Tolkien Collecting - Beyond Books

Is Collecting Tolkien all about Books?

 

When you search the Internet about ‘Collecting Tolkien’ the majority of the hits returned are about books.

 

This is understandable as the books are where it all started and the books are what we rarely love, and yes there are many many different versions, re-releases, special editions etc, and yes Tolkien was so meticulous in the depth of his writing, and art, to give us a steady stream of new publications, and yes there are literary 100s of books about Tolkien and his works, so obviously the primary focus in Tolkien Collecting is on books.

 

But, if you move the books aside for a minute and look behind the bookcases, there is actually a whole other world of Tolkien related stuff to collect.

 

I remember the early days, not quite far enough back to the first release of the Hobbit or even the Lord of the Rings, but back to the late 60s and 70s, including the release of the Silmarillion, and in those days there was not very much ‘other stuff’ to collect. A calendar each year, an occasional board game, some posters and a few other oddments, but not much. In fact, the main problem with being a Tolkien collector was in knowing what was available. There was no internet, so it was all about stumbling across items in magazines or in shops, often quite obscure shops, or word of mouth.

 

Then came the Bakshi Lord of the Rings movie, and this introduced the Tolkien community to a whole new world of collectable items, action figures, toys, branded items, videos, promotional items etc, and ever since there has been a steady increase in non-book items, especially when the Peter Jackson movies happened, the Tolkien collecting world went through the roof.

 

We should also not forget the introduction of the Internet, which meant that collectors could really find out what was available, and ebay, which meant that you could now get hold of the items you never even knew existed. Now there was definitely more than just books to collect.

 

So, can you be considered a serious Tolkien Collector if you don’t primarily collect books?

 

The world of Tolkien fans is quite an enigma. From the start there has always been 2 aspects to Tolkien fans, the boundary of which is quite blurry. On the one hand there is the serious, the academic, the Tolkien specialists. On the other hand, there is the light hearted fan, the hippies, the students, and those who only know the movies. I’m not getting into the Ringer vs Tolkienist debate, but are there Book Collector vs Non-Book Collector sides? I think this is an area to explore in a separate article, what I wanted to start to explore here is what the Tolkien non-book related collecting world is all about.

 

There are definitely a lot of people with an interest in Tolkien who have smaller Tolkien collections out there, you see them all the while on twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. Check out the wonderful @CollectTolkien and #TolkienCollection on twitter for a daily view of these. This is great, it keeps the interest in Tolkien collecting ticking along and generates a community.

 

But what about really serious Tolkien non-book collectors? Can you even be a series non-book collector?

 

As previously discussed, there is now a lot, and I mean a lot, of Tolkien non-book related stuff to collect, far too much to collect it all, especially if you are a completist, I know I have fallen into that ever expanding world. So, I believe that the really serious collectors are the specialists in one particular non-book area.

 

Some of these specialists have shared their knowledge and collections to the world via specialist websites examples include Tolkien Calendars http://www.tolkiencalendars.com/ and Tolkien Board Games https://www.freewebs.com/tolkienboardgamecollecting/. There are also quite a few collectors of the high-end ranges, such as the WETA statues and the United Cutlery weapons. I would be interested to know of any other serious non-book collectors, particularly those of non-high end ranges, whether they specialise and what they have got in their collection.

 

So what non-book areas are there to collect and specialise in?

 

There really are quite a few different areas, some very large, such as Cards, others smaller, such as Vinyl LP’s. You can make an area as big or as small as you want i.e. collecting any type of Cards or specific types of Card e.g. Trading Cards, or even focusing on a single supplier such as Decipher Trading Cards (some of which are quite big in their own right). It all depends on your area of interest, budget and storage space.

 

Another idea is to collect based on something more general which would include items of various areas, such as a specific Tolkien character, take a look at madeyegamgee’s collection https://gemr.com/user/madeyegamgee/collection/WvjzECnalwAUSHCx/The-Sam-Rosie-Collection of items featuring the Hobbit Sam.

 

Similarly, you could focus on a specific ‘theme’ which would also include items of various areas, such as the Bakshi Movie.

 

Cost is always a factor and, although each area normally has ‘high end’, or expensive, items as well as ‘low end’, or cheaper, items, some areas are more ‘high end’ than others. For instance, Replica Weapons is very high end intensive and you will need a big budget to specialise in that area, however others can be primarily ‘low end’ and therefore a bit cheaper e.g. Computer and Video Games items.

 

As initially stated, it can be quite hard to find information about non-book Tolkien areas and items. Apart from the very specialist websites mentioned above, there are a few websites which have some good details about non-book items, https://www.tolkienguide.com/ is very good, but does focus a lot on books, as does the more generic Tolkien site http://tolkiengateway.net/. Others do cover some areas well, such as https://lotrcollectornotes.wordpress.com/, but are no longer updated, and others are about collections or general items. I have a larger list of some of these http://allaboutmeab.blogspot.com/2016/10/collecting-tolkien-internet-resources.html. I have also tried to document quite a few non-book areas within other articles within this blog, these are Visual Guides of items within specific areas and themes, they don’t include much description, but do include references to other internet resources about items and the area. Please see this Index https://tolkienvisualcollectingguide.blogspot.com/p/index.html.

 

I will also be following up this article with some summary articles giving overviews of some of the non-book Tolkien collecting areas.

 

One final observation for now about collecting non-book items, is that you get a greater interaction with other non-Tolkien collectors. When I post my Tolkien Items (Action Figures, Lego or Video Games etc) to my collection on Gemr https://gemr.com/user/andybirduk, I get interest from more specific Action Figure, Lego, Video Games collectors. Interacting with these other collectors is great, I also get to promote the Tolkien world a little bit. I’m sure that collecting is part of your DNA and if you are a collector it is great to interact with other collectors, whatever they collect.