A story about collections collecting dust with George Ivanoff

George Ivanoff joins us as we all share our stories about collectibles. We find out about his sonic screwdrivers.

If you want to find out more about George you can check out his website... https://georgeivanoff.com.au 

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To find out more about R.A. Spratt visit raspratt.com
To find out more about Jacqueline Harvey visit jacquelineharvey.com.au

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to real stories with random writers. I'm Ra Sprat, and I'm here with Jacqueline Harvey and Tim Harris. And today's special guest is George Ivanoff. George is the author of the survival. Guide series, the Otherworlds series, the you choose books, the RFDS Adventure series, the Gamers series, and a massive number of education books. And his most recent book is Monster island. Welcome to the show, George. Yay. Now, we're all authors, which means we're storytellers. Normally, we write our stories down, but for this podcast, we're going to be telling them out loud instead. And today, we're going to be telling tales about collectibles. Okay, now, before we get into it, I do have to explain. All right, so when we recorded this. Episode, we had a few technical problems. Now, obviously, we haven't been doing this podcast for long. It's like our fifth episode, something like that. And we're still learning a lot. We're on a steep learning curve, and we're figuring out how to do a podcast where there's four of us in four different locations. So we had a few difficulties. We started recording, and then basically Tim's computer decided to drop dead. Tim quickly sorted it out, and then. We started again, but we lost the. Original bit that he recorded. So we're gonna pick it up now at the point where I've introduced everyone, and Tim is about to tell us his story about his lego collection. Here we go. Okay, so Tim had a few technical problems there, but we're gonna get back into it. Tim, please do continue your story about Lego. So childhood memories, nostalgia, and they're so good at, you know, saying, you know, you had good memories of playing with this stuff as a kid. So now, as an adult with more, more money than your $2 weekly pocket money, come and buy these sets. So that's one thing that I collect. And if you walk around the house, you'll see sets everywhere. And I know, listeners, you won't be able to see this, but just for Rachel, Jackie, and George, I'm gonna show them towards the piano where we have the Harry Potter. Oh, very nice. That's the Hogwarts set. And that one took about three months to build, and that was done with the kids. So it's sort of. The collection has a process. It sort of creates bonding time. Do you really let your kids help, though, Tim? Really? Well, they do. They have to sit on the other side of the kitchen counter watching you make the Lego. Well, that's helping, isn't it? They're helping, making sure that the pieces don't get eaten or lost. Don't touch. Look. Don't touch. Although, have a look at this one. This is one that my four year old built pretty much by her own. So I'm holding up a frozen rotatable set, and we've got Olaf and Elsa, and I just broke a little bit as well, which I'll fix, but so that's an obvious one. Right? So you walk into the Harris house and you know that someone collects Lego, but there's something that if you walk into our house, you would actually have to go through the covers to find out what's collected. And it actually started, this collection and obsession actually started when the four of us were hanging out in 2019 on the yabba koala. Don't blame us for your character flaws, Tim. But do you guys remember how much fun that week was? It was like the best experience of. Being an author ever. It was. It was so much fun. But I had my head sort of buried in my phone a lot because I just discovered baseball. Oh, I remember that, Tim. I remember that. Jackie remembers. Yes. Yeah. And so. And this was the result of term three. In 2019, there were 50 school days, and out of those 50 school days, I did 46 school visits, so they're only four days off. It was madness. And I was absolutely shattered by the end of it. And I said to Heidi Jane, look, I'm so exhausted after this term, and I've got the yabba koala tour bus coming up. I just need. I think I need a few weeks just to. Just to be. And she said, absolutely fine. And so I was literally just lay on the lounge, like, pretty much during the day. And, of course, if you get bored, you start clicking through the channels on tv. And there was not much on except for the baseball final series. This is sort of early October 2019. And I started getting into the baseball, and then I thought, all right, well, if I'm going to get into this, I probably should choose a team. So I literally printed out the 30 MLB team logos and sort of pushed aside the ones. I was like, oh, New York Yankees, everyone goes for them, they're dissed. Boston Red Sox, everyone goes for them. They're off. And I slowly started whittling this list of 30 down to about ten. And then I was like, okay, let's find out about their history and their players. And I was really getting into this research. I'd go another way. I would have gone, like, what colour suits me? You know, Japanese. So when I get the merch I look really good. That's a really good point. And colour was. Colour was part of it. And anyway, eventually I got down to the Toronto blue Jays because Mister Van Buckle has a pet blue jay. Oh, there you go. It was meant to be. It was meant to be. And so 2020 rolls around and the season starts and I'm really getting into it. And it was. It was COVID affected. So their, their massive season of 162 games was shortened to about 60 or something. And I'm thinking to myself, I need something. Toronto Blue Jacks. I'm really getting into this. So I thought, what. What can I collect? You know, what's something that's not going to take up too much wall space or shelf space? That's something. That's pretty cool. And so after a bit more thought, I thought, I'm going to collect signed baseballs of my favourite players, because that's pretty obvious. And so it started with a bit of eBay and Amazon searching. And how can I make sure that if I'm buying this in Australia, if it's coming from America, that it's going to be the real thing? And so that's when research went to that extra deep level of the whole concept of certificates of authenticity. Things that have been really went down. The rabbit hole, didn't you? I mean, your wife must be looking at the mortgage payments, going, oh, Tim, no. And he's just going, but you know what? This is appreciating value. It's going up every day that I look at it, you know. Oh, Jackie, it's the Toronto Blue Jays. No. It'S so funny, Jackie, that you say that, because if a player is, you know, a young and up and coming, if they start making all star teams and getting MPV votes, MVP votes, sorry. The price actually does appreciate. It can actually go up five or six or 700% in value, but the reverse can happen. You might get a player who. You pay overs for a ball and then they sort of fade out and they form, you know, they literally get dropped. You can still use it as a ball. Yeah. Take it out of that glass case and practise with the kids, you know. And I think there is often a huge difference between what a person who collects something thinks it's worth and what someone is actually willing to pay for it. All you've got to do is have a look at eBay and some of the prices of the collectibles on eBay that never gets sold. That's right. They sit there for years and years. So my collection is. Look, it's new and it's small, but I'm up to eight. Eight signed baseballs, all of players who have sort of been favourites for a little patch at some stage. But it's going. So it's going up about two per year. So because, you know, it's hard to get them. They are hard to. Hard to find and hard to get for a good price. It's going to be a tricky collection to expand in terms of volume, but it's a really bizarre little interesting one that not many people actually know that I have that collection. So have you got a. Have you got a display case yet? I have, I do. So each ball has got its own little perspex display. Casey, don't you know anything? No. Well, I knew it would come in a perspex case, but I want to know, has he got the built? Yeah. So the kids can't touch it and so even I can't touch it. So that's the dream, is to get some kind of big display. But we just have no room at the moment. So they're sort of tucked away in their little individual cases, waiting for the day where, you know, there's a bit more room. Does Heidi Jane know how much they're worth? Because I know my husband is a collector and I just eye his things and think, if you drop dead, I'm. On. Better than life insurance. Huh? Mercenary. Just mercenary. It's the most annoying life insurance. Because then she'll have to do the research. Yep. And then she'll have to try and find somebody on eBay who wants to. Buy them from her. Yes, exactly. No, my husband's got a huge book collection and my bestie got retrenched and she got a job working at like a second, like an antiquarian bookseller. So she knows everything now. And I rang her and said, if he drops dead, you've got to come over. And she's like, I'm on it. We'll split the money. Poor Angus. Not that you actually want Angus to drop. No, I don't. But it's. But you've got to, like, it's like George's survival books. You've got to plan for the most difficult eventualities. True. That's another thing. We collect George's books. Excellent. Lovely segue. So, you all done, Tim? Should we go over to you, George, for your story? Okay. Oh, dear. Is all I can say, because that's amateur level collecting. Okay, so this is not going to be so much a story as a psychoanalysis session of therapy. I think I have an obsessive nature, I think. And so throughout the years, I have collected so many different things, you know, everything from cinema lobby cards through to promotional bookmarks. So I thought I'd break this story up into three sections. So number one, what I'm collecting now I've got collecting under control, okay? So I'm only. So I'm only collecting a few things. I am collecting books, obviously. I've got a huge collection of books. I've got a home library. It would be unprofessional not to. You're an author. Indeed. But I also collect different editions of my favourite books. So, you know, I love John Christopher's tripods trilogy, so I've got multiple editions of those books. Okay, so that's one, the second thing, okay. And Rachel, you're going to groan at this one, but I collect sonic screwdriver. I love the Doctor. These are from Doctor. Hey. So this is the kind of magic wand that he waves around to fix things and open doors and stuff. But of course, he's had a whole bunch of different ones over the years. And, yeah, each time they release a toy, I buy one. I collect it. I've actually made a sonic screwdriver. I got like a kid's toy for the thing you put in your ear. And I wrapped it in aluminium foil and it looked just like a sonic screwdriver. It's because my daughter went dressed as Doctor who for book. I was going to say that had. To be a bookweek event. Yes. So. I know what you mean, George. Oh. I want to know how many people are listening right now and actually googling sonic screwdrivers. I actually, you know, even though this is an audio medium, I have brought. Some of them along to show you. Well, that one's a bit more like Harry Potter's wand. That's very futuristic. And that's it. Oh, yeah. Very impressive. That's more geometrical and it's sort of like. It's like something you would. So they've, they've, you know, changed a lot over time from, you know, the very first one the Doctor used. I think they just used a pen torch in the tv show through to the more elaborately designed ones now. Anyway, so me collecting these is an endeavour to keep myself under control because I love Doctor who and I love Doctor who toys, but there are so many Doctor who toys, it would cost a fortune to keep up with them. So I limit myself to collecting the sonic screwdrivers. The other thing I collect is Pokemon, but I collect them. No, no, no. I collect them digitally. Oh, you do? By playing the game. I know you collect them digitally. While other presenters are presenting at author talks. I may do that. Yes. Again, this is about control and keeping the obsession under control. It's not taking up room, it's not costing me money. It's all on the phone as part of it. Now, we're all glad you collecting Pokemon and not, you know, killing people and collecting their teeth. I don't know how to respond to that. All right, so how did it all start? I tried to work out how it all started and it started because of footy cards? No, they were a big thing when I was a kid at school, everyone collected and swapped. Problem is, I hated footy. I absolutely had zero interest in it, so I didn't want to collect footy cards, so I worked it out and the very first thing I started collecting was stickers that were on the back of some sort of chips. I can't even remember what they were, but they were Hanna Barbera cartoon stickers. So Yogi Bear, Flintstones, jetsons, stuff like that. I still have some of those mankey stickers. Are they still sticky or are they dried? No, no, no. I've glued them onto a bit of paper. So that was the first thing that I collected. And from there, I moved on to abacards. Wow. Didn't want the footy cards, but they had ABBA cards that came, you know, in the same way, in a packet with bubble gum. And you threw the bubble gum away because it was repulsive and you just kept the cards. So there was abacards. From there, I moved on to bird cards. And the way that happened was they, because they came with tea. Tetley's, I think it was Tetley's tea. And you had a bird card in each one. And I had a teacher in primary school who was obsessed with drinking tea, and so she used to bring the cards into me at school so that I could collect them. Oh, no. And from there, I moved on to various other forms of bubblegum cards. You know, the Battlestar Galactic ones were the first ones, I think, for the tv. George, what about the. Do you remember the Simpsons cards? When the Simpsons started rising, rising in. Popularity, I did not collect them. I was over the card obsession by them. I had gone, you know what's cool about those cards is you get your individual cards that sort of, you know, you look at them portrait. But then those Simpsons cards, if you flip them over and turn them landscape, it would create a massive jigsaw puzzle for, like, this ultra Simpson and so everyone wanted to collect the puzzle. I collected those for a bit. A number of the old bubblegum cards used to do that, even some of the footy cards. I think you used to have the picture on the front, but if you turned it around, there was a portion of a jigsaw piece puzzle, and you connected them. When I was a kid in our house, because we moved out from England, so everything had been packed up and brought out here, and we had two biscuit tins, and we loved to go through them, and they were just random things that hadn't gone anywhere else. So there's, like, my dad's old pipe from when he used to smoke, and there was, like, safety pins, and there were these two little boxes of cigarette cards that my grandmother had lovingly collected as a chain smoker for her grandchildren. And they were like, one was like marine animals and one was birds. And she had complete collections because she smoked so much. And it's like my grandmother died when I was two, so I have zero memory of her. But it's so sad, like, to think she actually conscientiously collected those. Like, she was very poor and wouldn't have been able to afford to give us presents. Very, very poor. So she conscientiously collected those to give to her grandchildren, using a habit that stole her life from us when so we never got to know her. Really, the most sad, poignant little box of cardboard slips you could imagine. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Anyway, back to your story, George. All right, so. Yes. And I thought I'd finish up. I picked out the two weirdest things that I have collected over the years, the first of which was promotional cinema cups. The plastic ones? Yes, the plastic ones that they would release for a particular film. It started with Superman, the movie, in 1979. So I. My parents bought me a coke in the cup, and I thought, oh, this is a cool cup. And the next time we went to the cinema, it was like, look, there's another one. Oh, there's another one. And so I started to collect these cinema cups. It's a stupid thing to collect. They take up an awful lot of room. You can't put them through the dishwasher either. No, no. You've got to be really careful with them. So it was fine. When I was a kid, I used to display them on the pelmet above my, above the window in my bedroom. I love that you correctly used the word pelmet in a sentence. Oh, thank you. But I got to the stage that I had so many of them that there was just no room to display them. And so they were just stacked up inside each other. So I eventually thought, this is a bit daft, really. I can't display them. And so I stopped collecting them. Mind you, I still have all the. Ones that I was going to say. You didn't get rid of them? No. They are now collecting dust in a corner of my office because my wife won't let me display them in the lounge. Funny. Funny about it. How many do you have? And did you have a rule about two questions? How many do you have? And did you have a rule about you had to see the movie to get a cup? Absolutely I had to see the movie. There was no point in getting a cup from something I hadn't seen. I don't know how many I have. It'd be at least 50 or so. Yeah, I kind of lost count. So that was. That was a weird and stupid thing to collect, really. But it gets weirder. Okay. I used to collect as a teenager, newspaper clippings about science fiction television. That was my little obsession. So it started with Doctor who and moved on to other things, but it was ridiculously over the top. You know, I would, you know, go with my parents to their friend's place and I'd be looking through their newspapers and magazines. Oh, oh, can I rip this out of your magazine? What? Why? Oh, there's a letter to the editor here about doctor who. Okay. And then I, you know, I would collect them and I'd bring them home and I would meticulously, you know, cut them out and stick them down onto a sheet of foolscap size paper because my dad used to Nick, like, bundles of it from his work and bring them home. So onto a foolscap bit of paper with a heading with the name of the newspaper and the date and all. Oh, you are an archivist? Yes. I hope Georgie west, born in your dad's collection, because maybe he was actually collecting those. So it was a bizarre thing to collect. And I remember once, like, a friend's parents were throwing out, like, doing a cleanup and throwing out old magazines. And she brought me, like, several boxes worth of, like, old magazines and said, do you want to go through these and look for articles? And it's like, yeah, I do. The problem is that then they just sat in the corner of my bedroom for years gathering dust because I never actually had the time to go through them. Every now and then I'd flip one out and go through and look, there's. Something to cut out and stick it. Out onto a piece of paper. Insane. Yeah, it's a really strange psychology, isn't it? That, and then you feel bad about it. Like, I think there's something high fidelity. That book where they talk about collectors actually spend most of their time feeling miserable because they can't find what they want. And then when they do get what they want, they hate themselves for being so addicted to their collection. So it's actually not a very satisfying hobby at all. No, no, no. And it kind of. And it moved because I would move. I mean, I eventually lost interest in that and stopped doing the. The article collecting. But I also think back, like, when vhs video recorders first came out, I started to collect tv shows that I liked. So I wouldn't just watch a tv show, I would record it. I don't think I ever watched any of them back again. It was just the effort of collecting. It and keep, and I would have. Had, like, hundreds of video cassettes full of television shows that I would never watch. But the thing is, it sounds insane. And frankly, George, it is insane. But it's people like you that, like, when the BBC used to. They used to trash their. They trashed all their archives. And so all these shows, like dad's army, which, of course, no one has any respect for comedy, and they just trashed all their archives. And these are like classic, brilliantly written shows, beautiful time capsules of their period in television history. And they just got rid of it all. And it was lunatics like you who, like, 30 years later, Australia was like, where they found heaps of these things. Yes, like all the goon shows, they got rid of a lot of the goon shows, but in Australia, they'd sent big reels out to the local radio stations in Australia. And so lunatics like you were able to save these episodes that had not been stored properly by the BBC. So we thank you for your work, George, but we just pity your family. Unfortunately, I never actually recorded anything of any work. One day, maybe it will be all right. Well, because I don't have them anymore. I've chucked them all, but they're all gone anyway. That and the fact that videotapes degrade. So at the end of this stage. All you've got is, like, fuzz with. The occasional picture coming up. It's like, oh, dear. Okay, there's no positive spin on that. Sorry, George. All right, we'll get to my story. Okay, so my story, it's a bit of the opposite tack because, you know, I live with a collector and this one's actually about my brother. So this happened many years ago. My parents were overseas and they left their house in Sydney and they didn't get a house or anything. They went to England for a couple of months because my family's from England, they go back there all the time. So my husband was up in Sydney for work and he went by their house. Just have a rest, get something to eat, use the kitchen and the bathroom and everything. He went by their house and he opened the front door and their house had been ransacked. It had been burgled. It turns out one of the neighbours had burgled them. Some guy had just got out of prison and his aunt had left him her very nice house in the suburbs. And it was like a three story house up on top of a hill. And he used to sit on his balcony with binoculars and watch all the neighbours. And when he could tell someone was away, he'd go and rob their house. So because he knew they were away, he took his time. So my mum's bestie rang me and said, okay, you're going to have to come down and fix it because the back door has been smashed in and there's. It's not locking. So it's like, okay. So I got my power drill, I went to the hardware store, I got some fence palings and I went down to mum and dad's house and it was just like they had spent an entire day methodically trashing the whole house. They had taken every single thing out of every single cupboard. To be fair, they had taken all the glassware out and carefully placed it on the floor so nothing was smashed, but just like, they'd look at it. Yeah, I know, because mum had actually a beautiful bohemian crystal collection and they just placed it all on the floor. But they had 40 years worth of stuff where every single item they owned had been taken out and put in another room, put on the floor, thrown around, like all the. All the linen cabinet, everything. The beds had been overturned, they'd been gone and they had stolen a bunch of stuff. But just so you don't stress about it, my parents had been robbed several years earlier and all their good stuff had gone then. And my parents are really miserly and they don't have any nice stuff, so they'd just stolen random stuff of no value, like they. My dad's wedding ring that he'd never worn and they stole, like, my year. It's. It's not a big deal. George. Don't pretend just because you love your wife. And they stole my year six music award, which was like a treble clef silver pin. But the only thing we're upset about is they stole my mom's giant elephant toy, which was like, like a Tim wooden toy that was more an ornament. They stole that. We were sad about that, but nothing else we cared about. But they trashed the whole house. So I went down walk in the front door with my power drill. I think I'm going to be here all day because I knew my mom, if she saw this, would just be devastated. So I wanted to clean up the whole thing before she got back. So it took me 8 hours. I started the back of the house, worked my way through and just put everything back, put everything back in the drawers, just tidied everything up. It was physically exhausting. And then I got the, the timber panels and I screwed them because it was the french doors that had broken in. So where the timber work was on the french doors, I basically had to install timber work to like, screw the door back shut. And then my dad drives me up the wall because my dad will never give me credit for any suggestion I ever give him that is helpful. And for years they keep slipping and falling down their back stairs. And I was like, you should put some anti slip strips. And he's like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. And then I press him on. It's like, why don't you put them on? You've fallen down. I've fallen down. Mum's fallen down those stairs. He's like, oh, they're ugly, they're yellow. So I thought while I'm there with my power drill, I went and got some slip strips. I spray painted them brown and I screwed them all into their backs steps while I was still there. I thought, you're never slipping down those stairs again. Not on my watch. So at the end of all this, I've been there 9 hours, the whole house was tidy again. Like literally when my mum walked in, she said, it's like nothing had happened. I didn't think it was such a big deal that everyone was making a fuss. But anyway, so the house had been restored, but I was exhausted. It was very physical work putting everything back. So I get in my car and I drive back to barrel. And I am not a good driver. I literally crashed once going back from a school, a day of school visits, because I was falling asleep a bit driving back on the freeway. So anyway, I'm driving back, I'm exhausted. Like, oh, thank God that's over. And I get about 40 minutes towards home and my phone rings and I answer the phone. And it's my brother. And my brother never, ever calls unless it's my birthday or he wants something because he lives in Asia and I can't even remember where he was living at the time. It was probably Tokyo. So he rings me and I'm like, hello, what can I do for you? He's, oh, you know, hello, how are you? How are the kids? And I'm like, just cut to the chase. I'm tired. What do you want? And he's like, I hear you went to mum and dad's house today because they got broken into. And I'm like, yeah, that's right. Oh, my gosh, it was such a mess. I worked for 9 hours. I'm so tired. But I tidied it all up and I screwed the back door back together and I put the anti slip down and I'm tired, but it's all done. You don't need to worry. They'll be fine. Mum won't freak out. He's like, oh, okay. When you were going through the house, did you see my magic cards? And I'm like, what? And it's like, my magic cards. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you are such a nerd. Because magic cards, if you don't know, they're sort of like if dungeons and dragons were playing cards. And my, my brother, through my whole childhood, was a huge dungeons and dragons nerd, a huge chess nerd. But I'd totally forgotten that when I left home at 18, he lived at home to 27. So he stayed there even though he's older than me. See, he was still there. He really got into magic cards, and he got seriously good at it. And he'd go and he would pay to go and compete interstate. And he learned all this money playing magic cards. I had totally forgotten about this because I was an adult now. I was like, 30. And I'm like, your magic cards? No, I have not. He's like, oh, there was a big box somewhere in the house. And it's like, no, I have no memory. I went through every single thing in their house. I have no memory of seeing any magic cards. And he's like, oh, oh, they were worth $30,000. Whoa, what? And so he's like, oh. And I was like, the police report's gone in and no one told them about $30,000 worth of magic. And I'm like, you've got two children. Why have you got $30,000 worth of magic cards? You should be selling them and putting them towards your child's education. He's like, oh, they're worth it. Could you, like, call the police and see if they found them? And I'm like, oh, my gosh. He's like, you've got to put it in the police report so I can claim the insurance. And I'm like, you are so shameful as a human adult on so many levels. Fine, I'll call the police. So I call the police and I say, I've got to add something to the police report. And they're like, what is it? I said, $30,000 worth of magic cards. And, yes, I know how nerdy that sounds. It's not me, it's my brother. And they said, oh, okay, well, if it's $30,000, that's a big deal. Anything over $20,000, you're going to have to turn around and drive back to Sydney and have an interview with a police detective. And I paused and I said, oh, I'm sorry. I misspoke. It's a $19,999 collection of magic cards. I'm going now. Goodbye. So that's my story about my brother's. Collection of magic cards, which I find people. Gosh, that's a lot of money for cards. I know. They were never found. No. Were they ever found? They were. They were still in the wardrobe. They hadn't been stolen. They're still there. So if you want to grow up. My parents house. They're still in the box in the wardrobe? No, no. I'm going back to what I said before. There's a huge difference between what the collector thinks they're worth and what they're actually worth. Now, your brother may think that these magic cards are worth $30,000, but George. My brother, is literally an equities analyst. It's his job to know how much things are worth. Okay. I stand correct. You've still got to get someone to pay it on the day, though. Yeah. I actually met someone who had a collection of something worth well into the six figures to the point where they actually put in. Into their house, a lift, so you could go down, so you could only access this room via lift. And when you get into the room, there were cameras in every single corner. And it was such. I'll tell you what, the collection was just to build up the tension. But it was such a famous collection that people from America who worked for the company that made this particular product would actually fly out. And just to see the collection and so on, it was a Jim beam collection. Wow. Yeah. And so it was. It was absolutely insane. And I really didn't know much about it, but I'm just looking around and the way it was sort of dusted and displayed and the guy who owned it said to me, he goes, I know every level in every jar. So when my son grows up. That's right, yeah, well, the sun's just. Got to pour it out and put tea in like you do in the minibars in your hotel room. Too true. Did he never drink any of it? It was all just. No. Yeah, he actually did. He had some bottles that he would drink from, but he had. Of course, there were those really rare, like limited edition ones that you would just keep completely sealed. But yes, it was sort of like a working collection as such. I have never understood this keeping things sealed mentality with collections. I mean, it's like wine. People who collect valuable bottles of wine. Wine's meant to be drunk. That's true, that's true. My husband has a very impressive cellar which Rachel has seen. It's not a cellar, it's like a glass cupboard that. It's underneath the staircase, but it's as you go walk into Jackie's house, it's the first thing you see is this magnificent glass cupboard of wine. It's all like, lit and everything has been lovingly hand labelled with the label dangling on the bonnet. I do that. I do that with my wine and. That'S how I know which ones we're allowed to drink and which ones we're. Not allowed to drink. And it's all climate controlled and everything, but, yeah. So my husband collects wine. I suppose I should tell you my collecting story or, or not. So I was the kind of kid who, when I was little, I used to like to, you know, the cereal packets when you'd collect like the little figurines and that sort of stuff. And, you know, but my attention span for that sort of stuff was really short, so I'd collect it for, you know, like two weeks now, be like, no, over that. Don't do that anymore. And so I had this real epiphany when I was about eleven years of age. I walked into my bedroom one day and I went, what a tip. And I basically just cleaned it up, pulled everything out, threw everything away that I didn't want. And since then I really find the idea of like having lots and lots of collectors, collectibles collecting stuff, just not my thing. And I probably went through a stage when I was in my twenties, I used to collect a bit of china. So I did get into sort of collecting royal Dalton, and I was really into collecting satsuma, which is this beautiful japanese China. But then after I got a few bits of that, I was like, that's enough. Five bits of satsuma is enough. And then we would go to England, and I would get some more crop vases, and three of those is enough. So after a while, I just sort of. I don't collect it. A lot of stuff. I just had little bits of stuff. But when my mother in law was moving, and my mother in law tended to be a bit of a hoarder, and, like, my house is not a hoarding house at all. Like, I have very minimalist kind of stuff. And so I would walk into her place, and I'd be, like, tripping over boxes of stuff on the floor. I'd be thinking, oh, no. Oh, my gosh, there's every stuff everywhere. Anyway, she had a whole bunch of crazy tea sets. So basically, it's just crazy tea sets where you have, like, you might have a Royal Dalton one. You might have a royal Albert one. You might have a, you know, a. A different. Some sort of different one. Anyway, she had about 50 of these things, and she was moving into a retirement village. And I said to her, look, Joan, I think we need to probably cull the crazy tea sets, because how many people are you ever going to have for afternoon tea? And so she said, I think we could go with a dozen. So I pull out the stuff that is, like. That is valuable, and I put the valuable ones because I know, you know, what is valuable and what, you know, the Ainsley's valuable, the royal Dalton's valuable, you know. And then I package all the rest of it up to take to the op shop. Anyway, about a week later, she says to me, where are all my crazy teeth? And she hadn't lost her marbles at all. Like, my. My mother in law was still very with it. And I said, well, you told me I could take them to the op shop. I did no such thing. And so I had to go to the op shop and find that box and buy them back again because I was. I was in trouble for getting rid of all the crazy tea set. So, yeah, so I'm. I guess I'm not really into collecting very much, but we. We do have some friends here who have the most incredible collection I have ever seen of cars and cars and motorbikes, and. And these friends of ours, they actually built a house to house their car collection. So from the outside of this house, it's actually, just up the road from my house. And from the outside, it just looks like a regular house. And then you go in the front door, and where you would turn down what would be a bedroom wing. It's a car showroom. And they even have electronic bollards at the front so that nobody can steal the cars because all the entrance and access is out the back. And so anyway, we call it the party house. We call it the carhouse, but it's also the party house, because whenever they want to have a party, we all just go to the carhouse. That's cool. He has an incredible collection of mostly american cars, actually. So Corvettes and Chevys and stuff like that. How many? He's probably in the house. There's probably ten cars. And then he also has a Messerschmitt, you know, the old. The three wheel at which he actually drives around the. The estate, which is really cool. And he has, like, a. He has a triumph motorbike that raced at Le Mans. So it's a phenomenal collection, which, you know, I have never met anybody before who had a house built just to house their car collection. Jerry Seinfeld did that, but in New York. So he's got, like, a brownstone that he lives in. I believe the building next door is his car collection. Yeah. And then there's Adam Carolla, the comedian, because he's all into cars. Like, he's quite good a race driver. He built a house so that the garage is underneath with, like, his big collection of cars, but there's, like, a platform that raises up into the, like, the living room area with a car on. So if you have dinner and you're like, oh, do you want to see. Do you want to see my Porsche? No, no. He's got, like, Paul Newman's, one of his racing cars. So it's like, do you want to see Paul Newman's racing car? So he'll have it set up on the lift, and it just comes up through the floor, and everyone can admire it. Or if he's got someone coming over who really likes to see lotuses or whatever, they're like, oh, I'll see my Lotus, and he'll put that car on the lift, ready to raise up after dinner. Ultimate conversation that trumps our friends place. These are just regular people. These are not movie stars or. I don't think people with regular people. Ten Corvettes in their basement are really regular people. So I've got a question for the three of you. Before we finish up, I want to know, you guys have written a lot of books. I'm on my way, but not as many as you have. I want to know, do you collect each edition of your books and the international ones and sort of have them in a special place? I collect mine, but I find the current ones. I tend to not realise that I don't have any copies because people ask for copies. And, like, just yesterday, I was doing some research on nanny Piggins. Cause I'm writing a nanny Piggins book and I was going through the old ones and I realised I don't have a copy of book five of the current edition, so I have to go to the bookstore and get a couple of those. But my husband doesn't let me display them in the house because he says that's pretentious. And yet I have noticed that some of the books he's a researcher on are displayed in the house. So just outside my office, there's now a bookcase just outside my office and it's upstairs on a landing no one who comes to the house ever sees. I snuck a bookcase out there and I put all my books just as a point that, you know, but generally most, like, you know how you get all the author copies and you have heaps left over? Yes, I've got a built in wardrobe that's. That's part of my office and I just store them all in there so that I can give them out as gifts when I need to. Yeah, yeah, I have copies of all of them. But like you, Rachel, there's times when I think, oh, I need to look at such and such. I think, oh, I haven't got one of those, but I tend to. I mean, I use them as prizes and stuff and give them away as gifts. And the ones that I find really interesting is when you do an overseas translation edition and all of a sudden you'll get 20 hungarian versions. Yeah. And you can never get rid of them. Willow and wolf. But I've found a way to get rid of, like, the turkish ones, the hungarian ones. So I actually make contact with the local turkish language school in Sydney or wherever it might be, and then I organise to send them to them and I just keep two copies so that I don't have, like, multiple copies of stuff that I can't read. Anyway, thank you for that idea because I've got a bunch of romanian and vietnamese copies of the human body survival guide and it's just like, what am I going to do with those? Yeah, no, and they're really appreciative, those language schools, whenever I've contacted anybody straight away. And there was an Al Sarander in German. And so the german school, I said, would you like the german editions of Alice Miranda or the french school? Would you like. And they're like, oh, yes, please. The other thing you can do, the third nanny Piggins book, the hardback, got liquidated in the States. And when it gets liquidated, they send you a box of 20. So you've already got the first twelve, whatever. But then you get a box of 20 sent to you. So they said, because I'm in Australia, they always contact me. And they're like, do you really want another box of 20? And what I do is like, the lady who's the illustrator for Fancy Nancy, there'd been a tornado go through, I think, Oklahoma. And she was like, getting together books to give to the library. So I just got the Publix chair to ship my liquidated books directly to one of the affected schools. And then bang. You know, they've got whole class sets of that book if they want to use them. So that's another good thing you can do. It's just like when the publisher asks, say, because they'll also know if there's like a local charity or reading group that needs, needs books. So. Yeah. Or any underprivileged school that you've been to is always looking for class sets. That's nice. Yeah. Yes. Very good. All right, so, um. So that's it. So we've wrapped up. Sorry, wrapped up. What do you do with your books, George? You have like a hoard, do you? Don't click or you don't collect your own books? I don't know. I've got, I've got, I've got the brag shelf in the library. So I've got a library. One copy of, of everything onto. And everything else is in, in the back in the office. And I. Yeah, I use it for giveaways when I do school visits and stuff. Yeah. Because how many books are you up to now, George? It's, it's into the triple digits. Uh, 137. 137? Yeah. Racing sesquicense. That includes an awful lot of really teeny weeny little prep grade school readers. There's no need to qualify. It's awesome. There is a need to qualify. You say you've written this many books. And people think, you know, doorstop novels and that stuff. No, no, no. I love it. That's 137 times you were distracted from collecting things. I did research on you, George, and you've only written 106 education books. So that means at least 30 of your books are the doorstop type that we write, so you're not doing too badly. That's the same number I've written. Yeah. So in other words, George is awesome. Okay, let's wrap it up. Thank you all for coming. If you want to find out more about any of us, you can cheque out our websites. George, you're at george ivanoff.com dot au, is that correct? Yes, it is. Okay, Jackie, where can we find you? At www.jacquelinehavy.com dot au and timharrisbooks.com. And I'm at rasprat.com. Thank you all for listening. I hope you have a great week. And until next time, goodbye. Bye.