Curio: Do you save your stubs?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 2:31PM Alexa here. I've been thinking about the movie theater experience a lot lately, about what it used to be, and how much it has changed. Certainly there are things to complain about. As the Alamo Drafthouse was helpful to point out, texting is seen as totally reasonable by many patrons. And as Ebert discussed recently, the movies themselves are dimmer. But one of the many things I still value about the experience is the ticket stub. I've been collecting mine since 1989. I love opening my old tin; each stub serves as a marker of an experience. ("Wow, I really did see Boxing Helena in the theater!") Turns out I'm not alone; here are some images of stub collections, including my own. Do you save your stubs? Ever found one that surprised you?
A selection from my collection.
A self portrait by Joey Yee, featuring 6-7 years worth of stubs.
Radiostaticstar's stubs from the 80s and 90s, with writing over the faded ink.
Curio, moviegoing
Reader Comments (22)
Well... I never throw them out. Though that's not exactly the same as saving them since they are all scattered all over the place. There was a time I kept them all in a shoebox, but general laziness and disorganization crept up and so now they're everywhere... somewhere.
My dad gave me a framed collage like the one above when I graduated college. "Uncle Buck" ... "Home Alone" ... "Innerspace" ... "Critters" ... Jurassic Park" (twice)
Love this post! I have two framed ticket stub collections in my office.
I only keep stubs from films I enjoyed. Sadly, over 100 of these stubs were mistakenly thrown into a washing machine and destroyed by a well-meaning family member. That's what I get for not labeling my hand-sewn storage containers.
I used to save mine. For a few years in college. I wish I'd started earlier and kept going longer. So sad I gave that up. It was so cool to open up the box now and then and pull one out. You're right. you get surprised at what you've paid for sometimes.
Yes! And you will be pleased to find out that it all began with "Up Close & Personal!"
La Pfeiffer inspires!
i thought i was a rare klepto
and this made me feel not so bad hahahaha.
i too used to keep them. i think i threw them out in a house move. :(
i do have all my concert ticket stubs from Cher. i'll keep those
i keep a collection of my tickets and i draw a frame from the movie on the back of every single one. :)
i'm hoping in a few year it'll be quite a collection.
Amir -- that is TOO cool. drawing pics on them? brilliant.
I do! It's nice to see I'm not the only one!
It's true, they're kind of tiny time capsules...
I did that when I was a teen until I was in my early 20s. I had them in a binder, then stapled to a poster board but then I gave up cuz I was moving around. lol. I kind of wish that I'd kept them.
I just started in 2010! My first ticket was on January 2nd, and I saw The Blind Side (later that day, I also saw Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel lmao). I keep them in a binder using business card holder plastic pages. It's super fun.
Thank goodness! I'm not the only one ! Today I cleaned my bedroom in a serious way - had to find a box big enough to hold all my movies stubs which had overflowed the edges of my LOTR poster.....Now, I miss them and might put them back up!
Been saving them since I was twelve or thirteen and I'm about to be twenty-six, so I have quite a few.
I have a drawer full of tickets; movie tickets, plays, shows whatever, they all go to THE DRAWER
I also thought I was the only one! I kept mine ever since I first went to the movies in 2001 for Snow Dogs (the terrible one with Cuba Gooding). I've seen 87 movies in theatres since, and I have almost every one.
I have all mine in a shoebox along with concert tickets and plays/musicals. Since I started going to press screenings however the number of tickets I collect has rapidly dropped. Still, from 1997 (I think I remember "Small Soldiers" being the first one I conciously kept) onwards I've kept almost all of them (sometimes I accidentally threw them out, I'm sure).
As a teenager I'd write on the back who I went with (since we always went to the movies in groups), but I haven't done that in a while. I still save every ticket (not just movies).
I started saving mine when I was a kid. Back then, the tickets didn't have the name of the film printed on them, only the name of the movie theater and which number screen, row and seat. I would write the name of the film on the back of the stub and put it in a special box. Every now and then I would take the stubs out and try to guess the film based on the information on the front :)
Nowadays I never throw them out, but I don't keep them in a box anymore. They used to be so colourful, now they're boring with commercials on the back :(
I've saved all my stubs since 2003, so I have over 200 of them. I keep them in plastic bags, and keep those bags in a a box. The strangest one I've discovered is that apparently I actually spent money to see Blood and Chocolate in theaters, a movie I had to look up on IMDb, and still couldn't remember seeing.
Thought I was the only ar freak out there. Glad to see I am a member of an elite community, ha, ha. I not only keep my theater ticket stubs, but my concerts stubs and I write who I went with on the back of each ticket.
You know, it's funny. I still keep my tickets and Playbills from Broadway shows (I even frame the Playbills), but I stopped collecting my movie ticket stubs. There are a few I held on to because they seemed like big Events - Star Wars Ep. 1 on opening day, Fellowship of the Ring on opening day (can you tell I'm a sci-fi/fantasy nerd?), etc. But they just took up space and I never did anything with them, so now they get thrown out. But I really did like having a record of my movie-going history. I love that other people keep them, post them, and frame them.