Bambang Setiawan: Cigarette collector from Yogyakarta

By Bambang M.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Collecting antiques is no big deal. Millions of people all over the world do it. But collecting cigarettes?

Bambang Setiawan, a teacher at Yogyakarta Art Teachers Training Center, is probably the only one in Indonesia to have become a cigarette collector.

No less than 4,000 packs of cigarettes are in his collection which he displays at his office in Ngaglik, Sleman, some 10 kilometers north of here.

"Every pack on display has cigarettes in them," said Bambang, who does not smoke. He used to be a smoker but managed to kick the habit years ago.

Bambang, whose nickname is Orek, collects both local and imported cigarettes. On display are various foreign brand names like Marlboro, West, More, Cartier, Horizon and JPS; and local brand names like Gudang Garam, Kansas and Sampoerna Mild.

He also stocks up local brand names which are known only in limited localities that people have never heard of, such as Layar Tancap, Odjolali and Grendel.

The prices range from Rp 200 per pack to Rp 250,000 per pack when they were bought.

All the cigarettes are kept neatly in the cupboard. Local brandnames are separated from the foreign ones. He also has a different section for Indonesian cigarettes whose packaging have been copied by other companies.

"No foreign cigarette's packaging have been found copied," said Bambang, a 1982 graduate of the Advertisement Department of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) of Yogyakarta.

To make his cigarette collection complete, Bambang also collects anything which is directly or indirectly connected to cigarettes, like matches, leaflets, cigarette cans. He even has a small cigarette showcase.

"I will do anything to get something which has a connection to cigarettes," he said.

Bambang recalled how he tried hard to get the small showcase issued by Sampoerna Mild. Although he knew it was not for sale, Bambang asked the owner, a cigarette seller on the street, to sell the cupboard to him.

"I got it for Rp 250,000," said Bambang, who is also a photographer.

Attracted to cigarettes' different packets, he started collecting cigarettes in late 1996. "Actually they (the designs on the packets) correspond with the advertising designs I studied before," said Bambang.

Since then, he was ready to do anything to add to his collection and was not even reluctant to go to remote areas just to get one. Once, he got on his motorcycle to go to his hometown in Surabaya from Yogyakarta. The trip, which only needs about five hours of ride, took him 15 hours instead because he stopped at a number of villages along the way just to hunt for village- made cigarettes.

If he sees cigarettes that are not yet in his collection, he goes nuts and will do anything to get it.

Once, he found some foreign cigarettes in a market in Semarang and wanted to buy them all. Unfortunately, he did not bring enough money to do so. He somehow persuaded the trader to keep the merchandise until he got back to buy them all. He was lucky because the trader agreed to do so. In no time, he went back to Yogyakarta to collect the money and returned to Semarang to buy them.

On a different occasion, Bambang found a foreign cigarette, JPS, one of his favorites, in a shop in Yogyakarta. He wanted to buy the whole box of 10 packs but did not have enough money.

"So I pawned my watch with a friend and got the money to buy them," Bambang recalled.

Whenever the father of two goes abroad, he never forgets to buy cigarettes from countries he visits. He also asks for cigarettes as souvenirs from his friends who travel abroad.

His collection was also useful when he taught art teachers. "Sometimes, when I teach art teachers, I bring my collection to class to show how they are carefully designed," said Bambang who now has more than 4,000 packs of cigarettes and plans to display them to the public when their number reaches 5,000.

The character of a particular country, he said, was also reflected through its cigarettes. France, for example, which is known as the center for art and fashion, has artistic and beautiful designs for their cigarette packets.

Most of all, the man considers his collection as a means to entertain himself.

"This collection is my first wife," said Bambang, who also collects old cameras, hotel soaps, phonograph records and places his collections in his office to avoid intrusion from his wife and daughter.

"Sometimes I just watch my collection in the night."