Oddly Specific Collections

Humans have an extraordinary urge to collect things. Sometimes those collections can be very specific, and frankly quite odd.

Oddly specific collections

Psychologists say collecting can provide pleasure, identity, order, nostalgia, social connection and “the thrill of the hunt”. Some collectors are driven by rarity, others by beauty, completeness, memory or simple curiosity. One researcher estimates that roughly a third of people collect something, whether stamps, sneakers or fridge magnets. But beyond conventional hobbies lies a stranger world: people who devote years – sometimes entire lifetimes – to the gathering of objects so oddly specific that the collections become artworks in themselves.

Here’s a random list interspersed with some images:

• Airline safety cards

• Airline sick bags

• Antique mousetraps

• Banana stickers

• Barbie Dolls

• Bricks

Bricks

• Beer coasters

• Bottle caps

• Bread tags [RR1:09]

Bread Tags [RR1:09]

• Celebrity hair clippings

• Coat hangers

Coat Hangers

• Dirt and sand samples

• Elevator buttons

• Erasers shaped like food

• Escalator warning signs

• Exit signs [RR7:30]

Exit Signs [RR7:30]

• Fast-food promotional cups

• Fortune cookie fortunes [RR3:29]

• Fruit crate labels

• Golf course pencils

• Hotel “Do Not Disturb” signs

Hotel “Do Not Disturb” signs

• Hot sauces

• Matchbooks

• McDonald’s Happy Meal toys

• Miniature bottles of Tabasco [RR5:78]

• Napkins from restaurants

• Old keys

• Paper clips (found on the ground) [RR3:59, RR7:64]

Paperclips found on the ground [RR3:59, RR7:64]

• Parking meters

• Pencil sharpeners

• Police mugshots

• Police patches

• Rolling pins

Rolling pins

• Rubber ducks

• Seashells shaped like letters

• Shopping lists found in supermarket trolleys

• • Snow globes [RR7:80]

Wayne Golding’s “REMO World” T-shirt design from 1988 paid indirect homage to his own snow globe collection.

• Stones that look like human faces [RR6:58]

Stones that look like human faces. See Pareidolia [RR6:58].

• Sugar packets

• Tin robots

• Tiny pigs

Those pigs sure are tiny.

• Toothpaste tubes [RR1:84]

Legendary design and long-time friend of REMO Tucker Viemeister walks Remo through his international toothpaste collection, April 2023. Read more HERE.

• Traffic cones

• Typewriter ribbons

• Vacuum cleaners

• Vintage lunch boxes

• Vintage motel ashtrays

• “Wet Floor” signs

Some of the best collections are visually repetitive — hundreds of nearly identical objects lined up together – because repetition transforms ordinary items into something surreal, funny and strangely beautiful. A wall of airline safety cards or thousands of banana stickers can become more visually arresting than a traditional art collection. The collector turns the mundane into the remarkable.

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REMORANDOM Chapter