ANNOUNCER: Coming up on "Keystone Stories, More Than A Collection."

[theme music] KENDYL: Support for "Keystone Stories" comes from Tom and Sara Songer of the Torron Group and State College, a proud supporter of programming on WPSU.

More information at torrongroup.com.

Center County Historical Society, with support from Happy Valley Adventure Bureau.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

Are you a collector?

Maybe it's coins, toys, trading cards, vinyl records, or something entirely your own.

More than half of us are collectors, but no two collections or the people behind them are exactly the same.

On the stage, we're going to have South Wilcox from over, supported by members of Starfleet to the worm.

MARK: I am the god of the night sky and then he changes it to nighttime.

I'm here today to just look around, have fun.

I have a whole bin of minifigure series that I've had from pretty much series five to now.

I would consider myself to be a collector, yeah.

LOCHLAN: I'm a collector.

I collect pretty much anything.

Funko Pops, Pokemon cards, rubber duckies.

Yes.

Yeah.

I collect those too.

JON: I am a collector myself.

I have probably 200 pages at my house.

Don't tell my wife that.

[chuckle] I don't know if there's a particular personality type that's associated with collecting, but every collector I've ever met has been passionate about what they collect.

Ooh!

I just bought this Mega Kangaskhan card and it's from a new Pokemon set and I've been really looking forward to getting it so I'm really happy I got this KEVIN: But I think you probably have to have that passion in order to spend that much time, effort, money in some cases to track down these items.

But beyond that, people do it for so many different reasons and for so many different motivations.

JESSICA: I'm Jessica Dolan.

I own Arcadian Consignment, Vintage & Antique, but I call myself the finder of things and stuff.

I'm out there scouring for secondhand goods, looking for things for people who collect.

I have a list of people looking for different things, like Sterling silver guys and comic book guys.

Then if I get Lionel trains in.

I do ask them questions about why they're buying something, where it's going to go in their collection, what they're doing with it, why do they like it.

And the answers I get are all over the board.

People collect for lots of different reasons.

Sometimes because they got one item as a kid, and that one item turned into many more over the years.

And there's a sense of nostalgia as they age and find those older items out in the wild, so to speak.

Because I have the 16 at home.

It was actually my first fan ever just like this.

ROBBIE: Well, you let me, sir.

All right.

I'll think about it a minute.

ROBBIE: My name is Robbie Lawrence.

I am a lifelong fan collector, appreciator, appraiser, anything along those lines.

[light music] I am on the board of directors for the antique fan collectors association, and one of my duties is to hold a series of conventions.

Today, we are at our premiere fan meet at the Monaghan Township Fire Hall here in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

I have between 400 to 500 fans.

They encompass all time periods from as early as 1902 to as late as the early 2000.

So it encompasses that hundred-year period.

I predominantly store the ones that are the most value at my home in Bethlehem.

The rest are split up between two storage units that I have nearby.

The storage unit people absolutely love me.

I got a fruitcake from them every Christmas.

So I keep them in business.

[chuckle] There was a certain smell to one of these that I remember at high school.

There was one.

KEVIN: Nostalgia can be a big part of collecting.

Collecting is about saving something from the past that was significant in some way that people want to hold on to and preserve.

It can connect up with memory, with nostalgia in all kinds of different ways.

JESSICA: I hear at least once a day, oh, Grandma so-and-so had that.

Remember when Grandpa?

And you just hear all these connections.

And it could be a mug with Garfield on it, and they'll be like, oh, Grandpa always drank out of.

And you can just see the nostalgia come through.

One of my earliest childhood memories was coming home after preschool and sitting down on the living room floor at my grandmother's with a Hunter model 11027 box fan from the '70s.

I would just sit on that living room floor for hours watching that spin around on low, and that just never left me.

Today, there are certain models of fans where I am immediately whisked back to the living room of my grandparents' house in 1998 as a four-year-old child.

And every time I see something like that, it just brings me such joy.

Some of them are from the 1950s and '60s.

These are a little newer, maybe '60s or '70s.

But I hesitate to say off the top of my head because I'm not sure.

My name is Kim and I collect PEZ dispensers.

It began when I was 10.

My mother bought me an Easter Bunny PEZ dispenser.

After that, we started looking everywhere and driving places for them so it snowballed.

There is a group of presidents here that are out of the box.

These on the bottom actually have whistles in them.

These are all "Star Wars."

I'm not sure how big the PEZ collection is.

We're assuming 3,000.

Maybe it could be 4,000.

But we don't have a count so I'm not sure.

[whimsical music] My mom passed in 2009.

Since we'd spent a lot of time buying them, it's a way for me to remember her.

And I'd like to think she'd be proud of what this has all become at this point.

And I enjoy it, too so that helps.

Yeah.

For much of our civilized existence, collecting was limited to the wealthy, the powerful, those with money and institutions behind them.

Popular collecting really takes off around the time and just after the Industrial Revolution when there's simply more things to collect.

Collectors are a wide swath of people who collect for all kinds of different reasons.

And it's their personal passion for that that leads them into wanting to hold on to those items and put together a set of something that they can keep and treasure.

JESSICA: I've come across all sorts of crazy collections and collectors.

[chuckle] I'm laughing because I'm thinking of all the weird things people collect.

KEVIN: I did meet someone who has the world's largest collection of rubber ducks.

JESSICA: Cat items, all sorts of cat items.

If it has a cat on it, she's buying it.

KEVIN: Book collecting, coin collecting, stamp collecting.

JESSICA: Old axes, old railroad ties, KEVIN: Dr Pepper memorabilia.

JESSICA: Taxidermy is a big one.

Dog items, hair items, hair jewelry.

I know of one person who collects teeth, gold teeth, rotten teeth, all sorts of teeth.

KEVIN: Yeah, any collection involving human body parts is usually going to stand out from the pack.

Collecting has often been perceived as a male dominated activity, and I think it's partly because some of the most popular types of collecting do have more men collecting them-- sports memorabilia, comic books.

Whereas, historically, women have been more likely to collect objects that were centered on family and home and things that we would think of as more domestic.

This doll is from the year I was born so my mom's like, you have to buy her.

She's the same birth year as you.

My mom was a seamstress so she would make us clothing for our dolls.

Then I had two daughters so I started collecting porcelain dolls for them.

This space was my daughter's room.

And all the porcelain dolls have found their way here.

My motto was the bigger, the better.

But then they started taking up too much space.

So we switched to miniatures.

I have probably about 30 doll houses scattered throughout my home.

["habanera" playing] The Queen Patricia is my favorite.

She is 10 feet in length and 5-feet tall.

She rests upon four full-size kitchen cabinets.

She actually has mini mes.

So we went to a company in Pittsburgh and they do a 3D miniature of you.

This one here is my mini me.

I didn't really have a really nice dollhouse as a child or anything.

I collected Barbies and I never had the Barbie dream house.

I had just a cardboard inset house that was four large rooms.

So I think it was probably something missing from my childhood.

Most of our dollhouses are done in 1/12 scale, and that means that you're working a lot with tweezers.

So attention to detail is a very helpful trait to have in miniatures.

I really like the hunt, eBay sellers, estate sells.

It's so fun to rummage through and find just that little detail that's going to make a difference in your dollhouse.

JON: A lot of the books up here are first appearances of people.

We have a Fantastic Four one, an X-Men one, Avengers one.

Let's decide that as the first Iron Man, first Hawkeye.

KEVIN: There is an element of connoisseurship to collecting.

You're selecting particular objects.

You have a set of criteria you're using to decide, this is what I need, this, however, is not needed.

We have people that say, hey, I'm really looking for shiny Espeon.

Do you have it?

MARK: I pinpoint whenever a new set of things are coming out and know, all right, how much am I willing to spend to get the collection?

Stuff like that.

I usually take a lap around before I make any financial decisions.

Whenever I say, OK, that's the last one, I turn around and lo and behold, there's another one that I still want.

[chuckle] NICK: I go out and buy stuff and my wife says, where are you going to put that?

And I say, that's not the point.

We'll find a place.

You just have to have it.

We finished this basement a few years ago.

Before that, I was in a much smaller room and it was just stuffed to the gills.

But now this room is pretty stuffed, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop.

My collection is just about anything I can find related to horror, sci-fi, cult movies, comedy.

This is probably the oldest thing in this collection.

This is Ultraman.

He was a Japanese hero/superhero that fought giant monsters.

I just wanted to have it and I bought it.

And then I just started collecting other stuff from there.

I don't have too much of the normie stuff like the Freddy Krueger and Jason.

This is the autograph of the man who played Godzilla from the original in 1954.

So technically, I guess I can say I have Godzilla's autograph.

I like the weirder stuff, everything from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" to "The Green Slime."

This is probably one of my biggest collections, literally, "Killer Klowns from Outer Space," one of the most amazing, most inventive movies I think that's ever been made.

I'm sure a lot of people would see this and say, that's weird, but I don't see why.

You're spending money on just junk that makes you happy.

There's sometimes a negative stereotype about collectors as weird or obsessive or disturbed in some kind of way, some kind of psychological compensation going on.

But in fact, for folks who study collecting, you find it's just everyday people.

So we're going to start off here with a tall-base BMY.

Like many people that have the same fixation or fascination, I thought for quite a number of years that I was the only one.

The last three numbers are 254.

[applause] But during my days in middle school, I stumbled across the antique fan collectors association, and I noticed that there were people that had hundreds of fans themselves, full knowledge of companies and corporations that manufactured fans.

And as soon as I saw that, I'm like I just came out of the fan closet.

And it's time to make my presence known as a fan collector and to get the word out because I'm not the only one, after all.

[humming] ED: I'm Ed.

This is Eddie, my son.

We are from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

We are avid collectors and really wasn't up until recently that we met fellow collectors.

And there's actually other people who enjoy this type of thing.

KEVIN: Collectors of a particular item often flock together, and so there are often collector communities for different types of objects.

And it's an interesting kind of community because, on the one hand, folks are often competitors for the same object.

But at the same time, it's a friendly competition.

ED: I may buy a fan from somebody and then may end up with another collector.

Then it shows up in someone else's collection.

So it's cool to see your fans move around over time.

KIM: There's a lot of PEZ collectors, surprisingly.

I didn't know, until I went to a PEZ convention, how many collectors there were.

You can purchase shirts.

I bought fabric there.

You can buy all sorts of things there.

So it's a whole group of people all centered around that.

CHARLENE: There is a dollhouse collecting community.

The community is pretty tight, and I've made some very close friendships with fellow miniaturists.

ROBBIE: It's the friendships that we make here in the club and beyond that keep me going day by day.

It really makes up a huge aspect of my life.

[laugh] NICK: My collection just makes me smile.

Maybe someday I'll get bored of it, but I don't see that coming.

There's constant discovery, and it's just fun to keep digging and looking and finding it.

[light music] Some collectors specialize in preserving objects that help explain the history of a specific area.

These next two stories are from Our Town series and feature deltiologists, that is, people who collect postcards.

I have a personal collection of some very unique postcards.

Some of them are dated back as early as 1904.

Back in the early 1900s, postcards and written letters were a way for people to correspond and keep in touch with loved ones, family, and friends.

You were able to send a postcard for one penny.

They shared birthdays, well wishes, and holiday greetings.

The postcard show a history of the town, down, how people lived, and how it evolved and grew.

It shows how the church and school was very important to the people and their faith and their values.

MAYSHELL: The postcard show early downtown Lewistown.

Back whenever the trolley car was still in Lewistown, people used to ride the trolley car to get from here to there.

The postcard that's a favorite of mine is one of the American Viscose.

My father was employed there.

And during the flood of 1972, my father came across the river bridge in a boat.

One of the postcards that I think is pretty funny is a lady named Dora sent a postcard of the jail to her friend Frank and told him if he didn't behave himself, he would end in there soon.

When I look at the postcards cards of the early days in Lewistown, it brings back a lot of memories.

PERRY: Back in the middle of the 1980s, I began a collection of postcards.

They all show a great history of this area.

And we are today in this area, what these people did back at the turn of the century.

I have one great image of Rhododendron Park.

It's in color, and it tells a whole story of what the entire area looked like.

It was gorgeous for that period in history.

Families from Bellwood would pack a picnic lunch, or just take the family for an outing on the train to the top of the Blandburg Mountain, and they would spend the day at Rhododendron Park and then catch the evening train on the way home.

The station house was a gorgeous piece of architecture.

And as I collected cards over the years, I saw many, many hundreds of station houses across our great country.

And the Bellwood station house took a back seat to no one.

It was beautiful.

We had friends of ours that had located this postcard in Florida.

It shows a couple kissing, embracing, and the headline is Raised in Bellwood.

And I'm really happy to get anything like that.

And it's a great history behind it.

As we look back on these postcards of downtown Bellwood people are most interested in pointing a finger at, well, I remember that this is where I did this or this is where that was located.

One of them shows a trolley car from Altoona to Tyrone and return right down the Main Street of Bellwood.

And you see the awnings on the old stores and the beautiful trees that were planted along the sidewalk.

And it is a real trip back in history.

One day, we had an auction here in Bellwood of some very, very great photos, postcards I had never seen before.

One of these depicted the Old Bridge Hill.

On this particular postcard, many people failed to notice that there are men working atop the signals far above the Old Bridge Hill.

It's exciting when we find certain things, you want to tell someone else about them.

And I've just been so fortunate as to have had that great opportunity to collect, not only for Bellwood but for other communities too.

What do autographs and cows have in common?

At first glance, nothing.

But they both hold a special connection for the people in our last two stories.

NICK: There are some autographs that I need to complete certain posters.

I'll get a poster, and I'll try to get whoever I can from that movie.

There are some that are missing from some of them.

Celebrity conventions have just become such a big thing in the last 10 years or so.

When I started, there were several.

It's just it's blown up.

Basically, they sit behind a table and sign autographs for a weekend.

And you stand in sometimes a really insufferably long line, depending on how popular someone is and how badly you want their autograph.

I find that I don't necessarily have a lot to say to them unless I have a specific question.

But I don't like to go up there and just ask them the same thing that I feel probably everyone has.

Some celebrities are really, really friendly and talkative, and you feel like they really care and want to make the experience memorable for you.

Kevin Bacon would be a great autograph to get.

I would have to get him twice because he was in the movie "Tremors," which I already have some autographs from.

And then the other is "Friday the 13th," the original "Friday the 13th," which he is in and in which he gets killed with a spear through his neck.

And I've heard him say before that of all the things he's done, that's the picture everybody comes up to him asking him to sign is him getting murdered, which I would also like to do.

[serene music] CLARA: This is Mr.

Moo.

And those two are twins.

And then this is Cowie and Cowie II.

Then I have these rain boots, this hat, and then this book.

I have a bunch of cow poster things up there.

This guy is a rubber band cow.

Then I'm wearing a cow tail.

Some of them I bought, some of them I made, and some of them I got as gifts.

If I guess how many cow things I have, I would say 300 because I have a bunch of cow things.

The one reason I like cows so much is because my great grandma's last name is Cowden, so she collected a bunch of cows.

My Grandma, I think's my guardian angel.

So I just found Moo Moo Cow and I felt a connection to her.

[light music] This is Moo Moo Cow and she's my favorite.

And then these cows, I think, are my second favorite probably because I could ride on them.

This used to be my grandma's because she loved cows.

I don't think I'll ever stop.

Because one time when I was four, I was like, I'll stop.

But then the next day, I collected another cow.

So I don't think it'll end.

[laugh] When I'm a grown up, I'll keep Moo Moo Cow cow and all that other cow things because I'm probably going, if I have kids, they'll probably might like cows and cow still will be special.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Keystone Stories."

[frenetic music] [audio logo]