Your "first" drawer of lepidoptera

[Crake]

Hi all.

I've loved insects my whole life, but the past year was the first that I fully dedicated myself to collecting, which I greatly enjoyed. Here's the first drawer I filled with self-collected specimens: (save for the hermeli and thaidina)



It's nothing fancy (and pretty disorganized), but I'm very proud of it. Considering the impressive sizes of the many collections on this forum, it would be interesting to see how they started out. If anyone would like to share some of their earliest "formative" drawers, please do so!

[trehopr1]

That is indeed a fine and grand beginning !

[exoticimports]

Looks like you covered some ground.

My early collection was in riker mounts, then fit into six Cornell drawers. That was a long time ago.

Chuck

[trehopr1]

The picture below features (some) of my personally
collected insects from my high school years (1974-1978).
I have another (1/2) drawer of overflow and around 15
lepidoptera which are now in unit trays (hence, some of
the empty space in this one).

I regard these as my vintage/sentimental specimens. They
are what I have left from my youthful years. Just a very
few feature dates just after high school.

I did have a fair few others from my elementary school years;
specifically grades 3 thru 8. However, these were eventually
ALL replaced as my preparation skills became more refined and
I was able to get better examples. Some of coarse were replaced
for lack of data....





These specimens (as well as the leps + overflow items)
always re-kindle warm memories of summers afield and
all the associated memories of their capture. I still recall
how and where I collected virtually every one of them !

[eleodes]

Though not standard drawer size (it's 18" x 24"), and from relatively recently (2020). I think this might be the first picture I have of a box of my lepidoptera (this is definitely not near all of the specimens I had at the time. Just a sampling)
www.flickr.com/photos/194256110@N07/51843118629/in/dateposted-public/