Titanic’s memories stay afloat in this extensive collection
9/4/2024
Even though the Titanic sank more than a century ago, it still has fans who ride its waves with adoration. Conventions and fan clubs are aplenty across the globe and keep its memory alive through memorabilia. Few have collected more items related to the Titanic than Lexie Faust.
Faust’s fascination for the ship and its story started during childhood when looking at an edition of National Geographic.
“I didn’t know how to read yet, so I was just kind of looking through it. And then when it got to the Titanic, I just could not keep my eyes off those underwater pictures. And then we went to another story, and I kept flipping it back,” Faust said.
Faust would go on to do a book report on the shipwreck in school, eventually forgetting about her appreciation for the famed ship until James Cameron’s film “Titanic” made the subject a worldwide phenomenon.
Faust says her collection officially started with a book about the film after seeing it in theaters. Faust has seen the movie seven times.
“It was just everything about the movie that I liked, all the details, how they recreated it all, the sinking and everything,” Faust said.
Her collection began to grow in the years following.
“Every time I would go to a store like Hallmark, I would say, ‘Where’s the Titanic?’ It’s a great movie, so, why not? That’s when I started getting on eBay and Amazon, and that’s where I found pieces,” Faust said.
She has been able to find a number of the pieces of her collection online but has also found some, like a cookie jar, at the Brass Armadillo and other antique shops around the country.
It’s difficult for Faust to pinpoint exactly how many items she has in her collection since many of them are trinkets she picked up during her travels. She knows her collection of books on the subject adds up to more than 300, and she keeps a photo album of all the pieces to be sure she doesn’t pick up any duplicates.
Her favorite pieces in her collection are the cookie jar, telegraph meter and her deck chair, which is placed in the center of her collection room. The rarest piece is a White Star Line trunk from the shipping and transport company that built the Titanic. Faust found the trunk with the help of her dad.
Before entering the room housing Faust’s collection, she makes you stop for a moment. Fans of Star Wars, SpongeBob, Harry Potter, the Wizard of Oz or dogs are not permitted to enter.
“I don’t understand why people are so obsessed with them. It’s disgusting, and everybody else finds it wonderful,” Faust said. “Whenever I go to a store, that’s all I see. I look around, and just kind of go, no Titanic, no Titanic. And the same with going to Hallmark. I even wrote to them, and I said, ‘Why do you have something against the ship? Why can’t you do this with the ship?’ ”
Attempting to collect unique Titanic items can be frustrating for Faust as novelty pieces are normally dominated by the aforementioned pop culture powerhouses, often with Christmas themes.
“You see the same three things all the time: Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, Star Wars. They have nothing to do with Christmas,” Faust said.
“Yet you always see things made out of TV sitcoms and Santa Claus wearing a Darth Vader helmet,” she said. “If the Titanic has nothing to do with Christmas, why can’t you sell it here?” ♦
