Call Me Collect
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday June 2, 1988
THE world is going collectively crazy. From superpowers stockpiling nuclear toys to Aunt Matilda's priceless collection of Bay City Rollers albums, if it doesn't move, someone's keeping it. And if it does move, they'll shoot it, stuff it, then collect it.
Trevor Flett is a graphic designer who helps produce People's Paraphernalia- a continuing series of elaborate full-colour, hard-cover books dedicated to the weird and wonderful collections of Australia. He says the hottest collectible items at the moment are in the area known as ephemera - meaning just about anything printed and mass-produced. "Disney and Coke stuff is very hot," he says, "because you just can't get it in America or Japan any more. Australia is the last oasis of anything to do with Deco or Americana."
Also big are "theme" collections. Trevor has one of Australia's best collections of kookaburra and Vegemite paraphernalia. He was the one who paid$950 for a special jar of Vegemite at a charity auction. Liberal Party heavy John Elliot collects anything with an elephant theme.
Ephemera will be present by the truckload at the seventh Collectors' Fair this Sunday. The accent is on movie memorabilia, but related books, comics and records will also be up for sale, along with TV memorabilia. Organiser Mal MacDonald says there are fanatical collectors of anything to do with Lost In Space and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Those in and around the pop industry are known for their collections, probably because their lifestyle gives them plenty of time to haunt the op-shops during the day.
As you would expect from the band who wrote Elvisly Yours, members of the Johnnys are avid collectors of Elvis memorabilia. Also into things slightly tacky is Ray Medhurst of the Rockmelons. He collects soapie memorabilia, with special emphasis on Dallas and Prisoner spin-off merchandising. A rare bottle of JR aftershave is a prized item.
Some even wear their collections. Dave Mason's cloth travel patches, gathered from around the world, are sewn on to a pair of jeans. There are so many it's hard to actually see any denim. He says the patches are the only thing holding the jeans together.
Some collections turn into interior design. Crowded House keyboard player Eddie Rayner has possibly Australia's best collection of water pistols - at last count more than 300. He's working out away to mount them all on one wall of his house. Rob Walker, former tour manager with Tina Turner, has his vast collection of American baseball caps pinned to one wall of his office at EMI. It beats plaster ducks.
The most bizarre subject? Barbed wire collecting may sound twisted, but in fact it's a world-recognised activity, complete with its own fanzine, entitled(what else?) The Barbarian. There are hundreds of different barbed wire designs, each with its own story to tell. Nazi barbed wire is apparently among the most highly valued.
Australia's oddest collections? According to Trevor Flett, someone down in Ballarat, Victoria, has what he believes to be Australia's largest collection of large lemon squeezers (not to be confused with small lemon squeezers). Funnily enough, it is also believed to be Australia's only collection of large lemon squeezers.
The weirdest collection in the world? My vote goes to good ol' Frank Johnson of Minnesota, world champion twine twirler. He has been collecting string since 1950, tying the pieces together and rolling them into one large ball. Did I say large? That ball is now over four metres in diameter, weighs more than 10 tonnes, and along the way a few birds and squirrels have built nests inside the thing.
The world of the collectors is a microcosm of our society. Each form of collecting, no matter how bizarre or obscure it may seem to the uninvolved, has its own code of ethics and demarcation lines.
Women collect dolls, but men build doll's houses. Men give antique household appliances to museums, but women research our pioneers' domestic practices. Wedgwood pottery acquisitors are said to transcend sex and class boundaries. And although there are very few women seriously involved in collecting comics, records, science-fiction artefacts or toys (as opposed to dolls), there are exceptions.
Kerry Dougherty, who, with her long hair and diminutive build, looks a little like a Gerry Anderson heroine, sits in her western Sydney flat, surrounded by unpacked boxes of Anderson's Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and TV 21 annuals.
"I'm not the only female Gerry Anderson collector I know of, but I'm probably the most rabid," she says. "It's the main thing I collect, along with space memorabilia."
Helen Grant of Hobbyco is another woman working in a man's field - she's a model-maker at the store's main George Street branch. Starting at the age of five "repairing my brother's thrown-away aircraft and car models", she now laughs about male modellers who come bursting into the store, "demanding to meet the man" who created the window displays.
Powerhouse museum toy curator Louise Mitchell says women dominate doll collecting, while men go in for tin toys - especially those of automative design. John Bakasetas of Phantom Records says records are emerging as a major area of collecting, but claims it's still very much a man's field. He says Sydney's record junkies "range in age from 18 to 60, and often live on their own in houses full of records. Some work night shifts because the pay is good and they have free days to go hunting. Others pay for their buys through becoming record dealers".
Bakasetas adds that women "usually collect one artist - David Bowie or INXS, for example - or one style of music, such as new wave."
Men may collect records for "their different covers, and have no interest in the music within, or buy every release on a particular label". One almost legendary collector lives with his mother in a house packed from floor to ceiling with discs. He doesn't own a record player. The Collectors' Fair is on Sunday at St John's Hall, 263 Oxford Street, Paddington, from 9.30am.
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald