Absolutely centuries ago I was in a forum competition where we had to find displays with the most of certain items- as our team couldn't find anyone with a substantial pen knife collection, we decided we'd create one-- I was the one who hosted it and added to my display. I expanded it for years after, at one point owning well over 1 in 3 pen knives in the game.
Then Chedburn decided to unstack 25,000 of them in my inventory after weapons were updated to have individual stats.
Car batteries because I love racing and carnations because they were just sitting there looking fresh cut and ready to roll after I'd done the search for car batteries....so I'd buy them on the way out and eventually got a big enough bunch to call it a small collection.
I'm not into collecting anything really. There's one item I've seen thats a must have for my display though and that's the Monkey Cuffs collectible. One day maybe
I had an idea to overtake a buddy of mine with collecting Kabuki Mask. But i sold out to him. Then i figured to collect Kittens to anny a faction co-leader. But they got bought. Then i got into pearl necklace, then ched added tons of them so i just dont bother.
So i am now merit hunting and trying to build my NW
i am going for the rusty swords... ;) been collecting for quite a few years... just dont have the time to open all my boxes and put them in my display..
Not sure if this really fits into the same category, but I just collect random things throughout my life to serve as mementos.
For example, once when I was leaving college, I opened the door to my Shitbox 2003 Honda Civic and the inside latching mechanism for it literally fell off (with some pieces falling inside the frame of the vehicle so I couldn't reattach).
Went to the shop area of the college and asked around to see if anyone had any rope, sure enough someone did. Tied the door shut to the passenger seat, but still had to drive home holding it closed (hour long drive on the highway). Still have the bundle of rope in a lockbox filled with other stuff like that.