COLLECTORS' COUNTRY; PLEASURE, KNOWLEDGE AND MORE CRAMPED LIVING SPACES RESULT FROM HOARDING HOBBIES.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Staff Writer

It starts with one.

You buy it. Take it home. Put it on a shelf and admire it.

One day, you discover another one. A pair to enjoy.

A friend notices and presents you with a third as a birthday present. Then come the holidays, and a few more join the bunch.

Suddenly, however unwittingly, you've become a collector.

It's happening in at least 16.1 million American households, with at least one family member - and probably more - collecting anything from stamps to antique china, according to the Collectors' Information Bureau in Chicago. And while kids go crazy over the latest action figures and Pokemon cards, it's adults from 35 to 54 who account for 47 percent of collectors.

Accumulating things that go together or look alike is big business, too, with more than $10.7 billion spent on collectibles in the United States in 1998, up from $6.6 billion just five years earlier, said Peggy Veltri, CIB executive director.

``Used to be, older people were the collectors,'' she said. ``Now I think there's been a swing toward baby boomers. Now they have all this money and nobody at home to spend it. So they buy stuff that reminds them of the good ol' days.''

Collecting is a relaxing pastime, said Pasadena psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Rosman.

For a child, collecting can be educational, too, said Northridge child psychologist Drew Yellen. Squirreling away and trading Pokemon cards and Hot Wheels cars helps build organizational, negotiation and socialization skills and teaches a child the value of a product.

``And with stamps, you learn about geography,'' Yellen said. ``When you're dealing with money, you learn mathematics. When I was in fourth grade, I collected seashells, and I learned a lot about mollusks. Where there's an interest factor, there's always a possibility a child will want more information.''

Sorting a collection, displaying it, adding to it, even dusting it, lets collectors enter into a kind of fantasy world, said Mike Stott, marketing director for White's Guides to Collecting, a collectibles price-list and feature publication based in Richmond, Va.

``Nascar and die-cast models (cars) are very popular now, and the reason grown men buy them, with all the decals and detailing, is because they want a piece of that car and driver,'' Stott said. ``They buy it and put it on a shelf and see themselves in that car.''

While many collectors accumulate what they love and wouldn't part with it for anything, others buy and sell collectibles at flea markets.

San Jose-based eBay, the world's largest online auction site, started in 1995 because its creator's girlfriend - a collector of Pez candy dispensers - wanted an easier way to contact and trade with other Pez fans. Now eBay has more than 6 million registered users perusing more than 2.4 million items listed for sale at any time.

``We've tapped into a collectors' pool of the U.S. economy that nobody every knew existed,'' said eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove. ``It was probably out there, at garage sales, flea markets, trade shows. But you were limited by geography and time. The Internet makes that kind of buying and selling instantaneous.''

He estimated that more than 300,000 new items are listed each day and that users spend about $7 million a day buying collectibles.

But collectors should never invest in something just because they think it will be worth more money in the future, warned collector Bryan Eggers of Woodland Hills.

``There are no guarantees you'll make money out of it,'' he said.

He was one of the lucky ones, selling his collection of 600 or so hand-carved ivory 1800s poker chips for $50,000 a few years ago.

Collecting also can become dangerous to your mental health when it becomes hoarding, said Rosman.

``You can make a compulsion out of anything,'' said the psychiatrist. ``A lot of people hoard stuff they have no use for. I've had patients show me photos of their houses, and you'd have to walk through them sideways, they were so full of stuff.''

Obsessive collecting is usually symptomatic of low self-esteem, he said, a walking example of the maxim, ``He who dies with the most toys wins.'' A mentally healthy collector enjoys his hobby but doesn't let it consume his life, Rosman said.

Even hobbyists sometimes wish they could break free of the stuff they've so carefully collected.

``Don't ever become a collector,'' advised Maureen Dragone of North Hollywood, who's filled her home with dolls and autographed photos of former child stars. ``It is very addictive. Once you start, you can never stop.''

hirley Temple

Maybe it was the golden curls. Or the dimples. Or the way she smiled. Or sang. Or danced.

All Jan Wilde knows is that she fell in love with movie moppet Shirley Temple in the 1930s, when she was just about the same age as the talented child actress who lifted America's spirits during the Great Depression.

Over the years, the Studio City woman has collected everything she could find with little Shirley's face or name on it, from autographed photos to dolls, sheet music, greeting cards and Shirley Temple Black's grown-up autobiography.

``I just thought she was so adorable, just absolutely precious,'' said Wilde, who's filled her guest room with Shirley Temple memorabilia. ``My mother bought me all the paper dolls and records and even used to take me to the beauty parlor to get Shirley Temple permanents.''

When she was a child, Wilde remembers entering two contests - ``about naming one of her movies or something'' - and winning both. The first time, the prize was a Shirley Temple bathing suit and sandals; the second time, a pair of kid gloves. She still has both.

``Back then, Shirley was on our school tablets, and she was on the Wheaties box, everywhere. You had to have Shirley Temple everything.''

Today, in addition to all the moppet's movies on tape and records of her singing ``On the Good Ship Lollipop'' and ``Animal Crackers in My Soup,'' Wilde has the trademark cobalt blue cereal bowl-and-glass set, dolls, buttons, watches and about 3,000 pictures.

She spends the night with her idol whenever guests stay over. ``They get my bed, and I stay in the Shirley Temple room,'' Wilde said. ``And I love it. I guess I'm just one of those people who will never grow up.''

Tins

Shirley Sternberg can trace her collecting fever back to one particular dinner about 15 years ago.

Her husband Raymond's boss came bearing a hostess gift: candy in an intricately patterned tin shaped like a trunk. Sternberg ate the candy but couldn't bear to throw away the tin.

``That was the beginning of my passion,'' she recalls, nearly 600 tins later.

In shapes ranging from teddy bears to fire hydrants, from Noah's ark to a guitar, from a leprechaun to a soup can, the tins march up the living room wall of her Woodland Hills home - nearly to the cathedral ceiling - on 8-foot-long shelves. There are more in the hall and the living room. And just about everyplace else there's an available niche.

``If I get any more - and I probably will - I'm going to do like the department stores do and rotate them, display some and put some away,'' Sternberg said. ``But I love to look at them. They're really gorgeous and give me great pleasure.''

Many of the tins were gifts, but she bought many of them herself, most at flea markets and thrift stores. The most she's ever spent on one is $8; the least, 49 cents.

She says she can't pick a favorite, but the Noah's ark tin - painted inside with animals, two by two - is one she prizes. But she's always looking for something unusual ... like the pretty tin painted with English country scenes that she recently acquired.

``I got it home and was cleaning it up and looking at the scenes, and there was a picket fence, and on the fence was painted that famous four-letter word,'' Sternberg said with a laugh. ``I guess that was just a joke of the artist. That's what gives me a kick - finding different things.''

Baking soda toys

Bryan Eggers remembers the thrill of anticipation. He'd eaten his breakfast cereal and sent in the required number of box tops with a coin or two. And then he waited for weeks and weeks.

``I remember my mom picking me up after school one day and saying, `Here's a box for you,' '' the Woodland Hills man recalled. ``I was so excited. It was what I'd been waiting for.''

``It'' was a toy submarine made of plastic, a few inches long. It came with its own ``nuclear fuel,'' which - when spooned into the sub - made the bottom-hovering craft majestically rise to the top in the bathtub, a washtub, a sink or whatever else could be filled with water so he could play captain.

He didn't know - and didn't care - that the ``nuclear fuel'' was baking powder, which, mixed with water, dissolved and created carbon dioxide, lifting the sub. He just wanted the rest of the sub fleet, complete with frogmen, that came in the mail after he ate lots more cereal and sent in lots more box tops.

Years later, those original toys have disappeared, but Eggers - who runs virtual music fan clubs on the Internet - has started collecting them all over again since spotting an Internet ad. He's been buying and trading with other collectors and has amassed a collection of about 30 of the plastic toys.

``I saw one on the Internet and had to have it,'' Eggers said. ``I couldn't wait for it to get here. The minute I had it in my hands, I remembered everything about that day the first one arrived in the mail, the first time I put the `fuel' in. Then I tested it. It worked! It was really neat.''

Penguins

Dolly Allen's home has a decidedly formal air.

Not because of the decor. It's the tuxedoed birds that give it a black-tie feel.

Penguins rule the Panorama City home, from the penguins made of tiny seeds to the life-size (3 feet tall) stuffed toy penguins standing at attention throughout the house.

``I'm not sure how many I have,'' Allen confesses. ``I counted them back about five years ago, and then I had about 3,000. I've gotten a lot more since then.''

Her collection, she figures, may be nearing 4,000 - from decorative knickknacks to jewelry and coffee mugs.

``When I started collecting them back in college - and I graduated in 1939, so you can tell how long ago that was - they were pretty rare,'' she said. ``Now, a lot more people collect them, and there are a lot more new ones to choose from.''

She became enamored of the little birds when a friend's mother opened a gift shop that stocked a variety of tiny animal figurines. She fell in love with frogs, penguins and lots of others.

``Then I thought, `This is silly. I should specialize in just one animal.' '' She chose penguins because ``they look like a little man in a tuxedo.''

Most of her collection - which husband Bill ``kind of likes, too'' - was given to her as gifts.

``I'm starting to think I have enough now,'' Allen said. ``There's no place left to put them anymore.''

CAPTION(S):

20 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- 7 -- cover -- color) Calling collect - Valley residents are piling up unique hobbies.

(8 -- 10 -- color) Shirley Temple has remained a constant in the life of Jan Wilde, above, since childhood, and she has a guest, right, room at her Studio City home that's devoted to items that feature the diminutive actress.

(11 -- 13 -- color) Shirley Sternberg's fascination with tins began about 15 years ago with a gift from her husband's boss.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(14 -- 16 -- color) Baking soda-powered toys, which float to the surface of a tub when the baking soda reacts with water, bring back memories of youth for Bryan Eggers.

David Crane/Staff Photographer

(17 -- 20 -- color) Dolly Allen began collecting penguins in the '30s and estimates she has nearly 4,000 of the flightless birds. ``I'm starting to think I have enough now,'' she says. ``There's no place left to put them anymore.''

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer