The 75-year-old music icon opened up to Vernon Kay on BBC Radio 2's Tracks of My Years, explaining that he had not visited the United States for years due to health issues.
"I just came back from New York but I haven't been travelling that much. I've been to Austria to see my son, Matt, play football, but I haven't been to the States for years because of sickness and hospital," he admitted.
Collins owns an apartment in New York that he purchased in 2006. He said he finally felt up to returning recently and recalled buying the property around the time of his musical Tarzan. The star won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for writing and performing "You'll Be In My Heart" for the 1999 Disney musical.
"I went back just literally last week and when I first bought this apartment, it was around just after the musical Tarzan," he said.
Returning to collect his awards
Despite shipping all his awards and possessions to New York, Collins confessed he had been unable to visit until now.
"I figured...they're going to be calling me for another musical...but they didn't and nevertheless at the time I shipped all my stuff over, I mean all the awards and things like that because I didn't have anywhere else [to put them]...." he revealed.
On his recent trip, he brought back some of the trophies. "I brought a couple of things back with me [on this trip], a couple of Golden Globes and the Oscar and one of the Grammys and just took them in my suitcase," he said.
He added: "...Just a couple of them. I mean, I don't see them because they're in New York and I thought, well, I might as well take [them] over..."
Reflecting on the accolades, Collins said: "I don't drool over them. It's nice to look at them and think oh that's what your life is."
Health battles in recent years
The retired star has faced numerous health setbacks. In May this year, he told BBC Breakfast: "The last 18 months have been fine, but before that, not so good. Everything health-wise caught up to me at the same time. Whatever could go wrong did go wrong, but everything is fine now."
He also discussed a long-standing knee problem. "I had a problem with my knee, which I had for a while, but I played through it - toured through it. But eventually, I had to have a knee operation, and I had to have five - five times because it kept either getting infected or it broke, so I was inactive for a long time."
Radio show schedule
Phil Collins' appearance on Tracks of My Years airs on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds from Monday 3rd to Friday 7th August (9.30am - noon). He will choose ten songs that have soundtracked his life as he reflects on his career and life.
