July 2005 News from Readers

Our “famous” banana sticker collection brought us some new friends. We emailed the collectors who run one of the banana sticker collecting websites to tell them about our labels. They told us they trade and sell labels, but there are only a few sets that can be priced. One is the NFL Chiquita set from the 1970s; it sells for about $250. The Lake Placid Olympics set by Chiquita sells for $20-25. The Moscow Olympics set of two is so hard to find it would probably sell for $200 or more. But the big news is a Pep-O banana label from the early 1940s that just sold on eBay for $305. And we never thought there was any resale value to a banana sticker.

From Union City, Pennsylvania, a reader asks how to sell the 176 Jim Beam liquor bottles he has collected since the 1960s. Our answer: with great difficulty, if at all. The Jim Beam craze died years ago. While it’s true that in the last five years there has been some interest in sports bottles, the ones that feature golf tournaments or football teams, there is almost no resale market for the others. You can find them at malls and garage sales for a few dollars each. We wish we could give better news, but limited-edition bottles, plates, and other made-to-order collectibles of the 1970s and after are just not in demand. Even Hummel annual plates have dropped well below price-book values.

A few months ago we wrote about the theory that collecting is a disease. A Denver reader sent us a newspaper article about a University of Iowa study that “shows that the prefrontal cortex of the brain controls our desire to collect stuff. Damage to a section of that area ’causes abnormal hoarding behavior …’.” Our reader added: I have been telling everyone the reason my collection has gotten out of control is I probably did damage to my prefrontal cortex years ago when I roller skated. Most non-collectors just nod and some even say they thought so. My collection of needle-workers (figurines or pictures) numbers in the hundreds.