A word that I don't know how to even spell, a labeorphilist is apparently someone who collects beer bottles. Who wants to collect beer bottles, other than college freshmen who display them on their windowsill to boast how many beers they drank recently? It's kind of puzzling to me, although given the number of alcoholic containers in a lot of restaurants/bars/taverns I've been to I don't doubt there are even beer bottles to collect. Through trivia I've learned that there are cool-sounding names for various kind of hobby collectors, like a philumenist collects matchbooks, a philatelist collects stamps, an arctophile collects teddy bears, etc. Seems like people who like trivia often also like collecting things, well, because trivia is essentially its own collector's items, like picking up pieces of trivia and owning them, seems like a natural crowd. MJ and I don't collect much; we live a very simple lifestyle apparently. The closest thing may be flowers, where MJ has picked up a flower each time we've gone grocery shopping this calendar year, and as of writing we have both an orchid in our home and a cool collection of yellow gerberas (didn't know what those were). When asked on a game show about anything I collected, I once said I collected blood donation name tags each time I went to donate blood; I guess the other thing I collect are the free giveaways I get once in a while after donating, like I have a free Red Cross blanket, Red Cross mug, and half a dozen Red Cross shirts/ sweatshirts I've collected over the years. It really is kind of a badge of honor, but they're comfortable (and sometimes creative shirts). Oh and I guess I like collecting languages/ skills to use in life.... MJ and I are going to Mexico twice in the next couple months and she's told me to learn some Spanish. Challenge accepted.
Maybe license plates/ driver's licenses for the different states I've lived in? So far I've had 4 state licenses in my life. Also my student IDs; actually those have inherent value if you're like me and look the same as I did when I was 22 years old; you can use it for student discount rates.
The one thing MJ and I are NOT collecting, but looks like certain people do, are children. Not like adopting children or picking them up from the street, but just having a lot of children. I've been following this one Facebook friend I knew from college over the course of 10 years since he got married; every 2 years or so he just adds a new kid to the collection, it seems. It's maddening for people like me who don't have kids yet (and want one), but at some point (he's going to have a FIFTH kid soon) it seems a little excessive, and not just because you have to take care of the kids/ pay for them. Ten years ago my friends who were parents were saying their kids cost $1 million per kid over the course of a life; I wonder with inflation now how much that is. Sounds like sour grapes, but I would NOT want to have more than 3 kids. And the Facebook friend's wife has had FIVE different pregnancies! Elon Musk has upwards of 10 kids, but some of them were twins, and there were different mothers...... Facebook friend's wife apparently gave birth FIVE times. In the last 10 years she's been pregnant a majority of the time. Seems like a lot of work. I wonder if there are people who have the same personality that numismatists (coin collectors) do or deltiologists (vinyl records) do..... just try to get as many as they can and get fresh and excited about a new one each time. I get plangonologists (dolls), brolliologist (umbrellas), even cigarette cards, but collecting real life people..... you can't just give those back when you get tired of them, and I phase out of stuff pretty quickly/ easily.
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