Got It, Got It, Need It

Okay, so, Halloween’s over, the election is done, and you’re fat and happy after a Thanksgiving feast - right? Oh, but it’s the first weekend of December, and you know what that means. You gotta haul your backside up to the attic and drag down all the holiday decorations - including at least one huge, two-ton container full of either snow globes or that Christmas village collection. You know . . . it’s the one your spouse or kids make you add to each season, even though it’s already a sprawling metropolis.

But if you think your collection is serious - think again. Tillie Wiedemann, that sweet, personable woman who greets you at city hall as you walk in, has a collection of Department 56 snow houses that’d knock your socks off. She’s been collecting them for fifteen years and her scenes fill every room in her Bellaire home.

“I remember the first one I picked up,” Tillie says with a giggle. “I don’t know - I brought it home and set it on the television, and for some reason it really put me in the Christmas spirit.”

Since Tillie grew up in an orphanage, she says maybe it has to do with not having toys as a child. What she really likes though, is how warm and fun her dioramas are when she sets them up. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, she says it takes three or four days to create all the presentations. “I couldn’t do it without my husband and kids,” Tillie admits.

Evidently it’s worthwhile. Each year she has a special coffee and brunch where invitees come and see the annual exhibition, which Tillie leaves up until after the Holidays. “People look forward to it - they see something they might not have seen before or something new I’ve gotten,” she says.

What apparently makes these village pieces so collectible is that the manufacturers retire specific ones after a limited production run. “Oh, you can find them occasionally on the internet or something - but after they’re retired, it’s pretty difficult.”

Now, Tillie’s yuletide megalopolis got us wondering what else people collect around town.

Stamps from around the world.

My dad had a killer stamp collection. There were boxes and boxes of stamps from everywhere around the world. He had a thick album full of pages and pages of them, too. I, myself, had quite a coin collection as a kid - that is until my older brothers raided it to buy candy, cokes, and, later, cigarettes. Fortunately, they saw no inherent value in my Matchbox and Corgi cars. Even a small squad of my original army men survived suppression fire laid down by BB guns and the shock and awe of firecrackers and cherry bombs. So all that stuff I’m able to hand down to my sons.

And we all remember the baseball cards we used to get with bubble gum. How many of us wished we still had those? But what if you need ideas on what to get for one of your favorite people?

On the girly side, Barbie’s were a once a rage, and still are. Corrin McCullough, a second grader at Horn Academy, has a Princess Barbie collection.

“She really doesn’t play with them,” says Ann, Corrin’s mom, adding that her daughter keeps them on a shelf. “They’re really cute because they’re dressed in these little regal outfits appropriate to their cultures,” she says.

Ann is also a collector. Her particular interest centers on folk art carvings by artist Marlene Dusbiber. “I started collecting her birds and I now have (many, many) seasonal and other carvings as well,” she says. Then she confides that she loves to show her “Dusbibers” to anyone who is interested.

So, what if you’re a seriously cool kid - boy or girl? What’s the current runaway collectible? Yeah, the easy answer is Pokémon or similar spin-offs. Most parents have suffered through that stage with their kid. My oldest son got his hands on a huge cache of Pokémon cards - some are even the original cards in Japanese.

But, if you’re a way, way cool girl, then odds are you’re into Polly Pocket sets. Elyse Hanse, a six-year-old first grader at Horn, is my gleeful tutor on the finer aspects of her collection. Polly Pocket is a series of miniature dolls no bigger than about 3-1/2 inches tall. The pocket size figures come in sets with amazingly minute accessories. One of Elyse’s items is this centimeter long rabbit. What’s more, it even comes with a sweater that couldn’t be more than a millimeter.

They’re designed for little fingers, which made me feel like I had the dexterity of a gorilla when trying to help put on a doll’s top or shoe. Of course, you’re asking yourself, what is the attraction of Polly Pockets over any other doll? Well, Elyse tells it best in her own words.

“It’s cool stuff!” she says with an unspoken “duh” like I’m an idiot. “The roller coaster is really cool and I like the little people, and I like the costumes,” she says. Pushing through the mix of tiny things scattered in front of her, she digs up a dog. Her face scrunches up and she smiles big. “I like the dog and cats and rabbits, too!”

Then she demonstrates her dressing technique on one of the Pollys. “The people are little and you can put little clothes on them and shoes and it all fits into a Polly bag - so it’s easy to take places.”

Elyse makes a passing comment, nonchalantly as kids do, that she wants a new set. Her mom, Rachel Hanse, suggested to her daughter that it might be something to put on her list to Santa.

Now, I happen to know from a reliable elf that these Polly Pocket sets run about ten bucks on average. So, it won’t send the Polar Savings & Trust into Chapter 11.

Quartz are a favorite among rock hounds.

Believe or not, another popular trend is in rock collecting. At a recent meeting of cub scouts from Pack 130 at the Bellaire United Methodist Church, I discovered three scouts who are amateur geologists.

Seven-year-old John David Lambert and his eleven-year-old brother, Paul, are both into collecting. Proud mom, Donna Lambert, says like most boys, hers started off collecting rocks when they could figure out how to put a rock in their pockets. Then they got serious by collecting fossils. “Now their interests are really developing so they want to learn the ‘history’ behind their rocks,” she says.

The Lambert repository includes petrified wood, iron ore, quartz, and, obviously, fossils of various sorts.

A colleague, you might say, as well as fellow Cub Scout, is Cameron Anderson. According to his mom, Diane, the second-grader has always found them fascinating. “He wants to know where there from? How old they are? And how they were made?” she says. From her description, Cameron’s collection is pretty diverse, with specimens from trips to Nantucket Island to Amethysts from South America.

“Cameron loves the mesquite petrified wood we find when we get out to the country in Rockdale, Texas,” Diane says. She also says Cameron is a regular at Jeanne’s Rock Shop over in the Bellaire Triangle. Which, by the way, is someplace you should really go.

Gwynn Gurski was my guide through the shop. Jeanne’s is a treasure trove with all kinds of stuff to hit every interest and meet every budget. Gwynn says kids are more attracted to the shiny rocks when they start - either because of the high polish or the crystalline properties. Then they move into the fossils - that tie-in to dinosaurs, again. And just as an aside, petrified palm is our Texas State rock.

Statehood quarters are a great introduction to coin collecting.

Getting back to something more traditional, we meet Jacob Ehrenstrom. He’s another Cub Scout from Pack 130, and he’s into coins. According to his dad, Bill, Jacob has every quarter but one in the ongoing series released to date from the U.S. Mint. He also collects pennies and nickels.

Penny and nickel collecting may seem as easy as sifting through pocket change - well it is. But you have to know what you’re looking for. Is it a steel penny from World War II? Might it be an Indian Head penny? That nickel might have the typical Jefferson profile on the head, however there might be a Buffalo on the tail side rather than the Jefferson Memorial. The mintmarks make a big difference, too. And there are some mis-strikes out there that bring in hefty sums.

Jay Johnson, owner of Houston Numismatic Exchange in Rice Village, recommends that new coin collectors begin with U.S. coins, such as Indian head pennies and Buffalo nickels. He also suggests collectors pick up a copy of the “Red Book”, a retail selling guide of collector coins dating back to the first U.S. minting of coins. Johnson said the Red Book is considered “the Bible” in the coin collecting world.

“Statehood quarters are also extremely popular with people of all ages,” says Johnson. The Statehood quarters are released in sets of five each year, beginning in 1998 with the Delaware quarter. Twenty nine quarters have been released to date with Hawaii, the 50th quarter, scheduled for release in 2008. The circulated quarters can be purchased for as little as 50 cents to $1.50 each. Mint sets can run into the hundreds of dollars.

Then, again, most people wind up collecting things more out of interest that from prospective value. Tillie Wiedemann is a perfect example, as are the kids who collect rocks, or maybe army men they find in the dirt of some playground. It’s just the sheer joy of pulling together a bunch of cool stuff that makes you feel good.

Therefore, I’m shutting the door to my study so I can secretly play with my Matchbox fire engine collection before my kids come home. Shh!