6,666 Tea Labels Passed

The first milestone of tea labels is here. The catalog has passed a number of 6,666 items.

Tea Label, Come On LiptON!, Poland, Colnect Catalog

Thank you, everyone, for making Colnect better day by day and thanks to the coordinator, Els Van Gastel [leeuwin], for taking such good care of the tea labels category.

Tea Label, Peach Tea 100% Pure Ceylon Tea, United Kingdom, Colnect Catalog

The first use of tea was medical and it started in China, but later on during Tang Dynasty, which lasted from 618 to 917 AD, tea started becoming popular as a recreational drink. Even though in Asia tea was popular it wasn't until the 16th century that it was introduced to Europe.

Tea Label, Relajante, Spain, Colnect Catalog

Today many collectors are collecting tea bags and tea labels and it is considered as one of the bases of large collections. Currently, on Colnect, you can find 554 different brands with 37 themes of tea labels from 72 countries.

Tea Label, Kamille med Citron, Denmark, Colnect Catalog

Colnect has been built by collectors just like you. Are you interested in contributing to Colnect? Then you can go and check our Catalog Contribution Guidelines page and start making Colnect better.

Over 80008 Tea Bags on the Colnect catalog!

As is becoming a yearly tradition, we are now celebrating a new milestone for the Tea Bags catalog, surpassing 80,008 Tea Bags. In a perfect succession we have previously celebrated 70,070 tea bags in 2015 and 60,006 tea bags in 2014.

"Thank god..." Netherlands Tea Bag, from the Colnect catalog

This year over 10,000 unique new tea bags have been added to the catalog. The leading countries, by numbers, remain Germany, USA, UK and the Netherlands. At the same time, we've had new countries joining this year with their first representing tea bag, such as Mali and Kuwait.

"Calmer Chameleon Infusion" UK Tea Bag, from the Colnect cataog

The catalog's growth is meticulously and carefully conducted by the wonderful coordinator, Carine De Pauw [crookscarine]. The coordinator's dedicated work and high standards resulted in this perfectly cohesive, beautiful and comfortable catalog. You can read more about the Tea Bags coordinator in a short interview we had with her in 2011.

"Earl Grey Tea Blend" Netherlands Tea Bag, from the Colnect catalog

In April 2013, crookscarine has also created the Tea Labels catalog, that matches the Tea Bags catalog. This catalog is also now rapidly growing and already contains over 4000 tea labels.

"High Quality Sencha Tea Bag" Japan Tea Bag, from the Colnect catalog

We would like to thank the Tea Bags coordinator and the great contributors, for the excellent effort they have made to bring this catalog to its current vision.

"Senne Oczka" Poland Tea Bag, from the Colnect catalog

Would like to join as a contributor on the Tea Bags catalog? Learn more here how you can help. Want to help on Colnect in some other way? Please read the Contributor Guide for more information.

"Premium Ceylon Tea Irish Breakfast" USA Tea Bag, from the Colnect catalog

Tea Bags Catalog Exceeds 60,006 Teabags on Colnect

We on Colnect are proud to announce that the charming Tea Bag Catalog on Colnect has now reached 60,006 Tea Bags! The catalog has progressed a lot over the years,  into a beautiful and well structured catalog, that now also works as a counterpart to its brother catalog, Tea Labels. With over a thousand tea bags added just in the last month, the catalog's growth rate, years after its creation, is impressive.

This achievement is made even more admirable when you consider it's all the result of the ever dedicated coordinator and founder of the category, Carine De Pauw [crookscarine]. The Teabag category has gotten help from great contributors, of course, but as the sole coordinator and editor of the category, Carine is the main grand orchestrator and executor of it all, maintaining 2 categories at once. Without her, no of this was possible.

Carine with a Colnect T-Shirt at a fai 

Carine is a serious collector of Stamps, Phonecards, Tea Bags, Tea Labels and Beer Coasters. She has been a Colnect member since 2005, when Colnect was still a website only catering to Phonecard collectors. Let's take a few moments to get to know her a little better.

- Carine, you are taking on both the Tea Bags and Tea Label categories on your own as the sole coordinator and editor for both categories. How are you managing that?

This works because I use all my free time to work on both catalogs. I try to add new teabags every day. This is only possible thanks to my contributors who are sending scans. Some of them also send me new teabags, so I can enlarge my own collection, because I don’t have much time to swap. Sometimes I get comments regarding mistakes in the catalog which help me edit the catalog. Therefore I would like to thank all my contributors.

The first one. when I’ve started in 2009, was Els Van Gastel [leeuwin] from the Netherlands. In October 2011 I saw beautiful teabags from Brooke Bond on Facebook from Marjoke. I’ve asked her if I could get the scans for Colnect. She agreed and from then on I’ve gotten a lot of new scans from her for the catalog.

Here you can see a picture of Marjoke and Emilienne, another member on Colnect. It is at an international fair at Rijkevorsel in November 2012, where I advertised Colnect.

Left to right: Emilienne, Carine and Marjoke, collector fair at Rijkevorsel, November 2012

Special thanks to all my contributors, without whom I would never have had 60006 bags in the catalog:
From the Netherlands - Els Van Gastel [leeuwin], Marjoke Rozier [marjatea], Veerle Daams [dragons], Jan De Graaf [Saturn] ,Cees Verbaan [Cornelis], Irene Ramp [teagirl], Christel Aerts [CIEV2004], Hillie Janssen-Kiers [hillie1956]
From Belgium: Geert Vinck [GeertVinck], Nancy Vergauwen [bambi]
From Denmark - Flemming Axelsen [axpro], Inge Nielsen [vinkel]
From Finland: Ljuba Brown [Zamppa]
From Germany: Jacklin
From Latvia: Ivan Dimitrov [ventspils]
From Spain: Manuel Faja I Riera [ttags]
From Indonesia: Dhanya Rahardjo [dhanya]

- What do you think of how the TB catalog and Colnect have changed over the years?
Since the start of the catalog there are some interesting changes. I think the variants are very useful, as well as the link to the corresponding Tea Labels.

In the future I would like to add many new teabags and also spend more time on the tea label catalog which I have started in January 2013.

- What kind of reaction do you get from Tea Bag collectors regarding the catalog?
Some collectors are very grateful and they say “You’re doing a great job”.

- Do you have a favorite teabag?
My favorite teabag is not just a teabag, it’s a puzzle from an English tea shop with 25 small tea boxes. It’s a present from my daughter.

Carine's favourite item on her the Tea Bag collection

We're delighted to have Carine on board the Colnect ship and happy to celebrate with her a double occasion, her recent birthday and her great accomplished creation, the Tea Bags catalog on Colnect. Many Tea Bag collectors around the world now benefit from her generosity with her time and enthusiasm to the collecting of Tea Bags.

Colnect 2013 was Fun - version 2014 is going to be so much more!

They say that the way you start a year, is the way it will be for the rest of it. If that saying has any truth to it, judging by the amount of activity and newly added improvements, it seems Colnect is getting ready for a blast of a year to come :)

Lottery Ticket "Happy New Year!"

So what did we have in this year of 2013?

This year must have gotten some good luck when we celebrated our catalogs reaching 1,111,111 collectibles, which is seven lucky numbers one. Since then almost 300,000 additional items have been published on the catalogs.

This year had many new categories joining, from Lottery Tickets to Medals, from Drink Labels to Video Games, and from a familiar game changing Functional Cards to a the sister catalog to Teabags - Tea Labels.

Drink Label "Kruger Pilsner", from the new catalog

The New Year 2014 is now expected to bring with it New Categories that were waiting in the wings to be launched. We will have the highly anticipated Sports Cards category, and also Paper Clips, Milk Cup Lids, Kids Meal Toys and Music CDs. Many more were already suggested and are sure to join in the upcoming year.

Functional Card "Happy New Year", from the new catalog

There could never be too many helpful features and additions. In everything having to do with collectors and Colnect, the more helpful tools is definitely the merrier. We've just now added some cool helpful hands to the Inventory Notes. That's not the only feature we've added though, we did much more throughout the year. We've opened up the Personal Customs lists to all, so you can put your collection any way you'd like. We parsed the seas and divided the collectibles into Continents. We've made it easy to find items through Face Value. We sped things up with Quick Filter options. We've diversified the catalogs with adding Variant support. We even put a looking glass right into the catalog and added a Zoom into the pictures.

Medal "Royal Military", from the new catalog

Each collectible category is unique and has it's own specific needs. Many categories got tweaked and improved, decorated and streamlined. You can see that on the Postcards category that finally had Theme Collectors give out a sigh of relief, Phonecards that has split in two, following much debate, and Hotel Key Cards that got a cool new Aggregation Feature added to it's catalog.

Our community kept reaching new heights, we have marked the occasion of having 56789 collectors on Colnect, and had the opportunity to thank the 666 contributors on Colnect making it a better place for collectors every day.

Tea Label "1 De Beste", on the new catalog

Finally, December ended on an especially heart warming note, when the wonderful Colnect Coordinators, were able to gift Free Premium Memberships to some 100 happy collectors.

Lottery Ticket "Happy New Year!", from the new catalog

Colnect has been preparing to welcome the New Year in style and festivities. It has been an eventful December, that will undoubtedly lead to an exciting January 2014, full of new features, new categories, more options and more collecting.

Colnect Welcomes the New Tea Labels Category!

We are happy to announce the addition of a new category and catalog to Colnect - Tea Labels

"Pepermunt/Menthe poivrée" - Tea Label from the Netherlands.  From the new Colnect Tea Labels catalog.

The Tea Labels category was initiated and built as sister catalog of the Teabags category by the Teabags coordinator, Carine De Pauw [crookscarine]. The new category will be headed by Carine De Pauw [crookscarine] as well, who will take on this new category, additionally to her responsibilities on the Teabags category.

"Enjoy Me" - UK Tea Label, from the new Colnect Tea Labels catalog. 

The budding catalog now holds 155 labels, but with your help, it can quickly match the size of the Teabags catalog and surpass it. If you are interested in knowing how you can join in and contribute to the new catalog, you are welcome to take a look at our Catalog Contribution Guidelines page.

"Princess" - Lithuanian Tea Lebel, form the new Colnect Tea Labels catalog

The Tea Labels catalog, as mentioned before, was built in relation to the Teabags catalog, and so will include a nifty little feature that will enable collectors to match each Tea Label to it's corresponding Teabag on the Colnect catalog. All you need to do is take a look at the "teabag" field on the item description, and click the corresponding link.

"HAS Qualitee" - German Tea Label, from the  new Colnect Tea Labels catalog

As all Colnect catalogs, the Tea Labels catalog was created at the initiative of collectors, structured and designed as they see fit. You can take a look at the entire building process and discussion on the forum thread. Are you interested in seeing more collectibles on Colnect? Collect Something not yet on on Colnect, and you would like to start anew category? Read more about it on the More Collectibles? page.

"Assam Tea, ˶Każdy krok...˝" - Polish Tea Labels, from the new Colnect Tea Labels catalog

We would like to thank all who helped and participated in the build of this category and wish the best of luck to this new catalog, and its coordinator, Carine De Pauw [crookscarine] :)