So maybe I’m weird, but I kind of like having a phone collection. I had some of the old phones. I had started out with, I think, the bulk of a Nokia 6110i. I mean, sure it was the size of my entire face, and I had to carry it in my backpack, but I had a cell phone! I was AWESOME! What was awesomer was when I got a vibrating battery for it, so I could leave it on silent. I moved up to the 8210 and then down to the 3360, and then got my first colour-screen cell phone. It was a Motorola. I quickly returned it and switched it for a Panasonic cell phone.

It was the GD87 and it was my favorite phone up to that point. Polyphonic ringtones, a built-in digital camera; it was state of the art. I kept that for a few years until my bro turned me on to Sony Ericsson and unlocked phones.

Since then, I always tried to get unlocked phones. It was cooler. I could switch, if I so desired, from AT&T Wireless to Cingular or Sprint. Or Nextel if I wanted. That was the flexibility of them. I went through the Sony Ericsson T600 and then the K700i — my brother and I both purchased the same phone on the same day cuz I’m lame — and then found smartphones.

I had a Palm Treo, I now have a T-Mobile Dash. Before that I had a BlackBerry 8100. I forget what other phones I had in between, but there couldn’t be that many.

Today in the mail I got a Sidekick ID from Mark at Buzznet, which made me realize that over half of my old cell phone collection is somehow gone. From the big, bulky, black Nokia to the tiny red-and-black 8210, gone. The 3360 I found in a drawer a couple months ago, and it still had the Lilo & Stich stickers.

The Panasonic phone I gave to my brother’s ex-girlfriend, because she needed a new phone and I had just gotten a Sony Ericsson. In between the Treo 600 and the BlackBerry Pearl I had a Motorola SLVR, which I gave to my dad. He dropped it, cracking the screen two days later.

Keeping those phones would have been (a) great nostalgia, (b) reminders of the past, (c) a testament of the evolution of mobile communication, (d) an awesome way to take up space. Except all I can account for are the Nokia 3360, Palm Treo 600, the BlackBerry, my current phone, the T-Mobile Dash. And this new Sidekick.

But when you think about it, how much of nostalgia are good memories? Sometimes not that many, so maybe sometimes it’d better to let the past be the past and not cling to it so tenaciously.