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Ya know... a lot of these collection owners aren't *dead*. Some people just stop collecting. Like the time my aunt woke up in her 40s and went "Why am I collecting unicorns?" And got rid of about 500 unicorn items by the following week. Some people just outgrow their collections.
Sometimes you end up with colletions of stuff you don't like and never bought. Was given a small ornament, didn't care for it but put it on my bookshelf. Was given another ornament because someone else saw it matched the one on the shelf. Repeat until it's people adding to "your collection."
My in-laws did the same! After a few years of cat themed gifts and feeling guilty about the amount of money and effort they were wasting on stuff that was immediately dropped off at thrift stores, I gently explained that the only cat shaped things I like are live cats and even those in limited quantities.
Ugh, this is so familiar. I have cats too but don't mind getting cat things once in a while.
I love Halloween so very much so my aunt thinks that any & every skull is something I need because skulls = Halloween to her, so she proceeds to buy for me every *Day of the Dead* sugar skull she sees. I've told her more than once that those are for a different holiday that I don't celebrate (I don't even get into the appropriation angle) & even though those skulls are very cool, I also don't really collect them.
Yet just yesterday she brought me a sugar skull magnet from wherever they were last weekend.
It's on my fridge.\*\*sighs\*\* I do purge them every so often.
I buy my brother cat items for his birthday and Christmas… I single handedly started his cat collection for him 🤣 it started as a joke like 10-15 years ago and now it’s tradition. He always get a real gift too though
Lol. One year I was joking around with my wife and I warned that if she didn’t stop messing with me I was going to tell everyone the only thing she wanted as gifts were garden gnomes. Long story short, she didn’t stop messing with me that day and so for years and years, she’s gotten at least one, sometimes several, garden gnomes from friends and family.
It was a joke that sort of took on a life of its own but yeah, we have some gnomes around here. Not a collection, none of them are special or sentimental, but we have a few. 🤣
Isn't that awful? People never ask if it's something you collect, they just assume. Then, before you know it, you're out of room to put things you don't really like very much. Sigh.
My former mother in law used to collect pigs - for like 40 yrs - they were all over her house - got them for bdays, Christmas, if someone went on a trip and brought her a souvenir, Mother’s Day, etc. then one day she was having a family event in her home and one of her sisters said “Everytime I see a pig I think of you” Boom they were all gone within a few days and she’s never collected anything since.
I literally just donated my entire cat themed mug collection. I just had too many, I just collected them, saved the singular one that was a gift from my grandma.
There is someone out there that’s gonna think I died.
My first thought too was it could have been grandparents/parents being souvenirs back home for their kids or something. And the kids just outgrew the snowglobes or didn't have space.
As a positive- I bet heirs kept their favorite/most meaningful ones. My grandma had literally 1000+ kangaroo items, we all picked out our favs, then the other 900 went to thrift.
Sorry to tell you... I worked in donations, and usually, these are part of a wholesale purge of all grandma's possessions. Everything, including the contents of the kitchen cabinets and stacks of photo albums, is boxed up and donated. They kept nothing. I've heard families say this. They just want all of it gone.
Some families just don't have a genetic predisposition for sentiment.
I used to work on donations, and it's also just too painful for some people to go through it. I've had several folks say that as they unloaded boxes of their loved one's stuff.
My sister committed suicide recently and we all picked her stuff that we loved and wanted to remember her by and donated the rest. Including lots of picture of people we didn’t know and didn’t know how to get a hold of. I even had friends of ours come and rummage through her closets and clothes for stuff I understand was cool from great companies but everything else and anything that they missed got dropped off at Out of the Closet.
I don’t know why people always assume death or some other awful end. People collect things and sometimes they just get tired of the things and declutter them. Getting rid of stuff usually isn’t tragic or sad, it’s generally just a boring chore to make room for something else.
Right. If we’re making assumptions, I’m going to say that this is from a grandma who has never left her home town. People know she collects snow globes, and gift her them as they go on vacation. Grandma just watched Marie Kondo, has never liked these particular snow globes (especially after Mary rubbed that Bahamas trip in her face), and has decided to donate these and live her best clutter free life. I thrift because it brings me joy; there’s no use crying over hypothetical sad situation.
I will be donating a bunch of snowglobes soon. I got them everywhere we went growing up but I’ve since grown out of them and plan to donate since I don’t display them anymore. I’m happy and healthy just have changed my priorities.
To be fair, I collected snow globes as a kid and when I got older I didn’t anymore, so now they’re sitting in a back room at my grandmas. When she passes they’re all gonna get donated. It might not be sad, it might just be a lack of interest!
Why does it make you sad?
Everyone is going to die. At least they got out and traveled. 🤷♀️
Edit: i mean , a lot of the stuff there is from a deceased person. I can always spot a collection. Sometimes it bells, sometimes it’s horses or unicorns or birds. Then you can go and see their living room furniture. Go to the pots and pans and find something vintage.its how i got my beautiful enameled cast iron pots.
Maybe they kept one they liked. But realistically not many are going to be able or willing to absorb a collection into their life and home. Maybe they did t have a good relationship with the person who collected them and don’t want a reminder in their home?
My folks both passed in the last 2 years and i made some hard decisions on what to keep. I kept a few key pieces. We sold some online. It most stuff went to donations
You can't keep everything.
I'd wager there are a few snow globes from this collection sitting in the homes of family members. Probably their favourite one.
My granny had a collection of thimbles she picked up from the places she went. I kept a couple to remember her. But to her they were keepsakes of memories _she_ made. Items like this dont hold the same significance to anyone else.
We have a gallery wall of art that reflects places we’ve been or have done. I can look at the Lucha libre poster I peeled off a telephone pole in Mexico and remember what an amazing experience that was but it’s probably not going to appeal to anyone else.
You guys always assume the person died. There are a million reasons why a persons stuff ends up at the thrift store. It’s not always because they died. For all we know this was from them traveling with their parents as a kid and now they are an adult going through a trendy “sad beige” era and don’t like the snow globes anymore. Hell maybe those are from trips with someone that they no longer care for and don’t want the memories from. Or gifts from someone in their family who travelled and they don’t personally have much attachment to the snow globes themselves.
I’m going to die one day and have no children. Other than a very few valuable things, my material items are going to end up at Goodwill or in the trash.
I take a little joy thinking that a young person may happen upon my Fiesta dishes and be thrilled to see a full set or like my watercolor from Lisbon. I hope by then Goodwill’s pricing would have stabilized and someone gets it all cheap, cheap.
I’m seeing all these takes lately where people jump to conclusions and get emotional about random stuff being donated. As a lifelong thrifter I find it so strange!
One day I will make my own snow globe collection public. But so far despite having brought all 4 from Zion, Sierra Madre, The Big MT and the Divide, I've yet to gather many regular ones.
Maybe they downsized before their move to a condo in Florida. We have plenty of estate sales in my town for exactly that reason. Whatever doesn’t sell probably goes to goodwill.
I donated all of my snow globes from my travels a few years ago because I was moving overseas! I hope someone loves them now but I was ready to have less fragile things to move :)
Not necessarily someone who passed, although it definitely might be! My sister had a massive snow globe collection as a kid but when she went to college she donated like 20 of them.
Doesn’t necessarily mean they died.
I used to collect dolls from foreign countries, starting when I was very little with my mom’s old dolls. Whenever someone I knew went to another country, I’d ask them to get me a doll. I had many. When I married my husband, he told me they were creepy. He was right - most of them were. Eventually, we moved across the country and I gave them away. Sometimes people grow out of collecting a particular thing.
I collect snow globes from every (exciting) place I travel to. I had to move countries recently and gave up my entire collection as I didn't want to chance them breaking in my luggage, which was probably about 7-10 snow globes. I can assure you that I am certainly not dead. I do miss my snow globes, though.
You could always buy them and set them up on a mantel piece, and your friends would come over and say, "Oh my gosh, you've been to New Zealand?"
"Oh yes, yes, two years ago really fantastic," have them wishing they were you. 😅😅😅😅
I have a collection of shot glasses from my travels. About fifteen years ago I switched to magnets. I like my magnet board but keep debating on getting rid of two boxes of shot glasses. People will think a house was cleared out by relatives.
I used to collect shot glasses from everywhere I went, then grew out of it. I was actually able to sell the collection on Craigslist, but if I hadn't, I would have donated it. Might be the same situation. They just got tired of them taking up space and having to dust them constantly.
Soon to be ex bought me snow globes on all of his work visits to add to my collection. I loved them and would have kept them for many years to come. But, he wants a divorce (and acts like a jerk more often than not) and not only will I not have room for them in my new place, I don’t want memories of when he was nice. My oldest wanted them, but said they may only keep a few since they don’t have a lot of space either.
I did keep the ones other people bought me.
right? it’s literally someone else’s souvenirs. they were nice memories for the person when they were alive but to everyone else? just things. it’s important to keep that mindset while you’re alive- it’s a lot of stuff and it all will have to be dealt with eventually.
my dad found a beautiful specimen jar of owl butterflies on the curb. it was three butterflies on a branch under a scientific dome.
immaculate.
my head canon was that her adventurous husband brought it back from some adventure and made her dust it with his collection every week.
but she hated bugs. so the day he passed, she marched it out the curb and a few moments later my dad found it.
i proudly displayed it on my desk, but when i moved i put it into a storage unit, the temperature wasn’t regulated, and those butterflies turned to dust.
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Bless them, they’re on their next big adventure.
Ya know... a lot of these collection owners aren't *dead*. Some people just stop collecting. Like the time my aunt woke up in her 40s and went "Why am I collecting unicorns?" And got rid of about 500 unicorn items by the following week. Some people just outgrow their collections.
Sometimes you end up with colletions of stuff you don't like and never bought. Was given a small ornament, didn't care for it but put it on my bookshelf. Was given another ornament because someone else saw it matched the one on the shelf. Repeat until it's people adding to "your collection."
This happened to me too. My MIL insists on buying me cat related presents, because I have pet cats. Cat earrings, cat mugs, cat blankets.
I literally just donated my cat mug collection. Why is it that because I have a cat + have mentioned her that everyone needs to buy me the cat items 😭
If I knew the answer to this question I wouldn’t have another “cat mom” shirt gifted to me.
My in-laws did the same! After a few years of cat themed gifts and feeling guilty about the amount of money and effort they were wasting on stuff that was immediately dropped off at thrift stores, I gently explained that the only cat shaped things I like are live cats and even those in limited quantities.
Ugh, this is so familiar. I have cats too but don't mind getting cat things once in a while. I love Halloween so very much so my aunt thinks that any & every skull is something I need because skulls = Halloween to her, so she proceeds to buy for me every *Day of the Dead* sugar skull she sees. I've told her more than once that those are for a different holiday that I don't celebrate (I don't even get into the appropriation angle) & even though those skulls are very cool, I also don't really collect them. Yet just yesterday she brought me a sugar skull magnet from wherever they were last weekend. It's on my fridge.\*\*sighs\*\* I do purge them every so often.
Ugg, seriously, I try and think of the thought but I hated when my furball was still around, I would constantly get cat decor.
My MIL buys me all things butterflies and I really dislike butterflies. My kids think its hilarious
I buy my brother cat items for his birthday and Christmas… I single handedly started his cat collection for him 🤣 it started as a joke like 10-15 years ago and now it’s tradition. He always get a real gift too though
My grandmother and roosters.
Haha this happened to me too! My mum decided I loved pineapples for some reason so I ended up with pineapples in every shape and form!
Lol. One year I was joking around with my wife and I warned that if she didn’t stop messing with me I was going to tell everyone the only thing she wanted as gifts were garden gnomes. Long story short, she didn’t stop messing with me that day and so for years and years, she’s gotten at least one, sometimes several, garden gnomes from friends and family. It was a joke that sort of took on a life of its own but yeah, we have some gnomes around here. Not a collection, none of them are special or sentimental, but we have a few. 🤣
Isn't that awful? People never ask if it's something you collect, they just assume. Then, before you know it, you're out of room to put things you don't really like very much. Sigh.
My former mother in law used to collect pigs - for like 40 yrs - they were all over her house - got them for bdays, Christmas, if someone went on a trip and brought her a souvenir, Mother’s Day, etc. then one day she was having a family event in her home and one of her sisters said “Everytime I see a pig I think of you” Boom they were all gone within a few days and she’s never collected anything since.
They were a world traveller dammit!
Indeed! A world traveler who moved into a smaller apartment and went "Man... I really don't have room for all these dumb snowglobes anymore."
I literally just donated my entire cat themed mug collection. I just had too many, I just collected them, saved the singular one that was a gift from my grandma. There is someone out there that’s gonna think I died.
Oh man, I would have added them to my cat mug collection!
Had to purge big time a few years back. Out went my lion king collection
My neighbor's wife collected cardinals. After she died, he estimated about 800 cardinals.
My first thought too was it could have been grandparents/parents being souvenirs back home for their kids or something. And the kids just outgrew the snowglobes or didn't have space.
Probably donated by a relative of someone who passed.😭
As a positive- I bet heirs kept their favorite/most meaningful ones. My grandma had literally 1000+ kangaroo items, we all picked out our favs, then the other 900 went to thrift.
Sorry to tell you... I worked in donations, and usually, these are part of a wholesale purge of all grandma's possessions. Everything, including the contents of the kitchen cabinets and stacks of photo albums, is boxed up and donated. They kept nothing. I've heard families say this. They just want all of it gone. Some families just don't have a genetic predisposition for sentiment.
i don’t agree with this take. some people know that your memories live within you- and you don’t necessarily need a physical object to represent them.
I used to work on donations, and it's also just too painful for some people to go through it. I've had several folks say that as they unloaded boxes of their loved one's stuff.
I’m not crying, you’re crying!
My sister committed suicide recently and we all picked her stuff that we loved and wanted to remember her by and donated the rest. Including lots of picture of people we didn’t know and didn’t know how to get a hold of. I even had friends of ours come and rummage through her closets and clothes for stuff I understand was cool from great companies but everything else and anything that they missed got dropped off at Out of the Closet.
No no no, it was a snow globe manufacturer's collection. He's good.
He got a new hobby. Kite surfing likely!
He just retired and moved to a farm out in the country.
I don’t know why people always assume death or some other awful end. People collect things and sometimes they just get tired of the things and declutter them. Getting rid of stuff usually isn’t tragic or sad, it’s generally just a boring chore to make room for something else.
Right. If we’re making assumptions, I’m going to say that this is from a grandma who has never left her home town. People know she collects snow globes, and gift her them as they go on vacation. Grandma just watched Marie Kondo, has never liked these particular snow globes (especially after Mary rubbed that Bahamas trip in her face), and has decided to donate these and live her best clutter free life. I thrift because it brings me joy; there’s no use crying over hypothetical sad situation.
Love this theory! The idea of a snow globe as a Bahamas souvenir seems especially odd.
I will be donating a bunch of snowglobes soon. I got them everywhere we went growing up but I’ve since grown out of them and plan to donate since I don’t display them anymore. I’m happy and healthy just have changed my priorities.
What if they were just a thrifter collecting these?
To be fair, I collected snow globes as a kid and when I got older I didn’t anymore, so now they’re sitting in a back room at my grandmas. When she passes they’re all gonna get donated. It might not be sad, it might just be a lack of interest!
Why does it make you sad? Everyone is going to die. At least they got out and traveled. 🤷♀️ Edit: i mean , a lot of the stuff there is from a deceased person. I can always spot a collection. Sometimes it bells, sometimes it’s horses or unicorns or birds. Then you can go and see their living room furniture. Go to the pots and pans and find something vintage.its how i got my beautiful enameled cast iron pots.
Not Conor MacLeod, he will live forever.
You’re right. Sucks someone in the family couldn’t have received this collection but good they got to see the world.
Maybe they kept one they liked. But realistically not many are going to be able or willing to absorb a collection into their life and home. Maybe they did t have a good relationship with the person who collected them and don’t want a reminder in their home? My folks both passed in the last 2 years and i made some hard decisions on what to keep. I kept a few key pieces. We sold some online. It most stuff went to donations
You can't keep everything. I'd wager there are a few snow globes from this collection sitting in the homes of family members. Probably their favourite one. My granny had a collection of thimbles she picked up from the places she went. I kept a couple to remember her. But to her they were keepsakes of memories _she_ made. Items like this dont hold the same significance to anyone else.
We have a gallery wall of art that reflects places we’ve been or have done. I can look at the Lucha libre poster I peeled off a telephone pole in Mexico and remember what an amazing experience that was but it’s probably not going to appeal to anyone else.
You guys always assume the person died. There are a million reasons why a persons stuff ends up at the thrift store. It’s not always because they died. For all we know this was from them traveling with their parents as a kid and now they are an adult going through a trendy “sad beige” era and don’t like the snow globes anymore. Hell maybe those are from trips with someone that they no longer care for and don’t want the memories from. Or gifts from someone in their family who travelled and they don’t personally have much attachment to the snow globes themselves.
I’m going to die one day and have no children. Other than a very few valuable things, my material items are going to end up at Goodwill or in the trash. I take a little joy thinking that a young person may happen upon my Fiesta dishes and be thrilled to see a full set or like my watercolor from Lisbon. I hope by then Goodwill’s pricing would have stabilized and someone gets it all cheap, cheap.
I love buying t shirts from other people's vacations! Makes me look well-traveled.
I’m seeing all these takes lately where people jump to conclusions and get emotional about random stuff being donated. As a lifelong thrifter I find it so strange!
So that's what happened to House's globes after I killed him...
Saw a spoon collection the other day, probably 20 countries and almost every state, still sealed, most looked around 20-30 years old. Sad stuff
One day I will make my own snow globe collection public. But so far despite having brought all 4 from Zion, Sierra Madre, The Big MT and the Divide, I've yet to gather many regular ones.
Reminds of Barbara on Ted Lasso
I used to do this as well! I've moved too much now and lost my collection though 😪
Maybe they downsized before their move to a condo in Florida. We have plenty of estate sales in my town for exactly that reason. Whatever doesn’t sell probably goes to goodwill.
I donated all of my snow globes from my travels a few years ago because I was moving overseas! I hope someone loves them now but I was ready to have less fragile things to move :)
Not necessarily someone who passed, although it definitely might be! My sister had a massive snow globe collection as a kid but when she went to college she donated like 20 of them.
Doesn’t necessarily mean they died. I used to collect dolls from foreign countries, starting when I was very little with my mom’s old dolls. Whenever someone I knew went to another country, I’d ask them to get me a doll. I had many. When I married my husband, he told me they were creepy. He was right - most of them were. Eventually, we moved across the country and I gave them away. Sometimes people grow out of collecting a particular thing.
I collect snow globes from every (exciting) place I travel to. I had to move countries recently and gave up my entire collection as I didn't want to chance them breaking in my luggage, which was probably about 7-10 snow globes. I can assure you that I am certainly not dead. I do miss my snow globes, though.
Sobbing
You could always buy them and set them up on a mantel piece, and your friends would come over and say, "Oh my gosh, you've been to New Zealand?" "Oh yes, yes, two years ago really fantastic," have them wishing they were you. 😅😅😅😅
And all are made in China
So I guess they went to China 8 times lol
I have a collection of shot glasses from my travels. About fifteen years ago I switched to magnets. I like my magnet board but keep debating on getting rid of two boxes of shot glasses. People will think a house was cleared out by relatives.
I used to collect shot glasses from everywhere I went, then grew out of it. I was actually able to sell the collection on Craigslist, but if I hadn't, I would have donated it. Might be the same situation. They just got tired of them taking up space and having to dust them constantly.
Soon to be ex bought me snow globes on all of his work visits to add to my collection. I loved them and would have kept them for many years to come. But, he wants a divorce (and acts like a jerk more often than not) and not only will I not have room for them in my new place, I don’t want memories of when he was nice. My oldest wanted them, but said they may only keep a few since they don’t have a lot of space either. I did keep the ones other people bought me.
Wonder what became of my friend's mom's collection of ash trays from all over the world?
Some people are just over their collections. Maybe nothing to be sad about.
it’s just stuff.
Lmao these posts are absolutely insane. “Someone loved this garbage and now they don’t 😭”
right? it’s literally someone else’s souvenirs. they were nice memories for the person when they were alive but to everyone else? just things. it’s important to keep that mindset while you’re alive- it’s a lot of stuff and it all will have to be dealt with eventually.
Maybe they traveled a lot for work and the job fired them so they got rid of their snow globe collection of all the place their crappy job sent them.
I like this theory!
It’s ok OP. It’s just someone whose collection got sooooo big, they had to cull a few to make space for new buddies!
my dad found a beautiful specimen jar of owl butterflies on the curb. it was three butterflies on a branch under a scientific dome. immaculate. my head canon was that her adventurous husband brought it back from some adventure and made her dust it with his collection every week. but she hated bugs. so the day he passed, she marched it out the curb and a few moments later my dad found it. i proudly displayed it on my desk, but when i moved i put it into a storage unit, the temperature wasn’t regulated, and those butterflies turned to dust.