SMC Discussion Areas

By reading various threads, I have learned that many of us have hobbies in addition to soda machines.  I have not really found a thread, though, that actually lays out members' other interests.  According to my wife, I have too many hobbies.  :help:  I contend that I don't have too many hobbies, I just don't have enough money.  I would love to hear the different kinds of things everyone is into and maybe how you got started.

When I was little, my family always said I liked to mess with all the buttons and knobs on everything I came across.  I'm not sure that is strictly true, but I have always liked to take things apart and to try to learn how they work.  I think that's how I gained my interest in many of the things I like to collect.  I suppose a short list of the things I like to/have collect(ed) includes:  coke machines, juke boxes, just got my first stoner candy machine, matchbox/hotwheels, sports cards, and watches.

What's your poison?

Coke\DP machines galore, Vintage Campers (currently rebuilding a canned ham)...dream is to have a 22 ft. 60's Airstream one day though. That's about sums it up as far as what my wallet can sustain. It's already at critical mass. I got into Coke machines when my wife's grandfather died. Cleaning out his garage we came across an old Coke cooler and the family said I could have it. Researching the history and how to go about restoring it left me hooked.

Not to be creepy, but I collect other men's used pants... among other things!!

It's only creepy if the other men are still in them.

I collect Advil for all the headaches my wife gives me because of my crap collecting.

I have acquired over the years, which I guess turned into a collection at one point, old vending machines, em arcade games, console slots, motion beer signs, and now I have three jukeboxes.

I use to collect coins, currency, and baseball cards back in the seventies, but they were all stolen from my folks house.  My collections are heavier now.  Harder to steal!! :biggrin:

I collect any Griesedieck Brothers Beer advertising and I also collect old police memorbila. My wife is really good about my collecting as long as I dont decorate the house with it...

I collect money to buy more machines...

Yet in my spare time I collect soda door pushes, and used to collect PAM soda clocks
I have a huge collection of McFarlane NHL figures from the 1st series.
AND I have a very large collection (every set from 1966 Topps and O-PeeChee till 1992) of NHL cards.
And I collect debt, which I'm quite good at.  :glare:

 :happydrinkers:

Well, I have a few other hobbies that keep me pretty busy...most of them center around making money, which is then used to fund the other two!!

First is my glass insulator lamps, I started building them a few months back and it's been a surprising business...over $3K so far in my first 7 months of building them, not too bad!  Couple of links...my shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/luceantica and some photos of one of my big installations in a bar in Texas (first and second photos): http://www.thrillist.com/food/dallas/tx/75205/uptown-/acme-fb_american_date-spots_great-beer-selection_great-cocktails_wine

The DC area Craigslist really reflects what a disposable society we have, and I take full advantage of that to dictate the rest of my projects...lawn tractors that "didn't start up this year", computers that "don't boot up", and other items that just don't work due to some simple problem. 

Of course these all fill the rest of my time...the 1965 Chevy II Nova, the real money pit of them all.

When in college  I watched NIGHT COURT with Harry Anderson, that got me collecting Vintage Neckties of the 40s and 50s. I had about 500 of them...  Down to
a little over 125+ Awesome designs and wild colors...met a lot of neat old timers with great stories, then I started collecting vintage advertising, then ACL soda
bottles, then Coke bottles, then needed some carriers, then crates, then picnic coolers, then floor coolers. Also have a few older 30s, 40s telephones,
gumball machines and a 1950 Studebaker....

Interesting how all have the same things.

Canned Ham camper mine: 1964 13' Serro Scotty
At least 5 dial phones, hand crank 78rpm record players, old radios.
5 or so candy machines, Marx electric toy trains.
Speedway arcade, Seeburg SP2C juke.
Signs, coins, cards, hot wheels, AFX slot cars, sand from the beaches I've visited.
Viewmaster's, toy canons, camera's, old tools.
Cap guns, BB guns, real guns.
Bunch of crap still in boxes from the last move I can't remember.

Great thread!
Creighton

Pretty much the same things as everyone else but I'm also a licensed pilot so I do a bit of flying, hence why none of my machines are done! And also restoring a '66 mustang!

Ok, now that I have a second to explain... Being from Maine I am a red sox fan. I collect red sox game used equiptment and team signed items from the world series... I have David Ortiz's and John papelbon's away pants from the 2007 world series game 4, John Lester's autographed pants, varitek's bat, every full ticket from the 2004 world series and 2007 world series. The 2004 tickets game 3&4 are rare because the ripped the tickets, so you basically had to have a ticket and NOT go to history to keep them full!!


GO SOX!!

Tom..I feel a little better about you collecting red sox pants instead of men's regular pants. You creeped me out for a minute there!

LOL

Soda machines , shot glasses , and old things  :oh:

Things that make me feel good. Make me remember how great things used to be. Always collected Soda Pop as I own a restaurant and thought the old trays and signs would look good displayed. Things then just exploded. 4 EM pinballs, a Seeburg R, my classic rock collection on vinyl makes me feel good. A collection of books related to 40s, 50s, 60s concerning Diners, Drive In Theaters, Route 66, Motels, Doo Wop (NJ) motels and related architecture. Oh, and PEZ candy dispensers.
I also collect dreams. The kind that go "Someday I'm gonna get a" (insert item you cannot afford right now here).

I have a collection of just random older stuff that I thought was pretty cool (like my pepsi machine, some film reels, gas pump, drive-in speakers etc). I also am going to school to be a machinist so I have some model steam engines that I built and bought and one of my larger collections is my Civil Defense collection. Right now I have about 7 or 8 geiger/survey meters hundreds of pages of documents showing evacuation routes, shelter locations and warning information (cool thing is they are all from the towns around me so I know where the places they are talking about are), some fallout shelter signs, some training film strips, an old helmet and some books explaining everything from shelter construction to how to deal with a nuclear disaster from an attack to a truck tipping over containing radioactive materials. Have not read much of the books but they are pretty interesting. Also working on getting my own outdoor movie setup going. Got some drive-in speakers a few years back and since then have been slowly getting the projector (large CRT projector) screen and sound system built. Finally got all the main components for it and am now working on getting the stuff for them built like screen supports and a table for the projector. Once that is done and everything is running a popcorn machine will be the next thing.

British cars....Triumph Spitfire's specifically, although I've cut back to just one for the time being after having 4 of them in the driveway/storage unit a short while ago.  Sold and/or traded them for parts and kept my first one.  My wife is much happier now.

I also have a nice little collection of Warner Bros stuff - mostly animation cells and old lobby posters with a few other odds and ends.  Bugs Bunny was a hero of mine.   :laugh:

I also love to cook and am finally getting into "real" BBQ'ing as my boys bought me (read:  I bought myself) a Kamado style charcoal grill for Father's day this year.  Smoked my first pork shoulder (or Boston Butt if you prefer) this past weekend.  Looking to do some beer-can chicken this weekend.

Jim

MaineT
I saved every sporting event ticket that I've ever gone to (we're talking several hundred) and the best of my ticket stubs are un ripped (shows our age with the ripping, as opposed to the bar scanning lol) tickets from the '91 baseball All Star game held in Toronto, as well as Unripped '92 and '93 World Series tickets (home games only) AND unripped first ever game held at Rogers Center (known as SkyDome when it opened) where the Blue Jays play.

I have all these unripped tickets because my friend from high school worked the gates, and when we passed thru, he pretended to rip them, then handed them back  :biggrin:  The turnstile would have a count, but in reality, they never looked at the number vs. tickets collected.

SO, your tickets, which are great by the way, although were not ripped, I am sure that they were used in one way or another.
P.S.  This year my Jays are going to finish ahead of you  :smile:  Im hoping for a wild card... NY is just too good again this year.

Great thread by the way!

I collect whatever I think is cool, or things I thought were cool when I was young.  Pinball tables, jukeboxes, old telephones, movie posters and of course a few pop machines

Hot rods

1932 5 window original Ford
1931 5 window Olds chopped and channelled

Now in my early fifties.  I grew up on motorcycles, over the years I've had so many twin cylinder European bikes I can just barely recall them all. (Ducati, Moto Guzzi, BMW, Triumph, BSA, and my beloved Norton!

Clocks, (especially marine chronometers) and vintage pocket and wristwatches. (especially Railroad approved pocket watches)

Vintage tube audio gear, McIntosh, HH Scott, Altec, Dynaco, etc.  I match these relatively low wattage amplifiers with highly sensitive horn loaded loudspeakers like Klipsch La Scala, Altec 604 or 755, Lowther, etc.

Shotgunning, I love my 1964 Browning Superposed!  I have others too.

German cars.   I have nothing to say publicly about this!   :biggrin:

I also love my Oak manufacturing and Ford gum machines!

I am obviously into Soda machines and coolers, but got started by collecting Signage and Vintage advertising, mainly Coca-Cola, and also Hamm's Beer (midwest brand) I had every motion sign that Hamms created at one time in my collection and then had to move so sold 75% of the Hamm's Stuff.. some awesome vintage advertising was made for that brand!
Also collect just old cool stuff that looks cool in my bar room, mainly 50's realted era, jukes, coin op games, and other decorator stuff..
I have a 1959 Corvette , and that got me into Old Gas Pumps a while back too, so I also dabble in them.. have 5 or 6 scattered around the yard,shop,barn..
also am into Radio Controlled stuff as well,, have always had nitro 1/10 scale monster trucks, cars and buggies,, now into Electric Monster trucks with the kids and recently got into the air with RC helicopters and just about 3 weeks ago Radio Controlled airplane.. lots of fun with that so far..

that is enough to keep me busy and happy for now...

Excellent thought for a thread!!!

I have always had a "tinkering" interest, even when I was a young lad in the 70's I would play "CHIP's" and take my bike apart.   I am into drumming in my free time, used to be in a band with some of my high school buddies that toured up and down the East coast.  As a matter of fact, that's how I met my wife (my first groupie  8)  Now being a child of the 70's and 80's I have the luxury of most things from my childhood becoming "hot" again.   Unfortunately I always have felt that I am more a product of an earlier generation as I have always been more attached to everything from the 50's and 60's.   Interested in most anything nostalgia related, but soda and candy machines are what are in the collection so far, unless you want to count my original milk glass globe from a KFC in the 60's

Cool jako ive been into drums since I was 12, Also play in a band. I collect any old cool stuff beer brand churck key can openers. love old signs neon signs clocks. I also collect empty miller highlife bottels lol :happydrinkers:

I've really enjoyed reading about all of the cool stuff everyone is doing beyond soda machines.  It's making me want to dabble in some new areas and revive a few of my other interests.  I really like your lighting tkaz!  It has a great look.

I also like to cook (and eat)... I have two smokers.  My big boy smoker is on its own trailer and was built out of a 500 gallon fuel tank while I built my "little" smoker out of a drum and welded it to a firebox made out of quarter inch plate steel... couldn't have done it without my father-in-law.  We built it in his shop in Georgia and I trailered it in a U-Haul back to Virginia.  I like to make jerky and to smoke Boston Butts, loins, chickens, turkies, etc.  If you haven't tried it... smoke a baking potato dusted in kosher salt and wrapped in foil.  I've also started making my own barbecue sauce from scratch.

Where to begin!  I have always been a collector since I can remember.  Started with coins, stamps, bottle caps, and license plates.  Later added antique bottles and skulls.  Still have a lot of this stuff boxed up, but now collect other stuff.  Soda machines, beer cans (over 3,000 of them), breweriana (mostly pre-pro), Victorian and mission furniture, 1920's/1930's radios (over 150 of them), Boy Scout patches, and old cars.  Currently have a 1959 Rambler Super and a 1951 GM Coach bus that has been converted into a camper.  It saw service as a city bus in Oklahoma City.

Some would say that I also collect kids, as we have 5 of those!    :wow:

I'm sure I'm forgetting something!  Cool thread!

Blue Jays? Are they still around?!?! I thought they dropped to the minor leagues, double A or something like that!!

I agree there were some devious ways to get the full tickets and still use them, but the most common way was an error or actually to not go to the game. There are a certain amount of people who die, miss flights, season ticket holders that get caught out of the country or town for work, etc. I did talk to someone who went thru a VIP gate and the singer for the anthem came so they looked at their tickets and did not rip theirs to push them thru, but they were ripping them or hole punching them at the VIP gate. (if you wanted them kept whole ONLY at the VIP gate they would punch it instead of tear it) And the VIP date was just for the corporate boxes, etc.

The current population report has 48 full tickets ever verified as authentic, out of over 49,000 in attendance there could be up to 500-1000 out there I guess. For some reason, there have been over 400 stubs graded and authenticated to date. Personally, I don't think it is worth the $25 per ticket fee plus shipping both ways to authenticate and grade a stub, but lots of people paid the $$.

I didn't request this set to be added, but when I saw someone did I found it necessary to load my tickets so he could see a real set!! Click the link below and there are pictures loaded.

http://www.psacard.com/PSASETREGISTRY/Composite.aspx?c=5965

I started out 43 years ago when I was 10 collecting bottles , I collected so many when I moved 12 years ago I just gave them away. As I look back now that might not have been very smart because in coke bottles alone I had 1800, but I moved on and have always collected signs and clocks and soda machines that is what I really like most.

I have a few vintage cars.
A special paint 68 Mustang 289 coupe and 2 68 Cobra Jets.
The special paint car is purple
I've only seen a couple in this color ever.
If anyone is "into" 68.5's please send me a PM.

It started over 15 years ago for me with Pinballs, then jukeboxes, arcade machines, neons, soda machines, and whatever else moved me. Now it's everything Grapette, coolers, calenders, clocks, anything. Then I branched-out with other flavors bottled by the Grapette Company, Mr. Cola, Botl-O, Sunburst, Flavette, Orangette, Lemonette, and Lymette. Still doing Jukeboxes, but sold most to aquire a 2007 Shelby GT500 convertible. There's also the 59 Ford I'm restoring. But coin-op stuff is just in my blood.
  TFJ

If you are a true collector then I think you never collect just one thing but my main passions are WW1 and WW2 posters.  I have about 100 of them but I also have alot of paper relics from WW2 like leaflets we dropped, savings bonds,  ration stamps, training manuals, etc.  My wife recently put a stop to poster buying until I display some in the house......but framing is so damn expensive  :censored: I'd rather spend the money on new posters.

And the vending machines satisfy my need to use my hands and make things work, as well as being something from the past.

Would like to see the WWII posters my sons are into collecting WWII items.. we are starting to get quite a nice little collection...
I bet most here starting collecting things at a young age and didn't even realize it.... This thread really had me thinking... I had
Pez, comics, hotwheels as a kid but of course parents took care of most of that stuff when I went away to college. :glare:

Classic Cars and vintage dirt bikes. I currently have around thirty old bikes. A few completely restored that have been displayed at the west coast supercross races! I also restore vintage bikes and race them on the vintage national mx circuit.

Besides restoring soda collectibles, I restore antique gas pumps, air meters and petrobilia.  I am doing a complete resto-mod on my wife's 59 Chevrolet Biscayne with a 535 hp LS3 from Mast Motorsports.  Hope to have it driveable in a month or so.