A brief history of mensma's collection

[mensma]

@Inkkoonce collection thread made me thinking, it's a nice document of how his collection evolved. So I immediately dived into iCloud and found map with the name Oakley, I had no idea I made pictures of all my Oakleys and there were quite a few surprises. So lets start at the beginning.

Once I was fat. So I decided I wanted to lose weight and bought a road bike. I got hooked so upgraded the bike like crazy. When doing that you also have to look good yourself on the bike, so I also bought an expensive kit and asked my parents for an Oakley on my birthday. This must have been 2007. It was a Pearl White M Frame with Ice iridium lens. I was very happy with that one (I'll come back later on this one, because later I sold it, stupid).

 

[mensma]

It became very clear to me I liked this brand. So two weeks later I also bought another model, the Radar Polished white with OO Red Iridium Polarized lenses. It was clear to me this one fitted my big head much better than the M Frame. So I had a new favourite, although the great form factor of the M Frame still made me love that one too.

 

[mensma]

From then I knew I wanted more. On a local marketplace I found someone who offered two Pro M Frames, a black and a white one, so bought those: not sure about the lenses, one looks like Blue Iridium in the black one, no idea about the other one:

That made this the total

I love making pictures of them, these turned out okay:

I also bought a cap over about this time I guess

 

[mensma]

Then I probably thought it was time for some extra Radars. Somehow I don't remember buying the black one. That prabably was because I wanted the Black Iridium Polarized lens in the White Chrome Radar. They weren't with delivered like this with this lenses, so I must have changed them immediately, there's no pictures of how they originally were. I really liked the Chrome Radar but I rember when changing the lenses the paint cracked very easily. I sold both later on.

 

[mensma]

From then there's some holes in in iCloud, probably I bought lots of stuff in the next year. But I got them all on picture at least.

Radar Pith Retina Burn with Fire Iridium

Also changed the lenses here to Black Iridium Polarized path (still my favourites):

The White Chrome Radar didn't look bad with the Fire lenses, pity is was a Pitch.

Also see the paint chipping off already:

The Radar Atomic Orange Path with fire iridium lenses (sold it later, looking for one now)

 

[mensma]

And then I became lazy making pictures. I at least can see I bought these in the meantime, only made one picture per glass:
Green M Frame with vented Fire sweep lens

Radar Polished White text with G40 Photochromic

High intensity Yellew lens for in the white Pro M Frame

As you can see this also meant my first display stands and an Ikea display case:

And a nice overall picture, I probably already sold the Black Pro M Frame

 

[mensma]

From then on I lost interest a bit. There was limited space in the Ikea case and I mainly wore the Radars, so also sold the Chrome Radar, white Pro M Frame and the Green M Frame. After that there's a huge gap, these glasses were okay for me so didn't buy anything for years. Then I got divorced, got together with a new girlfriend and moved from the north of The Netherlands to the middle, about 150km to the south. For a Dutchman this is very far .

In this part of the country there are some awesome mountainbike trails, so besides a road bike I bought a mountainbike. Two years after I bought the mountainbike I had an accident. I was unconcious on the mountainbike trail for half an hour and another mountainbiker found me. I had a severe brain concussion, that wasn't a nice time. No tv, no reading, no walking or sports. Just wait until it gets better and listening to podcasts on the couch with our cats.

Funny thing is that triggered some things (this was november/december 2021)
1. I got a birthday present from my new girlfriend, a Custom Van Gorp Optics Jawbreaker Graffiti with Prizm Road lens.

2. I liked this one so much, I started selling my other Oakley's: first was my first M-frame, still regret that and second the Atomic Orange Radar, still regret that too. Even more since it got lost in the mail...

Somewhere in between of buying all of these sports sunglasses (and wearing those casual too) I bought some lifestyle glasses. A Jury, Sliver and Mainlink. They have been worn a lot, especially the Mainlink, which is always in my car

 

[mensma]

That Mainlink started the whole ****show of my current collection. Looking back it's just insane how the collection grew from january 2022 to january 2023.

Thanks to me letting the Mainlink in the car all the time the rubbers became bad.

Because these are my favourite driving glasses I decided to find another Matte Black Mainlink with Prizm Black Polarized lenses, there was also a small damage on the lens, so I didn't only wanted to replace the rubbers.

On a local marketplace I found a guy who had one for sale, new and for a decent price. I still had my brain concussion but I needed to get back in the car to try how that worked out, getting the Mainlink looked like a nice occasion to try this.

So I picked up the Mainlink and was happy. I bought it from a very nice guy, really down to earth. He told me he once worked at Oakley but got fired because Luxottica closed the offices in the Netherlands and did everything from Italy from then.

 

[mensma]

That got me thinking. If he had this Mainlink for sale, maybe he had more Oakleys for a nice price for sale. As an employee you get a nice discount, so if he has more and wants to get rid of all his glasses we have to talk again.

So I messaged him if he had more glasses for sale and he had. So I want back and bought more, and then again went back and bought more, and again and again until I went back so many times I needed to buy my first display case. That's because I bought a lot (how I miss O-Review now that they're offline!):

1. Mainlink Matte black with Prizm Black Iridium Polarized
2. Mainlink Corten with Torch Iridium
3. Holbrook Matte white with Violet Iridium
4. Holbrook Metal Gold with Grey
5. Chainlink polished black with Ruby
6. Sliver Fold Matte Grey Ink with Black Iridium
7. Trillbe Steel with Jade Iridium
8. Radarlock Matte white with Violet Iridium
9. Radar EV Steel with Jade Iridium
10. Radar Ev Silver with Prizm Daily Polarized
11. Jupiter Squared Carbon with Positive red Iridium Polarized
12. Endure Pace Cinder Red with VR 28 Black Iridium
13. Kickback Tourmaline VR50 Brown Gradient

 

[mensma]

From then I was infected and bought a lot more. I also luckily decided not to sell the other glasses I already had, otherwise I would have much more regrets. In no time my case got really full. I need O-Review to list them all (because I very fast knew I didn't like the wire frames, they are all sold again by now). So I'll add that list at a later time when O-Review is back online again.

In no time my display case looked like this, added some displays (which would become another Oakley Addiction) and more glasses :