Name: Jim Shaw, Los Angeles
Collectible: "Thrift store paintings. I'd been going to a lot of thrift stores and swap meets since moving to California in 1976 from Ann Arbor, Mich. I had a lot of tchotchkes. I'd been collecting paperbacks with lurid colors, but someone had put out a bogus price guide on that sort of stuff and inflated the prices. With the paintings, they're not quantifiable. Because they are originals, it's about your own particular taste, whether you're willing to pay that price."
What was attractive about them as a collectible: "They were strange. Many of them depicted the lurid underbelly of America. I gravitate toward homemade psychedelia and surrealism. Of course I like any type of depressing, homey type thing. There's one with a kid too small for a chair with all this unspoken melodrama going on. But you can project that unspoken thing--you can wonder why they were painted. Like the cigar-smoking turtle with a word balloon coming out of the mouth."
How many pieces are in the collection: "350. I generally don't have a lot of time now to go to thrift stores to look for them, but unlike gabardine shirts or vintage paperbacks, there are always new paintings. Acrylics have added to the number of paintings available. I haven't really driven cross-country. If I'm really lazy, I buy them from dealers at swap meets."