Air Sickness Bags

Bags have been carried aboard airplanes in case of motion sickness since the dawn of flight, though the modern bag wasn't commercially patented until Gilmore Schjeldahl did it in 1949. Airlines soon began personalizing them with their logos, which eventually led to more playful and even alluring designs. Many collectors don't stop at airlines, either. They collect bags from ships, trains, vehicles, movies, and even political candidates.

Why collect them? Because they're absurd. But there's nothing inherently dumber about collecting air sickness bags than collecting, say, Hummels. And since the bags are free (with the cost of a flight), they're an easy commodity to obtain.

Collections are sorted alphabetically by airline, nearly universally judging by collectors' websites, but the granularity varies from collector to collector. If an airline prints its logo on the front of a bag, and a later run adds the logo to the back, is that a different bag? Some say yes, some say no. Same debate over a serrated bag opening versus a straight cut.

Getting started costs nothing. Established collectors are happy to send an aspiring collector a couple dozen bags as a free starter kit, drawn from the duplicates that pile up when some guy (almost always a guy) unloads 150 bags from his attic from his business-travel days.

As for grails: anything older than about 1970 is extremely rare and sought after. Political stunt bags are prized too. The ones printed during the 2003 Gray Davis/Arnold Schwarzenegger governor race are exceedingly rare, as is a Jim Jeffords barf bag. And at least one collector holds a Space Shuttle bag, the grail.

Some collectors call themselves Bagologists, Bagophilists, or Nausicologists. Most just say "air sickness bag collector," because otherwise nobody would know what the hell they were talking about.