If you’ve ever ordered a coffee in Switzerland, the chances are you got a little creamer on the side. Did you carefully pocket the colourful foil top, the Kaffeerahmdeckeli? Probably not. For many Swiss, however, collecting these is almost an addiction – at least it used to be. “The collectors of coffee creamer lids were a real nuisance. In cafés there were people who went from table to table begging guests for their lids, or they scavenged deserted but not-yet-cleared tables for them. I eventually started punching a hole in the torn‑off lid after emptying the cream…” One person’s passion is another person’s peeve, as that reader reaction to an article in the Tages-Anzeiger from 2022 shows. While many people still buy or exchange lids, the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s are certainly over. But at its peak, Switzerland was the global hub of a very curious hobby. “Nowhere else was the collection of these small aluminium and plastic foils as excessive as in this country,” said the …