Master Modeller Builds Unique Matchstick Armada

79-year-old Phillip Waren has spent the last 62 years of his life creating incredible ship models out of old matchsticks and the wooden boxes they used to be packed in. He started building his amazing matchstick models when he was just 17, using the things around him, and since matchsticks were much more common back then, finding large supplies was a very easy task.

The master modeler, from Brandford, Dorset, has created every ship built in the Royal Navy since 1945, as well as 60 other ships from the US navy and other impressive floating fortresses from 18 other nations. One of the largest ships in his collection is the famous USS Nimitz, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

Throughout his career as a ship model builder, Phillip Waren created over 400 individual ships, as well as 1,200 airplane models that make his aircraft carriers look more real. The average ship in his collection is made using around 1,500 matchsticks and takes about a month to complete, but for his larger creations he used over 5,000 matchsticks and 200 wooden boxes. These took him about a year to complete. All in all, Phillip Waren used around 650,000 matchsticks, to create his entire fleet.

Although many museum curators told him his matchstick creations are worth serious money, Phillip Waren considers them invaluable, and has never once considered selling them. He decided not to ensure them either because he feels “the purpose of insurance is to replace things when you lose them. These can never be replaced”.

Sadly, his collection isn’t going to grow much bigger than it already is, not because Phillip Waren is getting to old, but because the wooden boxes used as packaging for the matches have been replace by cardboard ones, and his stockpile is running low.

Take a look at Mr. Waren’s detailed collection and prepared to have your mind blown:

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Posted by andrew, 31 August 2010. Post has 0 comments.
collection collector England models United Kingdom

Russian CPUs Collection

Largest private collection of CPUs has been discovered upon one Russian guy has posted a message on a forum. His message says "here is my humble collection for you" and then listed something more than one thousand of different types of computer processors he collected. There are ones from the old times and as well as modern ones, the lost and seemed never coming back relics of Soviet Russian genuine processors that preceded Intel world dominance and many other interesting findings he had.

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Posted by andrew, 30 Juli 2010. Post has 0 comments.
collection collector CPUs Russia Soviet Union

Wasp nests

Those with a penchant for collecting usually go for something pleasant like stamps, coins or sports memorabilia. Not Terry Prouty - he collects wasps' nests. The insect enthusiast from the U.S. state of Oklahoma became fascinated with the stingers when he was growing up in Louisiana.

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Posted by andrew, 24 Juni 2010. Post has 2 comments.
collections collectors United States

Rock collector: Rob Lavinsky

Robert Matthew "Rob" Lavinsky, proprietor of The Arkenstone mineral dealership, was born December 13, 1972 in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Richard Lavinsky, an attorney, and Marilyn Rosen, a dental hygienist. He began collecting calcite at age 13, with the support of many mentors in the Columbus Rock and Mineral Society, including Carlton Davis , field collectors John Medici and Henry Fisher, and dealers Neal and Chris Pfaff, among others. He competed with his calcites (which he still owns) for the first time at age 18 in the Berea, Ohio show. He eventually expanded his scope to collecting United Kingdom classics, Sweet Home mine rhodochrosite, and worldwide classics. As a field-collector he dug for minerals in the dolostone quarries and roadcuts throughout Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky (Halls Gap millerite), Ontario (Bancroft), and various other localities.

Rob received his BA degree in Biochemistry and History from Rice University in Houston, Texas (1995), and went on to earn his PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of California San Diego (2000). The first time he formally sold minerals as a dealer at a show was in 1986 (at the age of 14) at the Columbus Show. During the years from 1986 to 2001 he gradually bought and sold more specimens, becoming a part-time mineral dealer by degrees, and finally becoming a full-time dealer after graduation, in 2001. His first business name was simply "Rob Lavinsky Minerals," until 1994 when he changed it to "The Arkenstone" (the name of a fabulous gem in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy).

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Posted by andrew, 26 März 2010. Post has 0 comments.
collector mineral rock United States

Olympic Games

How do you think athletes can be considered as collectors? Bowls on the shelf, golden and bronze medals hanging on the wall … yes! Definitely - yes. So, let’s watch on TV the XXI Olympic Winter Collectors Games, which starts today - on February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the resort town of Whistler, British Columbia and in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be the third Olympics hosted by Canada (1976 - Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta).

PS. of course, we get involved not only with the success of collectors actions and sport performances on this Games who use CollectionStudio for tracking their invaluable awards but with all other guys!…

Posted by serge, 12 Februar 2010. Post has 0 comments.
Canada collectors fun Olympic Games

Collectors?

If you see these guys you should know - they are not collectors, they are not interested in bonistics in any of its kind. Do not ask me why!

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Posted by serge, 26 November 2009. Post has 0 comments.
banknote collector photo Romania

Hobby of the king George V

George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 1910 through World War I (1914–1918) until his death in 1936.

King George V. Portrait

George V who ruled the British Empire more than 25 years, made philately by one of the most popular hobbies in the Great Britain. He took a great interest in a collecting of stamps when he was only 13 years old. He did his first purchases at Pembertone and Charles Phillips. By 1890 George had already have enough serious collection. George's father , Edward, helped the son with a rare material for the collection which usual philatelists had no possibility to get. George was the first who received angular quartblocks of all stamps which were issuing in British Empire. Also his father bought the collection of stamps of his brother Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and gave it to his son.

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Posted by serge, 8 Oktober 2009. Post has 0 comments.
albums British collection collector George V hobby king stamp

Declaration of Independence

In 1989, a Philadelphia financial analyst discovered something unusual in an old picture he'd bought for $4 at a flea market in Adamstown, PA. He'd purchased the painting (an old, torn depiction of a country scene) because he liked the frame. He liked it even more once he discovered that a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence lurked within it.

When he had attempted to detach the frame from the painting, the frame fell apart in his hands. He then found a folded document between the canvas and wood backing which appeared to be an old copy of the Declaration of Independence. A friend who collected Civil War memorabilia advised him to have it appraised.

It was real: one of 500 official copies from the first printing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. (Only twenty-four similar copies were known to exist before this find, of which a mere three were privately owned.) This rare document was offered for sale by Sotheby's on 4 June 1991, and the lucky find fetched even more than had been anticipated: the $800,000 to $1.2 million estimate turned into $2.42 million by the sound of the gavel.

The buyer was Donald J. Scheer of Atlanta, president of Visual Equities Inc., a year-old fine arts investment firm.

"We thought we would add historical documents to our portfolio," Mr. Scheer said, adding that "we were prepared to pay considerably more."

He stressed that he had bought the Declaration as more than just an investment. "I think this is a living document and the words are every bit as live today," he said.

Posted by serge, 31 August 2009. Post has 0 comments.
declaration independence Sotheby United States

Unknown collector-soldier

Collecting as hobby can be born not only via aspiration for an accumulating of all pieces in variety of kind. But in aspiration for imprint the places where you were one day. We have already wrote about Michael Hughes, who has found his own way to do this, using snapshots of souvenirs in front of the original sights. Today, I’ll show an impressive and rare exhibit from local history museum in Grodno (Republic of Belarus). It is a belt of the Nazi soldier.

Click on image to enlarge

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Posted by serge, 6 Juli 2009. Post has 1 comments.
belt coins war ww2

Baseball Cards: The Great American Hobby?

Hey, Zach WestRasmus here, He is a teen living in Boston, when his heart is in New York. He has been a life long baseball fan, and he loves the Yankees! He is not happy with the way baseball is today (cough* hehatebudselig*cough). Here is story about his hobby written by himself.

Baseball.

Nice Zachary's photo

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Posted by serge, 8 Mai 2009. Post has 0 comments.
baseball card hobby