Giving Life to a New Catalog - Meet Carine De Pauw [crookscarine]

Meet one of Colnect's most notable contributors and the creator and coordinator of the world's most extensive tea bag catalog, Carine de Pauw [crookscarine]. As her Colnect profile shows, Carine is a serious collector of stamps, phone cards, tea bags and beer mats. She has been a Colnect member since 2005, when Colnect was still a website only catering to phone card collectors.



Carine has just celebrated her birthday and we thought it would be a good time to feature her on Colnect's blog and ask her a few questions.

When and how did you begin collecting in general and tea bags specifically?

I've started to collect stamps during my childhood. Now I have other collections as well, of which the most important ones are phone cards and teabags.
Our daughter began collecting teabags in 1996. She didn't have enough time so I took it over. I'm always looking for new items for all my collections.
Luckily I have a lot of good friends and relatives who are helping me. Every time they are going on holidays, they come back with new collectibles I can add to my collections.



How and why did you start tea bag category on Colnect?

As I knew many people who collected teabags, I've asked Amir [tcawe] to start a tea bag category on Colnect. He was happy to add the new category and I became the coordinator of the tea bags catalog in August 2009.
Now I post scans of my own teabags and of the ones I receive from the other members. For the time being we are with 150 tea bag collectors. The catalog shows 13,236 teabags from 1,139 brands and out of 75 different countries.

How often do you use Colnect?

I'm now using the site on a daily basis to manage my swaps and to add new tea bags to our tea bag catalog.



What do you like best about Colnect?
Colnect is perfect. You can reach many collectors from all over the world.
Of course new members are more than welcome. The more members we have, the bigger our teabag collection will be, and the more possibility we have to exchange.
Last but not least I would like to thank Amir for all the work he's doing.



Thank you Carine for the interview and we all wish you a happy birthday, happy collecting and enjoyable time on Colnect :)