I got a great present for my birthday on Sunday - the last four CD.s I needed to complete my Alice Cooper collection. As wonderful and thoughtful as that was, now I’ve got a slight case of “what next?”
Okay, there’s still quite a lot of vinyl, a couple of videos and movies and I haven’t even begun with the 8-tracks, but a big chunk of my collecting is done. It feels kind of weird. No more checking out the piles at yardsales and flea markets, no more searching through Value Village, at least not the CD racks.
I’ve completed a collection once before. It took nearly twenty years to catch up to all of the Dark Shadows novels, but I finally did it.
So, collectors, how did it feel when you finished your quest, or at least a section of it? Did you go on to something else or start refining the existing collection, looking for the best available copy etc.?
Broadly speaking, my collections will never be ‘finished’ as there’s always more to add. There are smaller parts within them, but when I finish a group of novels/DVDs/etc, I just move on to the next. I mean, now that I have my Ghost in the Shell* collection finished, I have money for the Sailor Moon stuff! There’s always something else when I’m finished with the current goal. I have a mental list of stuff I will buy if I see it, even if I’m not actively looking for it.
*I spent way too much money on that…but it was worth it.
This is the benefit of being a serial collector - I seem to just have a collecting personality and am constantly finding new things I have to collect, so I can just move on to the next one. Luckily, I can stifle the urge to collect all and only collect what I personally find aesthetically or otherwise pleasing. Currently, it’s saint medals (5 more to go!). I’m not religious, so I don’t really know why I like them so much. I guess because of the saints’ forbearance in the face of pain. And many do have really nice illustrations. Plus they’re incredibly cheap ($ 0.50 on average if you get them from internet stores and not off of ebay).
Anyway, I can’t have all of them, it would be too much time and money, so with all my collections, I chose which ones I want and seek those as far as is reasonable. When I run out of ones I like or out of money, I lose interest. My main problem is how to keep up with current production. Periodically I’ll come across a new, say, tarot deck I really like, and this will send me searching through internet stores and listings for any others I like because of course, I can’t remember when I left off last time and don’t want to miss anything.
I generally feel quite driven and a bit anxious while collecting and just feel relaxed when finished.
I’ll never be done because I’m at the point where I can’t afford the items I want that are available.
I collect the National Geographic magazine. I’m all the way back to 1914, and going further, for the fewer and fewer decent copies that are available, is getting expensive. My goal now is to someday get at least one decent copy from before 1900. I do have a map from 1896.
Sure, I’ve finished plenty of collections. If the collection has a limited scope then it usually isn’t that hard to complete things in these days of the eBay and Internet shopping. Most of my finished collections focus on sets of books (everything by Terry Pratchett in hardcover, for example) so I just order a few at a time until I’ve finished them off.
On the other hand I’ll never finish my “game collection” because there will always be something more to get. There I’m more concerned with covering the high points and breadth of the medium than any arbitrary completion point.
I collected comicbooks. Most of my titles are from the early to mid 80s. I stopped when I went to college due to lack of funds. I had always planned on going back to it but I never did. My collection is still at my mother’s house.
Now the only thing I collect are shotglasses from places I’ve been. Its for the bar we are building in the basement. It will end when I stop going places.
I have 65 teacups. I don’t drink tea. I simply got into a “thrill of the hunt” thing. I doubt if I’ll ever be done collecting because in certain cases (such as in the case of antique china) you can always hunt down a particularly fine example or start collecting a different pattern or age period. Then you can trade or sell pieces that aren’t your favorites in order to acquire those that are.
I sometimes wonder if simply “tagging” a piece of china or taking a photo of it would satisfy my “hunt and kill” mentality just as much as finding storage for 65 teacups.
I collect underground comics, primarily R. Crumb. I’m not collecting original comics as that is far too expensive, and I just want them for reading. But Crumb did publish a comics anthology with the wonderful title “Weirdo”. I enjoy being able to tell people who think I’m weird that yes, I have a complete collection of Weirdo magazine.
I also collect Kate Bush’s work, and am constantly searching for better, lower generation copies of stuff I already have. One of the wonderful things about the internet is that I can share my collection with my fellow fans video YouTube, Google video and BitTorrent DVD images.
I collect Captain America ‘stuff’. Many, many years ago, someone I worked with gave me a Captain America coffee mug as a Secret Santa gift. I was a little puzzled, but I “ooooh’d” and “aaahhh’d” like it was the greatest gift in the world. Within a few months, word had somehow spread throughout the company—all eight stores and our production center—that I collected Captain America stuff. I started getting various little bits of Captain America odds and ends from co-workers, and my ex-wife got in on it, and my friends from outside of work, and…
The collection is now about two hundred or so items strong and it just keeps growing. I don’t have the room to display it (it would fill up an entire room), so it’s all packed away in a series of crates in the garage. I was considering selling it all off, but me wife insisted I keep it all for my son when he grows up (or when I die). He’s only five, so by the time he’s eighteen the collection should be at well over five hundred items and worth a cool $8—10,000.
Some parents leave their kids money, or stocks, or property; my legacy for my son will be a mountain of Captain America crap.
I collected the entire Battle Royale Manga series, that took about a year of various shipping fiascos and purchases on Amazon and such to finally get it all. I got it. And then i read it all.
It was GLORIOUS.
And then i put it away (after letting all my freinds read it too). A collector, I’m not. I just like my stories.
I’m currently working on the Scott Pilgrim is Awesome Mangas right now, and have 5 of the 6. But now I have to wait another year or two for the next one to be written (the 5th one came out today).
