Mundy acquired two bags from a source in Nepal and offered one of them up for trade. An eager collector from Alaska quickly snapped up the prized bag. The bag is just one in a line of air sickness bags that are actively discussed and traded among this group of collectors. Every day it’s a new battle for a prized bag or a new bit of information about this unique hobby.

Air sickness bags, barf bags, sick sacks—all names for what Mundy and fellow baggists eagerly covet. While most collectors focus on increasing their collections through auctions, rummage sales, antique shops and thrift stores, Mundy and his fellow baggists use a more personal method—relying on each other.

Mundy, along with fellow Massachussets baggist Steve Silberberg, started the Barfbag E-group as a way to talk with other collectors who shared their passion for air sickness bags. The e-group operates much like an e-mail listserv, where people post messages that are sent to everyone on the list. A collector in Germany can discuss his latest find with collectors from the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and around the globe. On any given day, members of this e-group offer up questions about their unusual hobby, lists of bags they’re willing to trade, stories about finds during their latest “bag trips” or general information about the odd world of air sickness bag collecting.

The success of the Barfbag E-group lies in the members themselves and the unique hobby that brought them together. The group is unlike any other. There are no meetings or gatherings. There are no faces to attach to the names. It's simply a group of people bound together by their odd obsession with those little bag founds in the seat pockets of airlines around the world.

Of course, interest in air sickness bag collecting has to start somewhere. Mundy attributes the start of his obsession to his son, who would vomit all over Mundy’s father-in-law’s car. Mundy and his wife began purchasing motion sickness bags for the child. Once his son stopped throwing up in moving vehicles, Mundy’s wife wanted to throw away the unused bags.

"I realized there was a whole world of baggery out there,” Mundy said. “I got in touch with the other collectors by e-mail and started to trade with them.”

As of April 15, 2005, Mundy has collected 1,919 bags from 561 different airlines. He started collecting in 1998, with the five bags left over from his son’s motion sickness. From there, Mundy picked up bags on business trips. As a consultant in communication for developing countries, Mundy frequently flies around the world. Along the way, he increases his collection by nabbing bags from airline seat pockets.

"I try not to draw attention to myself,” Mundy said. “I try to get a window seat so I can remove bags from the whole row when I leave the plane. I also check the toilet, where there’s often a stash. If I can’t find any bags, I will just ask the cabin crew.”

Sometimes Mundy takes advantage of tourists to help increase his collection. While on a Buddha Air flight to Kathmandu to see Mt. Everest, Mundy gathered six bags from a 19-seater plane, while tourists were looking at the Himalayas.

"While the other passengers were gawking at the Himalayas, I was rifling seat pockets,” Mundy admits.

For some collectors, reliance on friends and family to purloin bags is necessary to find rare bags. As a collector’s “web” of accomplices grows, so do their collections. One collector in the e-group received one of his favorite bags, from Air Afrique, from a friend of his mother’s who nabbed the bag while on a flight. Several other collectors mix business with pleasure as they gather air sickness bags while on business trips. One collector writes in a March 2005 e-group message, “I’ve long worked in jobs that involve meeting lots of people from other countries, and once I get to know them well enough, I introduce them to my unusual hobby. Most are keen to oblige and will often keep in touch by sending me sick bags long after we’ve both moved on to new jobs.”

While Mundy’s job takes him to the far reaches of the world, fellow baggist and e-group member Bruce Kelly goes on “bag trips” simply for the joy of traveling and seeing more obscure areas of the world.

“Travel has never been work-related,” said the Anchorage, Alaska, collector. “It’s all personal-travel related and uses up an alarming portion of my disposable income.”

All the traveling has been worth it, as Kelly has amassed 3,300 different bags from 865 different airlines. The Alaska native has traveled to more than 100 different countries. During his trips, he’s been known to “vacuum” the plane of all its bags on his way out.

"One could say I’ve progressed to the obsessive stage of the hobby,” Kelly said. “Mere gathering from flight is not enough.”

The tactic enables Kelly to build up a trade stock that he uses to swap with other collectors on the e-group. Kelly even acquired two of his favorite bags from swapping with other collectors—an El Al air sickness bag and a British Overseas Airways bag, both from the 1950s.

Yet for Kelly, his obsession is all part of an effort to record history. “It is, after all, airline history, and someone has to preserve this valuable bit of history before it is lost forever,” Kelly said.

Several air sickness bag collectors have taken their roles as historians to heart. In addition to monitoring the Barfbags E-group, Mundy runs the Web site www.bagophily.com. The site features news about collecting, a swap list of extra bags for trading, information about airlines and bag designs and a catalogue of Mundy’s bag collection, complete with scanned pictures of several bags. The site opens up with a welcome message from Mundy—“This is what my wife calls ‘a bunch of stupid jokes and pictures of paper bags.’ She’s right about the jokes. She’s wrong about the bags—some of them are plastic.”

"I wanted to learn how to build a Web site and was looking around for a topic to practice with,” Mundy adds.

On one page of the site, Mundy details some of his more unique bags, including the largest, smallest, ugliest and most interesting bags in his collection. Air sickness bags range from the National Airlines bag, which is 25 by 38.5 centimeters, to the Riau Airlines bag, which holds just over 1.2 liters when filled to the brim—half as much as the average air sickness bag. His greatest find was a China Eastern Airlines bag with the word water-proofed spelled “water-prooed.” Another of Mundy’s favorite bags is the Finnaviation bag, which features a reindeer throwing up ice cubes.

Aside from detailing his own collection on the site, Mundy offers new bag collectors tips for starting their own collections. He even sends new collectors “starter kits” consisting of spare bags.

“It helps new collectors get started and gets rid of excess inventory,” Mundy said. “Some collectors have thousands of spares they can’t get rid of. Why don’t they give them away to someone who would appreciate them?”

Silberberg shares Mundy’s thoughts on helping new collectors. Silberberg began collecting in 1981 during a flight from Boston to San Francisco.

"It was a sci-fi moment when I looked in the seat back and the light shone out from the bag, illuminating the cabin,” Silberberg joked. “I can’t for the life of me figure out what sparks anyone’s interest in collecting, say thimbles or stamps. At least with barf bags, there’s a little bit of novelty involved.”

On his Web site, www.airsicknessbags.com, Silberberg offers people the opportunity to become “Patrons of Puke” by contributing to his collection. The site also details Silberberg’s collection of 1,600 bags. Yet, where as most baggists collect transportation-related bags, Silberberg specializes in movie memorabilia bags, political statement bags and other non-transportation bags. His collection includes bags featuring Newt Gingrich, Michael Dukakis and George W. Bush, as well as a rare bag from a space shuttle. However, he received one of his favorite bags from another collector. He sent an item to a Statue of Liberty collector he met over the Internet. The collector then sent him a Ralph Beer bag that she found lying on the ground while walking.

Luckily, the hobby remains relatively cheap. Most collectors can accumulate thousands of bags without spending a penny. Mundy has even received packages of bags from people he’s never talked with or met.

"They have found a stash of bags in their garage or they used to collect bags but have tired of them,” Mundy said. “Such collections often have older bags that are hard to find. They are a welcomed addition to my collection.”

Mundy makes a point of never buying or selling bags for his collections. However, when Virgin Atlantic’s limited edition air sickness bags were taken out of circulation, Mundy wrote to the e-group with a confession: he had succumbed and bought the coveted Virgin Atlantic set on eBay.

"The Virgin bags are pretty,” Mundy admits. “They weren’t being swapped at all, so I just couldn’t resist.”

Silberberg has found himself in similar circumstances. While he hates to buy bags, at some point he just can’t find any other way to acquire rare bags.

"How else are you going to find a 30-year-old bag?” Silberberg writes. “You can’t just go into the attics of old people hoping they took one home as a souvenir of their trip to Tahiti in 1968.”

Some collectors even go so far as to buy entire collections from people who no longer wish to collect. Collector Niek Vermeulen began collecting air sickness bags in 1979. At 68, the Netherlands native currently holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the most air sickness bags—3,728 different bags from 805 different companies. However, due to his declining health, Vermeaulen is looking to find a collector to take over his massive collection.

"It is wise that the collection get a roof for the future,” Vermeulen said. “Museums are in line for this collection as a give-away, but I am convinced that the buyer is born and will show up one day.”

With time and money invested into collections, most baggists cherish their collections with great enthusiasm. Therefore, when something happens to baggists, like most collectors, they can become discouraged and disgruntled. In a message to the e-group in April 2005, Silberberg stated that he felt like giving up collecting after nearly 150 bags weren’t returned from an exhibit in New York City. Silberberg sent his entire collection of 1,600 bags to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the Terminal 5 exhibit in the John F. Kennedy International Airport. When the collection was shipped back to Silberberg, he was missing three binders, including every bag from airlines starting with the letters U, J and A-Ah.

"In a lifetime of failures, barf bag collecting is the one thing I’m actually reasonably accomplished in,” Silberberg writes in an e-group message. “Now it’s gone. How am I going to replace 150 bags, some extremely rare?”

Yet even with his loss, Silberberg looks to the future. Part of his optimism comes from other members of the group. When e-group members heard about Silberberg’s loss they immediately sent messages of encouragement and offered to help replace the lost bags. One member even offered up a story about a shipment of 60 bags, sent from Canada to Namibia, that never arrived, in hopes that the tale would lift Silberberg’s spirits. The shipment included historic bags from Russia during the 1960s and 1970s.

It’s the camaraderie among members of this group, most of whom have never met, that makes collecting this unusual item interesting and fun. The group functions not as acquaintances or competitors looking for the next great deal, but as friends and family, offering help and suggestions to new collectors. Like the planes that these collectors loot, e-groups such as the Barfbag group give people the opportunity to connect in ways never before possible, allowing collectors to find others who are just as unique and absurd as the items they collect.