Have you ever had to rotate between what kind of mugs you have in your cupboard? Have you ever tried (and probably failed) to convince someone that everything you buy is with purpose and has a special spot in your home? Have you ever had more items than you could display in your home and had to keep some of it in storage? Well, my friend, if so - you have come to the right place! Because I can say yes to all of the above. If not, then let me introduce you to the wonderful world of collecting merchandise!
As I wrote in my introduction post yesterday, I am a collector of a lot of different merch - some might even use the word "hoarder" (they're just being overly dramatic by the way). To get this blog going, I thought I would begin by making a (never-ending) list of what we collect here in our house, so that you know what you have to look forward to in future posts!
First off, I would like to introduce and explain my tendency to collect things. It began when I was little (so little that I wasn't even the one collecting things yet); I was overloaded with plushes and dolls in all shapes and sizes - my mother still keeps a lot of them to this day! Then later on, I got into stationery, journals, notebooks and stuff like that. I could not see a pretty calendar without wanting it. I still get that feeling sometimes and have to tell myself that I do not need a fifth calendar to find out what week we're in!
Then fast forward a few years and I got into nail polish to the point where I was sitting with a collection of 400+ of them and thinking: "this is insane!" and I sold almost all of them. But then my makeup collection grew - which I have downsized a lot since then - but it still counts more items than the average collection.
But on a Disneyland Paris trip in 2011 I found a new love: mugs. And our collection quickly grew with each trip, vacation or whenever IKEA came out with a new collection. I don't have count on how many mugs we have. But it's 50+. Some people think we're crazy but we love having a collection of unique and different mugs that tells a story. It makes for great conversation starters when we're having guests over.
Then on our WDW trip in September 2018 we got the brilliant idea to try pin trading. So we bought a lanyard and some mystery bags and just like that: we were hooked. Damn you, mystery bags! And it has only gotten "worse" since. We buy new pins to display, some for trade, and we run around the parks like maniacs to find some good pins to trade for.
But besides the amount of money this quickly can cost you, I highly recommend pins if you want to start collecting something. Trading pins forces you to talk to so many different kinds of people: both castmembers but also random people in a queue who also have a lanyard around their neck. It is a social game and you get a lot of fun facts and memories from pin trading - it's so underrated here in Europe.
It was also on the same trip that I bought my first pair of Minnie/Mickey ears - along with seven other pairs. And trust me, it was planned weeks before going and I packed outfits to match each pair of ear headbands. Since then I've bought three pairs and made some myself. And I have deemed it a tradition that I have to buy (at least) one pair of ears on each Disney trip - since I don't have enough to collect!
I also bought a wand in the Wizarding World in Universal Studios but one wand hardly makes a collection.. right?
After that we began collecting Lego mini figures which you can trade in Legoland shops (there's a theme here!). But once we filled a custom-made Lego frame with minifigures, we lost interest and now it's solely for decoration purpose. I'll show you some day!
The latest items we started collecting are Funko Pops. To what I suppose will be no surprise, our collection contains mostly of Disney at this point but we do have some in the "Television", "Movies", "Harry Potter" and other miscellaneous categories as well. We even got a special display for the Disney ones the other day, from a dear friend.
Like I told you, it's never-ending and we love it!
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