Untangling Knots

Remember how I said that I love movies?

When Casey posted about her Cherished Collections blog tour it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about my ticket stub collection.

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I didn’t mean to start this collection. I’d go to the movies and I’d stuff my ticket stub into a credit card slot in my wallet. When the slot became too full I’d pull out all the stubs and leave them in a pile on my desk. The pile got bigger and bigger, but I never threw it away.

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One day when I was cleaning my desk I realized that I had a nice little collection of stubs. I decided that it needed a proper home and my mom gave me this pretty box to keep my collection in. The box has been around our house forever. I think my mom has had it since she was my age.

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I have 106 ticket stubs. 91 of them are from movies. The oldest stub with a complete date on it is from January of 2002. Most of the stubs only have the month and day on them. That makes it sound like I average 10 movies a year, but the truth is that my collection is obviously incomplete. For example, I only have stubs for the 3rd, 4th, and 8th Harry Potter movies, but I know I’ve seen them all in theaters.

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It’s fun to go through my stubs and see obvious trends. I love me some super hero movies. I noticed that I’m missing some stubs here because I went to the first Iron Man in theaters as well as all of the X-Men and Spiderman movies. I also couldn’t find any Hellboy stubs.

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And I was surprised to find out that all of my Lord of the Rings stubs just say Lord of the Rings. Except for the small green stub that’s from when I saw Return of the King a few weeks ago, I have no idea which movies these go to.

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While it’s frustrating that almost none of the tickets have the year on them, I can usually look up the release date if I’m really curious. This stub is driving me crazy, though. It was in my wallet way too long and now I can’t read the movie title. Any guesses as to what it was?

ETA: Britta figured it out. It’s from Sweeney Todd.

You can see other people’s collections here if you’re curious. Do you collect anything?

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14 responses to “Remember how I said that I love movies?”

  1. Katie

    Fun! In high school, I collected all the stubs from the movies my boyfriend and I went to together. However, as that boyfriend is long gone, the collection is, too!

    Reply
  2. Yarn Coma

    Cute! And I love the box your mom gave you to store them all in.
    I keep most of my stubs too. A few years ago I became really good at keeping paper journals and I would buy Moleskines and imposter moleskines with the pockets in the back. So I mostly stored them in there. Nowadays they just kind of accumulate on my desk 🙂

    As for collections, well, I collect yarn (of course) and books. I have an alarming amount of books and they take up a whole wall in my tiny bedroom. I’m kind of a packrat.

    Here’s an older photo of my book wall. I have since added quite a few more:

    http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/26505_1321973846864_1156350081_30938298_4007615_n.jpg

    Reply
  3. Jess

    Wow, and here I thought I was the only person who does this! I’ve kept all my movie ticket stub since the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out in 2003.

    Reply
  4. Renee

    I think that is a great box to keep all your movie memories in.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  5. Peggy

    wow. I wonder how many movie and theatre stubs I’ve have if I’d have hung onto all of them? Based on that Sweeney Todd ticket, most of those are using thermal paper, so you should make sure to keep them away from heat, or they will turn black and become unreadable. (I work in a theatre box office & have seen hot coffee turn a ticket back!)

    Reply
    1. Andi

      That explains a lot! I never knew what did that to the tickets. I assumed that my wallet was rubbing dye off on them because I had a black wallet.

      Reply
  6. Rhia

    Interesting collection, it’s like little memorabilia at the same time, or “movie diary”. I used to collect ticket stubs aswell, when I was younger. But then I stopped going to movies and one ticket per year doesn’t really add much to the collection does it. So I have now stopped my humble collection. But I still have some of my old stubs, stapled between my old diaries.

    Reply
  7. Tecrin

    I used to do that with concert tickets. Back in the good old days when we hadn’t seen every band on the planet live yet, we used to do tons of concerts. I think we went to 250+ concerts in 2006 alone. (mind you, that’s including a couple of festivals.) We ended up with tons of tickets that we didn’t want to throw away so we got them all together, pulled out the best ones, and framed them all in a nice frame. It’s still hanging in our living room, although most of the ink on the tickets has faded in the sun.

    Reply
  8. northwest is best

    What a nice collection… my boyfriend collects gig tickets, and one day I convinced him to decoupage them onto a box. A box which now contains even more gig tickets.

    Reply
  9. Kristen

    I LOVE your collection! I love little relics that remind you of a time or place. I’ve only saved one film stub, for Love, Actually. It was the last film my then-boyfriend went to see before I flew off to an internship in NYC. We weren’t sure what the future would bring and didn’t know if that would be the last film we’d see together. As things turned out, NYC wasn’t the right place or right time for me after the internship ended so I returned home. Seven years later, we’ve been married for 5 years and that stub still turns up now and again. I can’t bring myself to throw it away, so thankful for where I am now.

    Reply
  10. Erika Lee Sears

    Really cute box- it’s amazing what one collects and then has the patience to collect. It’s almost like a little memory box.

    Reply
  11. Mags

    Lovely collection, but excuse me while I lose my mind over that box. Because I HAVE THE SAME ONE! Seriously, exactly the same down to the carving! It’s got all my sports medals in it. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the country right now, or I’d take a picture to show you.

    Reply
    1. Andi

      That’s so bizarre!

      Reply
  12. Blanka

    Lovely collection… I collect all cinema and concert tickets which I’ve visited with my boyfriend:)

    Reply

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