AUBURN – Nate LeClair started collecting nutcrackers at age 6 after the Christmas elf – that’s his dad, Norm – surprised him with one in a stocking.

He loved it so much that the Christmas elf brought more the next year. Then more.

The 10-year-old has 80 nutcrackers.

His favorite has a squiggly nose and a handsome ax. The boy-sized figure, dotted with rhinestones, was a gift this year. Norm found it during a business trip to New Hampshire.

“It was so big it couldn’t fit in the trunk so he had to buckle it in the back seat,” said Nate.

One nutcracker looks like a penguin, one like a snowman and a few like Santa. Most are variations on the central fellow in the ballet “The Nutcracker,” with crowns, white beards and glossy red, blue and gold. Some are golfers, fishermen and firefighters.

Only one nutcracker has ears – he’s wearing a furry Russian cap – and one has red hair.

Starting with that very first nutcracker, “I thought it was very cool that they could move their mouths,” Nate said.

He used one of his figures to chop into a nut once.

The walnut shell cracked slightly, paint chipped on the toy and he decided, never again.

Nutcrackers originated in Europe, in Germany, and the story goes that they bring good fortune and protection from evil, Nate said.

“They said they had mystical powers. I don’t think that’s true, though,” he said.

The collection spends January to mid-November in storage, each figure wrapped in lots of tissue paper. He had one break – it lost a foot, spear and crown – when a heavier nutcracker crushed it.

“We sent him to the mom hospital,” Nate said. Charlene, his mother, glued it up, but it isn’t quite the same.

His collection got the prime decoration spot in the house this holiday for the first time. Charlene offered to give up the mantel and piano top in the living room, where she usually puts her collection of Christmas carolers. It was an easy offer, she said, seeing how much his nutcracker collection has grown and how much he enjoys showing it off.

Nate, a fifth-grader at Fairview Elementary School, had a small part as a mouse in a production of “The Nutcracker” at school last year.

“That got me into it even more,” he said. “I’d like to have as much as possible, and get more and more each year.”