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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4278002, member: 110350&quot;]I had never heard of John Soane&#039;s house, but looked it up, and I must say that you seriously flatter me!&nbsp; For every object I own, he had about 1,000!&nbsp; But if I ever get to London again, I will definitely pay it a visit -- I&#039;m sure I would love it.</p><p><br /></p><p>One thing I do like about my collection is that it&#039;s relatively easy to build an impressive personal &quot;museum&quot; of antiquities if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend and an art advisor to tell you what to buy!&nbsp; It takes more work, and more time, to build a nice collection if -- like me -- you don&#039;t have that kind of money, and make all your decisions on your own.&nbsp; As I&#039;ve mentioned before, in almost 40 years of collecting, I&#039;ve never spent more than $2,500 on a single antiquity, and spent that much only twice that I can remember -- on one of my Attic black-figured lekythoi, and on the blue faience reclining figure of the lion goddess Sekhmet (which may be small, but is amazingly well-executed and in pretty much perfect condition).&nbsp; I think the most I&#039;ve ever spent on a single coin, of any type, was about $800. Again, that&#039;s happened only once or twice.</p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, I also agree with your belief that people who like to collect things rarely limit themselves to a single subject.&nbsp; At least, that&#039;s true of me.&nbsp; At various times, I&#039;ve gone far afield from coins and antiquities.&nbsp; Since people seemed entertained by the other photos I&#039;ve posted, I hope they don&#039;t mind if I post some more. </p><p><br /></p><p>For example, some of the posts in this thread reminded me that I have a very small number of fossils myself. Here are a couple.&nbsp; (In the second photo, see the fossil to the left and the piece of petrified wood on the right. Both photos are of cases that primarily contain seashells and small figures of porcelain, etc.)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088783[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088784[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Here are a few of my shelves of old books, including old Baedekers and other travel books, my set of the Encyclopedia Britannica 11th edition, my collection of (mostly) 19th-century etiquette and medical books, my collection of old New Yorker cartoon albums back to the first one published in 1928, some of my books of fairy tales and other children&#039;s books, and a shelf of books of Japanese prints, etc., quite a few (see the ones in the middle without printed spines) from the 19th century .</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088788[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1088789[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088790[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088793[/ATTACH] </p><p>&nbsp;[ATTACH=full]1088801[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088802[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>And then there are the maps and prints I have up on my walls. Like my map of Rome from the 1630s, and my map of &quot;Syria Moderne&quot; from 1685:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088812[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1088814[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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