Collectors and ephemera

Fresh examples of who collects and why?

Our founder, an English museum curator in Australia for the Bicentennial museum activity, collected paper bags – free or cheap, easy to store, and a record of many aspects of our social life.

Ephemera is ordinary printed material, in the past, say the 1970s, not usually kept by museums and libraries. Here are some examples:

It can also be extra ordinary: say this passport:

Collections can be defined by the collector, for example, you might only collect badges you can keep on a cap.

Some people find more space and a collection of more than 17,000 badges, never spending more than $0.50 on a badge. (Bill from Geelong’s collection.)

Some collectors like to focus on Australia images and themes – all from the collection of MA.

Some people hunt for particular types of material for years. Even though these calculators are tangential to their main collecting interests. Like this pharmacy and health collector AH, who has got distracted by volvelles:

You have to make decisions: there are so many postcards but fewer if you only collect those which show faces (not places) like JY.

Ephemera and collecting often have flexible rules – it needn’t be on paper.

Some focus on free items, like bookmarks.

Other people keep everything, almost obsessively but ordered like these diaries from the 1970s. These are very valuable because they tell us so much about ordinary life.