RANTS!!! ARRGHHH!!!

What have I collected over the years (or thought about collecting):

U.S. Stamps, U. S. Coins and U. S. First Day Covers. I collected these as a kid. This kept me busy for awhile, but these collectibles are not unique from one another. One coin is like another. The only difference is quality.

Baseball and Basketball Cards. Older cards were a challenge to find in high grades. I lost interest after the sports card market crashed.

Silver and Golden Age Comic Books. There are quite a few comic books from the 1940's that have 200 or less in existence. This makes a lot of old comic books rather unique. I enjoyed this, but I prefer my later hobbies better.

I thought about collecting Original Comic Book Art but was unable to find a dealer for the lower priced artwork. The popular artists were very expensive so I never got into this.

About 5 years ago I heard about Anime Cel Art. This sounded like an interesting hobby to get into. I read that Anime Cels were less expensive than American Animation Cels. Unfortunately I had no transportation to get to stores or conventions. So like the Comic Book Art, I had to move on to something else.

After visiting a store that sold Autgraphed Photos and Contracts, I became interested in Autograph Collecting. Since I enjoy watching old movies, I mostly collected Entertainment Signed Photos of older movie stars like Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Madeleine Carroll, Vivien Leigh, Toshiro Mifune, Jimmy Stewart etc.

Minor Autograph Dealer Gripe - It was rather hard buying Autographed Photos when you couldn't see them. Dealers may describe a photo in their catalog but you can't really tell how much you like the photo unless you see it. Cel collectors - imagine if you only read a desciption of a cel before you bought it. It was almost that bad for autographed photos. I'm glad there are more autograph dealers online now.

I thought about collecting U.S.Civil War autographs but the prices had risen too much. The only thing I bought was a Civil War letter a soldier wrote to his wife.

I thought about collecting Old Movie Posters but they were expensive. They're also hard to store correctly and take up a lot of space.

I almost went into collecting Old Movie Stills, Press Books and Lobby Cards. They wouldn't be hard to store or take up much space. Unfortunately they were very expensive for the older and popular movies. For the same price I could buy photos signed by the actors themselves. I much prefered celebrity autographs to printed items so I never got into it.

Right now I'm collecting Anime Production Cels. They are fairly easy to store and not that expensive (compared to most of the hobbies mentioned above). Well...not as expensive if you can control your spending.^_^