STRANGE HOBBIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21020, 8 May 1930, Page 14

STRANGE HOBBIES.

LURE OF COLLECTIONS, The man -who was reported the other day to have collected over 40.000 railway tickets, all different, is not the only collector with a strange hobby. There is even a Match Label Exchange, the bon. secretary of which states that many collectors have from 5000 to 10,000 examples. A Brighton collector boasts over 15,000 specimens. The late Mr D, E. Wethcrficld collected over 220 grandfather and other clocks, which, at his death, wore sold for £30,000, a sum that showed a big profit on the original outlay. The collection of the late Mr C. H. T. Hawkins, of London, has already realised nearly a quarter of a million pounds, and many objects arc still unsold. During the last 25 years of his life he never spent less than’ £IO,OOO a year on his hobby, and gathered together over 1000 jewelled snuff boxes, 800 miniatures and wonderful porcelain, pictures, and books. As a sideline he collected over 800 unset diamonds and other precious stones which at the sale realised over £20,000 A less successful collector of jewellery wad the eccentric Marquis of Anglesey, whose collection realised over £IOO,OOO in 1904. Ho was a most reckless buyer. A pair of sapphire sleeve Jinks, for instance, which made £I3BO at the sale, cost him ten times' that sum. A well-known society woman collects car-rings, and already possesses 200 pairs. One pair is in the shape of golden rats, which bang by their tails. A few years ago a man admitted in the Bankruptcy Court that nearly the whole of his large fortune had born spent in forming a collection of butterflies and mothf*