When you’re a fan of a group for nearly 15 years you tend to accumulate quite a bit of stuff. This stuff is then dubbed a ‘collection’. I suffered from the same phenomenon and was especially keen on collecting albums and CD singles. And while I was cleaning up my room yesterday, I came across said collection and I thought I would share. Curious to see what 15 odd years of Backstreet Boys fandom can lead to? Then keep on reading.
Scrapbooks, posters (in the bag), picture albums, special edition magazines and books
The scrapbooks hold all the articles I gathered from 1996 – 2004. I stopped collecting posters around 2000. Some of the books (at the top right of the picture) include the picture book by Andre Csillag, the comic book Nick wrote together with Stan Lee and a ‘book’ written by an ex-girlfriend. At the front there’s mainly some special issue magazines and at the bottom left corner you can see the first two scrapbooks I ever made. Mind you I was 12 so Aristocats was definitely appropriate, as was drawing hearts ;-).
Some more books, pictures, video tapes & DVDs and Burger King figurines
BSB had their own Burger King figurines that you could collect (including CD singles and a video tape). Those are at the bottom. The rest is mainly video tapes (it’s a 90s band!) and DVDs. Some special things in here are the UK edition of the very first official BSB video tape, a special reissue of Backstreet’s Back Behind the Scenes (in the blue box) and my own recordings of some of their concerts during the Unbreakable and This is Us era.
Random stuff: t-shirts, tour books, calendars, cassette tapes, diaries, post cards, a can of Pepsi, VIP lanyards, wristbands and key chains.
When it comes to stuff I was never much interested in that. I only really tried to hunt down the tour books and I know there is one more, but that one is extremely rare as it’s from their very first European tour. I have all the other ones, including both the European and US version of the Millennium tour book. As you can see I also have cassette tapes. They’re not just any old cassette tapes: they’re all BSB albums from the first album till Unbreakable. In Asia albums are still released on cassette and so I found these floating around on Ebay.
If you would like to see some more close up pictures of all of the above you can click here. I took some pictures of my collection when I was still frequenting BSB forums. As far as I know this is pretty much up to date.
CDs
As you can see I have multiple editions of each CD they released. I lost interest during This is Us so I only have one of those and I don’t have Nick or AJ’s latest solo albums, but up until Unbreakable this is pretty much complete. Including weird Taiwanese editions and illegal Chinese bootlegs, to my knowledge these are all of the different issues of every BSB album ever made. I have the Italian and Spanish language versions of the very first album as well as an Australian version. I have the karaoke version (incl. DVD!) of Chapter One – Greatest Hits and a version of Black and Blue that actually comes in a blue case.
I took some close up shots of these when I was still busy collecting. So if you’re interested you can click the following links to view which editions I have.
CD Singles
Again, as you can see I have quite a few of them. These are only the European and US editions though. I never bothered to collect the Japanese or Latin American versions. That would make this amount double instantly. Just like with the CDs, this is pretty much all I know exists and features some rare editions. Nick Carter’s solo single for I Got You is infamous for being hard to find and the same goes for the translucent edition of Anywhere for You and the hologram version of We’ve Got it Going On.
If you would like to have a closer view of all the different editions than click here.
As you can see, there’s quite a bit of stuff here and quite some money was spent on it too. If you’re wondering whether I regret buying all of this: no I don’t. This was something I used to like and so I liked spending money on it. Right now I really can’t be bothered anymore, but I’m also not ready to get rid of it either. I have all of it packed away safely in a box (apart from the CDs and CD singles) which is where it will stay till the end of days. So, if you saw any items on here that you are interested in, then I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you: I’m not selling. BSB was too important a part of my life to just give up like that.
Q: What do you think? Does anyone else have a similar collection of something they used to be passionate about and are keeping it for old time’s sake? Or maybe you have a massive collection of something that you are passionate about right now? Let me know in a comment below!
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