My wife never understood collecting. I have collected such things as post cards with municipal coats of arms on them, transit passes and tickets, US Army insignia, casino door keys, tickets from motor sport events, plus some weirder things. I accused her of hypocrisy as she, too, was a collector. What do I collect? she indignantly asked. You collect collectors, I said, and you have one; me, and that is all you need. Awww, she replied. Cute. Corny, but cute.
Well, yeah - if someone’s entire collection is large, random and valueless, e.g., “I just love Elephants/Angels/Spoons of all types” then that’s going to be a burden and can come across as borderline hoarding.
Collecting is on a spectrum, just like pretty much any behavior. Sorry your loved ones were at one end of it…
But as Garth Brooks might say, they could have missed the pain, but they’d have had to miss the dance.
My wife can sell my books if she wishes to - there are dealers out there specializing in sf who would probably buy the whole collection. If not, my will says to donate it to the MIT SF Society Library I was Librarian there for 2.5 years so it might be revenge. 
There was a need when I was there for reading copies of magazines etc.
But it is good for a collector to identify either a dealer who can handle the collection or a place that could take it.
I’m a collector. It’s a hobby that takes the dullness out of a rainy day and also provides me with something to research and occupy my mind. Plus it can be very profitable.
My parents are not collectors and as they get older I can see the boredom set in on them. It’s well known that having something to keep your mind busy can help you live longer; I wish my mom would find something to occupy her mind; she never gets to think.
Maloney’s Directory is THE ne plus ultra in finding such a dealer:
http://www.maloneysdirectory.com/ Your public library probably has a copy.
I “collect” three things. Xerophyllic plants (cacti and succulents mostly), pocketknives, and watches (pocket and wrist)
The plants are tied in to my long professional like, and currently are great matches for where I live in the desert. In particular, I specialize in a few genera that are inherently interesting to me, but are of note to like-minded individuals, many of whom are personal friends. I do search out rare species, and then propagate and distribute them (free) to like minded folks. My wife knows how to dispose of my collection when I am no longer able to care for them, and there is a ready market for them. I’ve been involved with this sort of plant since childhood over 50 years ago.
My second love is for pocketknives. This interest started as a young lad when Santa gave me a Schrade 2 3/4 inch stockman. Over the many years I’ve accumulated many knives which cover a huge range from common to works of art. My younger son will inherit my collection of 150+ knives, arranged in their display containers.
The third interest is timepieces. My older son and I share this interest. My pocket watches represent a wonderful time when the USA made the very best watches, and they are works of art and technical workmanship. My collection of wrist watches range from ordinary to rate, but each item represents an apex of development for its particular style or function. Example: my Casio watch that shows the solar system and position of all planets and Haley’s comet on any given day that you choose.
My collections might be an example of OCD behavior, but the reward that I’ve enjoyed over the years are great. Learning everything that I can about a particular genus of plants, or researching the development of a watch movement and understanding its production in respect to what was going on technologically/industrially, or just the smooth feel of an old pocketknife in my hands that brings up old memories of a wonderfully rich childhood are pleasures of the heart, even if my mind demands the collecting.
I guess I have a bit of a coin collection. I don’t generally care what condition they’re in; I just like to see what different countries have stamped on bits of metal. I don’t know why they’re better to me than just pictures of coins if they have no real value, but it has something to do with the physical object. Kind of how I use an ereader but if I really care about a book I’ll get a nice copy of it.
In one of the odder turns of my career, I’ve become the photographer for an estate sale company. Pretty much every estate has at least one “collectable”. The most memorable was a collection of more than 900 Beanie Babies, all with tags still attached.
If you want to put a Randian perspective to it, one acquires to feed one’s ego above all. But the measure of one’s wealth is not the ability to accumulate but rather the ability to select.
Cool. I collected pocket knives and watches with my dad - at one point, he had a great array of Remington, Winchester, Russell, Case and other knives. His watches were cool old pocket watches - railroad watches, Navy hack watches. I have an inexpensive WW1-era German pocket watch I keep to remember our mornings scouting collector’s fairs and flea markets.
As noted - the social interaction with others who share your interest is a big part of collecting. Sharing that with my dad is a nice part of our relationship. My son has been playing guitar a lot lately - the thought of him ending up with my old guitars is nice.
the_diego - yeah, that’s interesting. I had definitely thought of the phrase “show me a person’s books and I will show you the person” back when I was building my collection.
I don’t know how much weight to put on the considerations of one’s heirs. Whether it’s a collection or just a lifetime’s worth of stuff, everyone leaves behind possessions that their family is going to have to deal with. I only have one parrot, not a collection of them, but he’s still a pain in the ass that they’ll have to deal with. Obviously, it’s a kindness not to leave behind a mess, but again that’s true whether or not one is a collector.
I’m not a collector, but I think I have a decent handle on it, considering that my brother and several friends have been serious collectors of various things.
For the “sane” collectors, the idea is that the hunt and community aspects are the best part, and that having rare and valuable things in the collection gives you some bragging rights / cred in the community, as well as some currency in case something you want more comes up, and in rare cases, you may have something you can actually trade for money. Some “sane” collectors also just gather items of a certain type because they find them really aesthetically pleasing, or fascinating in some way.
The “insane” collectors are the ones who collect whatever it is that they collect because of the perceived value of the items. These are the fools who collect Beanie Babies or those ugly-ass figurines, or stuff like that, not because they just dig Beanie Babies, but because they think they’re actually worth something. It’s like special-needs investing in a lot of ways.
My nephew kind of falls into this category with his coin collecting hobby; he’s only interested in coins that are worth a lot, and has no interest in relatively worthless but interesting coins. I actually got him some replica medieval coins at one point and some ancient Roman ones, and he couldn’t have cared less- he was more interested in the steel penny I gave him, since it was actually worth something. I think he’s missing the point of collecting entirely.