Collectors Anonymous

“In almost every town nationwide you will find an op shop, secondhand or recycled goods store, antiques shop or auction house. This book is your guide to some of the best that New Zealand has to offer. Many of these store can’t be found on the internet, some don’t even have phone numbers, some remain local secrets and others are well known gems…”

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It’s a somewhat frivolous activity to source out items that we don’t necessarily need but want, display them in our homes and on our bodies for what is, essentially, pleasure. But there is an impulse within us to collect – for survival, for memories and for enjoyment. One way to lighten the affect of our consumerist cycle is to shop sustainably and recycle our goods. To assist in keeping op shops and antique stores alive, friend and writer Shannon Weaver has just created a guide to the best second hand stores throughout New Zealand.

Collectors Anonymous is single handedly put together by Shannon herself, from the website, ticking up kilometres on the road, the phone calls, and finally to the book design. Created for the collector that exists in all of us, the guide features just shy of one thousand stores, each offering recycled clothes, brick-a-brac and furniture that will make any thrift-store-shopper’s heart pulse with excitement.

Collectors Anonymous is for those who are forever captivated by the treasures that were once another man’s trash.

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Can you tell us about some of your best op shop finds and how you enjoy them today?

I am all about practicality. I won’t buy something unless it has a use, so my second hand buys are always well utilised. This makes me tend towards old tins that I can put stuff in, wooden cartons, glass bottles etc. At the moment my favourite thing is a small glass display case with gold edging I got for $2. It is the most impractical thing I own so to make it useful I like to showcase things in there that wouldn’t normally be displayed by anyone else but are essential to my daily life – film rolls, lollies or at the moment-surf wax.

What is it that you love about driving around New Zealand? Any favourite places to visit?

I think it comes down to my childhood, we were always on the move for dad’s work so my siblings and I find it hard to stay in one spot for an extended amount of time. New Zealand is an incredible country to explore by road, it’s so damn pretty it’s hard to concentrate on the road sometimes! When we first moved to NZ we wound up in rural Gisborne, I went to a school of about 10 kids, my younger sister was in the same class as me and every day we had to walk through a paddock of angry bulls to get to the bus stop. Needless to say I hated the place passionately but now that I’m older I’ve grown to appreciate it a lot more. The community is a beautiful mix of farmers, surfers and artistic people, with some neat little second hand stores of course!

Where did the idea come from to put the Collectors Anonymous guide together?

I thought about doing it about 5 years ago, while living in Australia actually. Their op shops are alright.. but ours are better. A lot of these shops are only found by accident, when chanced upon unintentionally, so I wanted to make it a bit easier for people to find and support them. Nearly every small town in NZ has an op shop, it’d be horrible if they started to close down because they weren’t getting enough business. There are small op shop guides online but I wanted to encompass all of the second hand things – antiques to building supplies and records to man-caves of second hand tools. I also wanted to put it all in a wee book, the perfect size for keeping in the glove box or close by for potential adventurings.

What was it about this project that you really wanted to see through to completion?

Well, when I first started on this, maybe two years ago, I thought it’d take me a couple months. A couple of road trips, a few phone calls, done. But as I started to get stuck in, the sheer number of second hand stores became increasingly apparent. I’m not the giving up type and it was a great way to justify op shopping under the guise of this project. There is just shy of a thousand stores in this guide.

How have you found the experience? What have you learnt?

Because I have had the project in my mind for so long and bringing it to fruition has taken so long, it has been such a big part of my life that it’s so weird that it’s finally done. I’ve done it all myself – the website, the road trips, the phone calls and the book design. If I’d had to pay others to do some of those aspects it just wouldn’t have been feasible to create.

Any advice to people wanting to publish their own book?

As much as I like to think ‘bleed and crop marks’ are some kind of exotic phenomenon that can be ignored, printers will have much respect if you know what they are and use them.

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Pre-order your copy of Collectors Anonymous [here]