What does everyone collect Zoo related ?
- Thread starter garyjp
- Start date
BeakerUK
Well-Known Member
Key rings. I am torn about whether or not to collect more than one key ring for places I revisit, though. I have the collection currently displayed hanging on drawing pins on a cork board, but it is full and also impossible to move without everything falling off. (I have also begun keeping maps and dating them, and rather wish I had been doing so all along.)
My main collecting interest is old (i.e. before 1950) zoo postcards particularly those from London Zoo. I also especially like old postcards from Berlin Zoo, the original Hamburg Zoo (i.e. the zoo before Hagenbecks) and the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie.
Whenever I visit a zoo I normally buy a copy of the current guidebook so, over the years, I have accumulated a large number of these.
However, I don’t go out of my way to collect modern zoo guides although I am always on the lookout for historic zoo guides, especially those from London Zoo. Unfortunately those before 1900 are now extremely hard to find and, when found, very expensive.
Whenever I visit a zoo I normally buy a copy of the current guidebook so, over the years, I have accumulated a large number of these.
However, I don’t go out of my way to collect modern zoo guides although I am always on the lookout for historic zoo guides, especially those from London Zoo. Unfortunately those before 1900 are now extremely hard to find and, when found, very expensive.
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
Everything. I realise this possibly makes me a vaguely absurd human being, but guidebooks, postcards, leaflets, maps, annual reports, books. Anything. Mugs. Posters. Old signs. Since moving house a couple of years ago, most of this has been stored in boxes, impossible to access. Nonetheless, the compulsion to gather stuff is impossible to defeat. God knows what my children will do with all this old rubbish when I die.....
I’m a bit like this. I started writing a diary in 1998 when I was 8 years old and I have genuinely never missed a night, wherever I have been in the world and whatever I have been doing I’ve always written in my thoughts, observations and impressions from the day. In 2003 I started to slot in little memories; entrance wristbands, admission tickets, maps, hotel receipts, train tickets, plane tickets and the like as a reminder of what it was that I was doing that day. I still have them all from 2000 onwards, no idea what I’m planning to do with them really, but there we go! I started buying entrance photographs, postcards and all kinds of other souvenirs from my zoo trips recently too. It’s all about the memories for me. And don’t even start me on the teddies . . . !
Realistic stuffed animals from zoo gift shops. And only realistic ones.
sooty mangabey
Well-Known Member
I don't often quote - or nearly quote - our chums in the National Rifle Association, but you can have my zoo guides when you can take them from my cold, dead hands....Willing to take it all off your hands
...or, possibly, when the attic floor collapses under the weight of too many annual reports from Slovakian zoos.
I've got a collection of plastic zoo animals from my childhood that totals more than 800. I've got a categorized collection of zoo maps that recently surpassed 1,500. I've got perhaps 80 zoo cups/mugs, at least 175 guidebooks and 200 or more zoo books. Just about everything that I just listed is worthless to 99% of the people that I've ever met in my lifetime but for me much of it is priceless.
Little bit jealous of this! When I was a very young child, I had quite a collection of plastic animals too, and my Mother built me a zoo for them with various enclosures. Obviously as I grew older she decided that I wouldn’t want it all anymore and got rid, but these days I really wish it was still around! I have slowly started to build up my collection of animals again (they can be pretty expensive though) - not overly sure what I plan to do with them, though, but they’re accumulating so slowly that I have plenty of time to decide!
I'm quite selective with my guidebooks, basically anything London, then whatever takes my fancy after that (German guides mostly). I'm quite picky with the modern guides I buy, if they're mostly fancy pictures of animals with basic facts, I'm not too bothered, I like something a bit more informative (was very pleased with the Howletts guide, good info about the actual animals at the zoo; very disappointed with the Blackpool offering). I've got a few other London-related ephemera too (a glazed bowl, some keyrings and pin badges, and most unusual, an antique brass shoe horn). Unusual fluffy animals, but ONLY the very unusual, don't have space for many more (ZSL have just got in fluffy pangolins! 
). And books. So. Many. Books.
). And books. So. Many. Books.
Since the start of our Zoo tour at the beginning of 2015, we have collected wristbands where possible. If the zoo doesn't sell them then we go for keyrings. I also like collecting zoo leaflets, we tend to pick these up when staying at hotels near the attractions.
As I think you know I collect postcards too- but more from a later era -1950's onwards.
I always tend to pick these up too, and the special edition ones for any seasonal exhibitions.
I've got all sorts of crap that has accumulated but it's stored in boxes at my ex's as I have no room at the moment. Some of the more obscure items include an original copy of The Spectacled Bear Studbook, some Friends Of LA Zoo newsletters and a book about Berlin Tierpark which I've never read because it's in German!
The Spectacled Bear Studbook sounds well worth having!