The most popular collections of Soviet teenagers, or What would never occur to modern teenagers to collect

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Collecting is a fun process. Sometimes a child's hobby leads to a really worthy collection. Often, professional collectors become very wealthy people. But for this you need to have things that really have great value. Today, schoolchildren collect toys from kinder surprises, figures from the Lego constructor, Barbie dolls and so on, since there is no shortage. Maybe in a hundred years, these copies will become incredibly expensive. But under the USSR, adolescents did not have such opportunities, and therefore the collections were funny and did not require large financial investments. Read why the schoolchildren were jealous of their classmates, whose parents worked at GosStrakh and what rods for ballpoint pens were worth their weight in gold.

Postcards and small calendars that were sold in stalls "Soyuzpechat"

One of the favorite hobbies of Soviet schoolgirls was collecting postcards and small calendars. To be fair, postcards at that time were indeed extremely beautiful. No stamping and vulgarity - in fact, they were works of art in miniature. They printed not only gorgeous photographs (nature, fish, birds, animals, still lifes), but also reproductions of famous paintings. You could buy such treasures in any clerical department, in the Soyuzpechat stalls, at the post office.

The cost was ridiculous, about 1-2 kopecks, and the quality was excellent. Girls preferred romantic postcards. The acquired beauty had to be stored somewhere, and most often boxes of chocolates or other sweets were used.

No less popular were small pocket calendars depicting famous cultural monuments and unique attractions, as well as flowers and animals. In those days, the employees of "GosStrakh" were given such calendars as advertising. Therefore, children whose mothers or fathers worked in this organization were considered lucky - they always had a lot of calendars with advertisements and congratulations on the holidays. Of course, the parents brought them home from work. Sometimes the most beautiful specimens were even given as a birthday present to friends. And sometimes they, together with postcards, were pasted into notebooks-questionnaires.

Fashion magazines that pasted over notebooks, questionnaires and homemade cookbooks

So, questionnaire notebooks. It was a craze for all students. They took a general notebook, usually 48 sheets, and wrote questions on each page. Friends and classmates had to answer them, also in writing. Postcards were used to decorate such profiles.

The older the girls got, the more they were interested in fashion. There were several popular women's magazines in the USSR, the most famous being Rabotnitsa and Krestyanka. In addition to political articles, patterns and recipes were printed in them. These pages were carefully cut out and kept by the girl. Some did the filing, and it turned out the most real cookbooks, collections of poetry, mini-fashion magazines. In 1987, the first domestic version of the well-known western magazine Burda Moden appeared in Russia. The publication's popularity skyrocketed. This was the moment of changes in the typology of women's magazines, the basis of domestic gloss.

Cutting out the most beautiful pages from fashion magazines, schoolgirls used them to paste over school notebooks, diaries, homemade questionnaires.

Candy wrappers, dolls and gum wrappers

The girls were often given dolls. Of course, toys from the GDR were the most coveted present. German dolls were in great demand, they favorably differed from domestically produced plastic dolls. This is perhaps the most expensive hobby, since a good toy in beautiful clothes and luxurious hair was not cheap. But it was very pleasant to show off the collection to classmates.

It is unlikely that modern teenagers will understand why Soviet children collected candy wrappers. This, incidentally, applied to girls and boys, and sometimes to adults. both girls and boys were carried away. The candy wrappers were not only collected, they were played, and the winner received his jackpot in the form of the same wrappers. It was necessary to throw a candy wrapper so that it covered the stranger. When imported chewing gum was introduced, many began to collect gum covers and inserts. It was fun and the paper smelled good.

Ballpoint refills: ruble for turquoise

When schools stopped writing with fountain pens, and then with the so-called "pistons", the era of ballpoint pens began. The rods that were inserted into it could have different colors - blue for writing, red for the teacher's grades, green for underlining words.

A new hobby appeared among teenagers - collecting pens, since they were not too expensive. The most common option in the 80s was the usual "ball" for 36 kopecks. Complex pens were appreciated, for example, in which there were several rods at once, the so-called "rocket". Rods with an unusual color were in no less demand. For example, if among the standard blue or purple it was possible to find turquoise, it was a real holiday. Such a rod could be very expensive, a whole ruble. But he very rarely came across.

Posters with Michael Jackson and Alla Pugacheva

Postcards with famous actors have always been on sale in Soviet times. But posters began to be produced in the nineties. It was a real boom. Every self-respecting schoolboy simply had to hang on the wall a huge photo of his favorite ensemble, singer or actor. Businessmen quickly realized how profitable this business was, and began to churn out images of famous Russian and foreign singers and actors at the speed of light. Alla Pugacheva and Yuri Shatunov, Madonna and Michael Jackson looked at you in the subway passages. Such pictures were not too cheap - from a ruble to three. But, what will you not go to to be in trend?

It also happens that people do not collect the most valuable collection for decades, but accidentally find it. So in Israel, teenagers found 425 gold coins 1000 years ago: What the find told archaeologists.