice assortment, including "She Loves Me" and "Hello, Dolly!" I lost one for "Cabaret", which included one of those sample 45 r.p.m. simulated records with a few songs from the show on it.
And one of my TRUE passions is souvenir programs from movies. I have been merciless and brutal in my acquisition of titles that rarely turn up. Of course, there is a limit. I once entered bidding for "Raintree County" and the bid hit $150 (yes, for that little insignificant little booklet that sold for 25 cents in the theater). After the auction ended, another person contacted me and said she had a "Raintree County" program she'd sell me for $150. I thanked her and declined. Two months later, I got one for $12.50. And once I was bidding on a "Gigi" and someone outbid me, then someone outbid them. This was in the final moments. That copy went for about $35. A few lines below was another copy of the program, which I bid on and won for $8. Go figure. And I never could understand why the second, losing, bidder never bid on the copy I won.
Oh...other things I've collected -- autographed photos of favorite stars. I have an assortment of favorite TV cowboys, too. And I have an assortment of Gary Lockwood photos. He was in my favorite childhood TV series, "The Lieutenant" which didn't have a long run.
And I have two cast photos from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (different seasons...one with Angel and Cordelia in the photo, and the other with Riley, Spike and Tara in the photo) signed by the entire cast (original, not a print)!
I have a nice assortment of autographs, plus caricatures and photos of Broadway musical composers and lyricists, bought in unbelievable lots. Sondheim is among the autographs. Some months ago, I won an auction for an unbelievable item...it was a mock-up album cover for one of the Sondheim recording issues (selections from shows I had the cast recordings of). It was called "Sondheim" and the cover was fabric. Sondheim had autographed it and several more (I don't know how many were done). I paid and waited and waited and waited. I had won this item from a PBS radio station in New Jersey. Finally, the station said they figured it must have been lost in the mail (in more than 600 transactions on eBay through the U.S. mail, NOTHING had ever been lost). I figured someone either "took it", or they didn't think the bid was high enough (it was given to them to raise money). My bid had been $156. I was reimbursed, but I'm still bitter about it.
But my prizes are my photos and signatures of film composers. I have a nice variety, plus some interesting items like the contract for Jerome Moross' score to "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," a contract with Edward B. Powell to arrange the main title for "The Best Years of Our Lives" and Hugo Friedhofers legal document signing over to Sam Goldwyn all rights to the music he composed for "The Best Years of Our Lives." All these documents are signed by the named people! I have a hotel receipt from the Beverly Hills Hotel signed by Alfred Newman in the wee small hours of a morning in 1938.
Oh, yes. And there's an autograph from Mr. Gregory Peck on a card dealing with an anniversary of "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- something that came "with" the DVD the seller was hawking on eBay. The card was mentioned in the description, but not as part of the subject.
Gee! I guess I am a collector!