My Tea Cup Collection

So I'm just curious as to what everyone out there collects. I'm fascinated by what people choose to collect because people collect the most random stuff. Baseball cards, porcelain dolls, snow globes, shot glasses, pink glassware, melmac dishes, autographs...the list is literally endless because one man's trash is another man's treasure. For instance, at an auction I got a blue glass insulator cap with a mirror I won and I was like, "What's this crap?" Turns out people collect those things. For whatever strange reason.

That's my point exactly, though. Why do people collect the things they collect? Why do some people collect hundred or thousand dollar items and others collect items that wouldn't even sell in a quarter machine? Why are some people willing to travel half way around the world for an item they collect?  What is it that draws us to the items we choose to collect?

I collect tea cups. For absolutely no reason other than to collect them. Several years ago I said to my mom, "I want to collect something, but I don't know what." We were in an antique store and she saw a tea cup and said, "How about tea cups?" So I bought my first tea cup then and there. I've been collecting them ever since.

My first tea cup.

I know absolutely nothing about tea cups. I don't know what is considered valuable and what is considered junk. I don't know what is the MUST have tea cup pattern. I just buy tea cups that I think are pretty.

Here's the thing though. When I started collecting tea cups there was no emotional connection or purpose.  Now, though, it's almost a compulsion to buy a tea cup that catches my fancy. I even purposefully look for tea cups when I'm at auctions or antique stores. I even turned myself into a tea fan just so there's more rhyme and reason behind my collection.

The tea cup on the far left is one of my favorites.  It's not the prettiest, but on the bottom it says, "Made In Occupied Japan" and I think that's super cool.  I have plenty of items that are "Made in Japan," but this is the first item I've ever seen that was "Made in Occupied Japan."

The one in the back is called part of a set called, "The Friendly Village."  My grandma had the whole dinnerware set at one point.  I can remember eating whipped cream (not ice cream, just whipped cream from a can) out of the little dishes that went with the set.

The little pink and gold cup on the right is the first one that Stonewall bought me.  This one is not a tea cup which I didn't learn until after the fact.  It is a hot chocolate cup.  Apparently, at some point in history it was normal to sit down and have a daily cup of hot chocolate.  You can tell the difference between a tea cup and a hot chocolate cup because the hot chocolate cup is much smaller, about half the size of a tea cup.

The tea cup that is front left was a gift from Danielle (SIL) for our wedding.  She painted it at one of those places where you can pick a piece of pottery and then paint it.  It has our wedding date on one side, our last name on the other side, and the saucer says, "Today I marry my best friend."

The tea cup front right is another hot chocolate cup.  I actually find hot chocolate cups much more interesting than tea cups.  If I didn't think I would end up gaining 20 pounds in a month, I would have a daily cup of hot chocolate rather than a daily cup of tea.

The back right tea cup was a birthday gift from Meg (my sister).  This one is also one of my favorites.  You can see how the handle is on the rim of the cup rather than on the side.  I wish I knew more about this one because it doesn't really feel like a tea cup to me, but what else could it be?

This is a tea set that Stonewall brought back for me from his first deployment to Iraq.  It was handmade and handpainted in Turkey.

And that's my random collection of tea cups.  Despite the fact that there was no reason for me to begin collecting tea cups, I've grown quite fond of them.  They're all so different and pretty in their own way.  I think what I love the most about them is that at some point in history each one of them was used by Someone.  I could have the same tea cup that one of our First Lady's used to serve a tea or maybe the real life version of Scarlett O'Hara drank her hot chocolate from my cup.  Who knows?  Just the potential history of a tea (hot chocolate) cup makes me want to buy it.

What do you collect and why?