Big Money in your Spare Time
The act of hoarding being a key neurotic trait, the recent surge in the collectibles market is something that many neurotics have been preparing for all their lives, whether they realized it or not. For years they have been cluttering up closets and basements and garages with old bottles, baseball cards, commemorative plates, comic books, post cards, Coca-Cola trays, and anything else they could get their hands on. Now, in an age when anything that shows the slightest hint of wit or craftmanship is worth big money, these collectors are sitting pretty.

There is another type of collector, equally neurotic, who is still waiting patiently for his day in the sun. This collector has a somewhat less discerning eye for value, a somewhat less sophisticated notion of what collecting is all about, yet his ardor is real. Since it is difficult for this secondary collector to gather information about his holdings, the following guide should be of some use.

1. Sugar Packets. Not too much happening in this field yet, but the gradual turn toward sugar substitutes makes for a very rosy prospect indeed. Anyone who has a full set of state bird or state flower packets is sitting on at least $1.50, and the value can only go up. The cognosscenti are still hunting down stray packets from the infamous Bicentennial Presidential Series of 1976 in which Dwight Eisenhower was mistakenly given enormous sidewhiskers.

2. Paper place mats. Instructional mats - "Sam Snead on the Bunker Shot," "Sammy Davis, Jr., on Showmanship," and "Rod McKuen on Sonnets" - remain popular among collectors. Rarer, however, are the "Map of France" mats that were ordered by the New York City resturant Lutece only to be discarded after several weeks' use. Lovers of errata are always on the lookout for the Howard Johnson's kiddie man gaffe of 1967 in which there was no way out of the maze.

3. Drink Stirrers. Not the cheap ones that you twist into nasty little knots or chew until the fibers get stuck in your teeth during tense nights out on the town, but the big, breakable plastic ones that have "The is a swanky joint" written all over them and for some reason a little ball down at the business end. All forms of this potentially valuable collectibles are becoming rare, but especially ones with penguins or gaudy arrangements of plastic fruit on the top. If you have one that actually has "This is a swanky joint" written all over it, hang on to it.

4. Pennies. Still not too much movement here, but by all means keep hoarding them. Something big is about to break soon, perhaps even a switch over to a yenlike currency sometime in the future. Such a switch would make the penny obsolete as a legal tender, and natually very valuable to the serious (over 40,000 pennies saved) collector.

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