It's the inadvertent collection of things I had no intent of ever collecting.
Antique brass candlesticks.
Sometimes they turn up at garage sales, the flea market, thrift shops, in the summer as often as a pair a week. And I buy them, usually because they're too cheap to leave, far cheaper than buying the new made-in-India rubbish that saturates the market now. I can't resist a bargain.
You learn to spot the real ones from the fakes. The fakes are heavier, lack the color, the patination, the distress and wear. Although there are some very competent fakes out there, most can be spotted without even lifting them and checking the bases. When you get them home you try and date them, compare the styles, look for a makers mark, most are unmarked and can only be dated generally by comparing styles to other candlesticks where you're certain of the period.
And there are the "orphans", the single candlesticks that have lost their partner sometime in the past 100, 200 years. I have a special affinity for these, pick them up for a dollar or two in the hopes of eventually reuniting them with their mates, rare but it's happened, I've found one at a garage sale and paired it, years later, with another from a distant garage sale. I think, romantically perhaps, of what they've been through in their years of separation and imagine, could they talk, of their conversations and joy at being reunited.