Whilst walking along Oxford Road in Manchester, England, I picked up a penny as I always do. This time, though, I thought about the coin for quite some time; I decided it was time to somehow log my findings. The things that people drop or throw away began to fascinate me and, the more I collected, the more interesting it became. Some people would call these 'found objects', but I consider them to be lost objects:things that have a value to someone, and are therefore precious.

As I collected my items, I would put them in a zip-lock bag and label this with the name of the object, the date it was found, the time it was found and where it was found. I was quite strict about my collecting:the items had to picked up by me and, if someone gave me something they had found, I would keep that for myself and not the collection. Items had to fit into my zip-lock bags, this was really for convenience, because it could get out of hand if I started picking up bicycles, for example.

It became apparent to me as my collection grew, that this acted as a kind of map of where I had been, evidence that I was in a certain place at a certain time. So, these objects were not only the traces of someone who had been there before me, but also traces of where I had been.

When I came back from my holiday in North America I stopped collecting rubbish. There was no specific reason for this, and I didn't choose a special day; I just stopped. Now I feel I should share my collection with the rest of the world and, hopefully, trace some of those people who have been careless enough to lose such lovely items.

Recently, I have felt the urge to pick things up again, and I have noticed that there a lot of playing cards around, so I am going to start a collection of playing cards. I hope you will find something here that interests you, and look forward to reading your response.

Adele Prince, 1999.