COLLECTIBLES
It's been said that one person's trash is another's treasure, and you can thank Lydia Cline for keeping some 2,000 America Online discs out of the nation's landfill. "If an AOL disc isn't pop culture, I don't know what is," says Cline, an architecture professor in Kansas who sees these pesky direct-marketing tools as 21st-century collectibles.
A small but growing number of people share her view: While bidding on eBay, Cline has met and started an email loop with eight other collectors and competes for hard-to-find memorabilia with 20 others. A version 1.0 Mac diskette sold for $107.50. Cline keeps her spending to a minimum (after all, the discs were originally free); unique designs go for 20 to 30 bucks a pop. For the bulk of her collection, she relies on the junk mail of friends, family, and neighbors: "It's the best way to get them and certainly the cheapest."
Check out Lydia Cline's online collection at staff.jccc.net/lcline.
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