I’d say that I no longer actively collect anything.
I’ve been a hobby dilettante throughout my life, and a fair number of those hobbies have been of the collecting sort, including:
Postage stamps
Star Wars action figures
Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars
Collectible card games (mostly Magic: the Gathering)
Model trains
Baseball and football cards
Miniatures for role-playing games
LEGO sets/models
Most of those are things that I just don’t collect any more, in large part because I have no good place to put/display them. I’ve cleared out some of those collections over the years – for example, I had a few hundred Hot Wheels cars, which I gave to the young son of a friend of mine some years back. Ultimately, they all need to go to a good home, or a dumpster.
This is very much it for me too. I have a collection of fountain pens (which I have mentioned before). I started out buying them because I was very interested in how quality fountain pens worked, and how they felt to write with (to that extent they were practical purchases). Then I went a little nuts. I started getting interested in buying all of a particular out-of-production model in all available colors. And it was the hunt and the auction winning, and the waiting breathlessly for the new pen to arrive that were exciting. When the pens arrived, I would ink them up, write in my journal with them through one filling, then clean them thoroughly and put them away in their assigned slot with others of their kind. I had nothing against using them again but there were always too many new ones coming in. I also enjoyed repairing vintage pens, which was fairly satisfying. But after fixing each one, I had yet another pen to store. One saving grace to pen collecting is that they take up a relatively small amount of space (well, except for the ones with fancy boxes).
I early on felt the need to start a database of my pens, which is how I know that I have bought nearly 500 pens since 2019, when I started. I now regret this very much, considering how much time and money I have invested, and I don’t even use them any more, having given up journaling. I stopped buying completely last May, but had only bought a very few pens in the previous 18 months. I have managed to sell a fair number, but that is tedious and upsetting, so I am going to end up giving away probably around 300 pens to charities who know how to dispose of them to best advantage.
I have other interests (bookbinding, carpentry) which don’t require me to collect anything much in order to enjoy them. I will be truly glad to get rid of these pens.
That was my thought. I own record albums, I make a point of buying them and enjoy to process of shopping for them and visiting new stores, etc. But I definitely play them all so they’re not purely just “stuff” I own for the sake of owning. I’d consider that a collection but I don’t think it fits the definition in the OP.
Or people who play tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and own a bunch of dice. You only really need one set (ignoring digital options) and can maybe stretch that to owning a couple sets for when you need to roll two or three of a particular type. But you have people who own dozens of sets in varying colors and materials and DO nominally use them all (“These green ones are for my druid…”). If they stopped playing D&D they would probably stop buying dice as well so it’s tightly connected to their hobby but it’s still very much a voluntary collection.
Oh, lordy, yes. I have several gaming friends like this. They have massive dice bags, and at the start of a game, they feel compelled to empty the bag onto the table, and pick through the pile of several hundred dice to find the ones that they want to use today.
Yeah, both my parents where artists. My best friends dad too. My wife and I made a deal, instead of gifts on our anniversary, we would go together and buy a piece of art. Could be anything. Well, that became overwhelming. Married 27 years and we already had a lot of art.
I’m not a ‘collector’ but I have a shit ton of tools. But I use them.
Oh yeah, I also have several Emperor’s New Groove –themed items. The kids give them to me because we’re all fans of the movie. So I keep those, but I’m definitely not pursuing more.
Ok, maybe “disturbed” is too strong a word. But how is that different from @puzzlegal’s “hoarding” comment?
As @StarvingButStrong defines it, I can’t imagine it’s that unusual to not actively collect large quantities of something for it’s own sake.
As a kid, I collected toys like GI Joe, Star Wars, Lego, Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars, and comic books. But I think it’s probably more accurate to say I “amassed a collection” of these things to play with then I outgrew them or passed them along to my own kids.
My son (age 11) would probably be better described as “collecting” Lego. He has specific sets or minifigs he wants that he largely keeps intact once they are built.
@StarvingButStrong would you say you have a hobby? I don’t know that I have a hobby other than my collecting is my hobby. I collect toys so I go to toy shows, I participate on toy sub-reddits, I go to toy shops, I grab old toy lots then fix them up and sell them so I can buy new toys for my collection.
I guess not every collection = a hobby (I’m guessing grandma’s Goose Tchotchke Kitchen does not take up much of her time) but a hobby might not leave much time for a hobby-like collection.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s weird to not have a collection. I can’t think of many friends of mine that collect anything, other than me and the plant lady.
I had a complete woodshop in Oregon. Had to sell all of the larger stuff and some of smaller power tools when we sold the place. I still have hand tools stored in my daughter’s garage, along with my workbench; not that I’ll likely ever use them again.
My ex-wife had a couple of fairly ordinary hobbies. But one of her persistent sayings was “The hobby of collecting tools and supplies for your hobby is a separate hobby from doing your hobby.”
In the 2+ years we were together I saw she was far more skilled and diligent in the “Buy and organize tools and supplies hobby” hobby, and rather less so in the “Use tools and supplies to do hobby” hobby
I don’t collect what would commonly be referred to as “collectables,” like coins or figurines. The only thing I have a lot of is tools. Lots and lots and lots of tools, mainly for working on cars. But since they’re tools, I wouldn’t say I “collect” them. I just have a habit of buying a tool if I know it will save me time and headaches.
Back when I travelled a lot to do exhibit installs (and drank much more than I do now) I’d buy a shot glass from each new airport. I had a shelf above the kitchen sink where they hung out. I have since shoved them into the back of some cupboard somewhere in the house.
I do have a small collection of antique tools, planes, chisels, etc that came from my family farmhouse, but the collection is not being added to and just sits calmly in my GGGrandfather’s old red wagon with a glass top.
Like many, I have a large collection of tools, but they’re for my job.
I admit that I’m not sure how much my textile-craft diversification is about wanting to try new crafts and how much about wanting to get the cool thing that the new craft uses. But my acquisition is always driven by an interest in using the thing, rather than a desire for “tool completism” in and of itself.
You may have something here. I read a lot. A LOT. If I read a book by a new to me author and really enjoy it, I’ll likely hunt out more by them to read. Maybe their entire book list – unless it turns out the others aren’t as good, or maybe the author has a limited set of ideas/themes they return turn obsessively.
But I don’t keep the books. (Tons are from the library so I can’t anyway.) Way back in high school I realized that I virtually never reread anything because there were always more books, new, full of who knows what delights to experience? And so I choose to take a chance on something new. (Besides, if I ever really want to reread, say, the Sherlock Holmes tales, what are the odds I can’t quickly lay my hands on another copy?
Oh, that rings very true, too. My next door neighbor when I was growing up, a seriously sweet and friendly woman, had a house full of owls. She used to hire me to take care of her dog when she and her husband took trips, and I’d sometimes wander her house stunned by all the owl crap she had. Figurines by the hundreds, atop every table and shelf and on the ledges above windows and doorways (are those lintels?) and ‘functional’ owl stuff, like vases and door stoppers and firescreens and – if it was in her house, it had an owl (or a dozen) pictured on it or perched upon it.
One time I finally said something to her, just like “You really like owls,” and she laughed, a bit bitterly. “Not at all.” She pointed to one painting above her couch, a nice view of an owl perched on a snowy branch with snow falling heavily. “That painting is by my college roommate, she gave it to me when I got engaged to Dave. And then…” She shrugged. “Someone else saw it, decided to bring me back an owl figurine from her vacation ‘because I like owls’ which meant I had to put it on my mantel, and from then on…”
She just couldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings by refusing things or even not putting them on display. Some years later she and hubby were selling their house and moving away to a warmer climate for retirement. She confessed to me she was planning to pack up all the owl stuff except that one painting and drop the lot onto Goodwill. I laughed. She grinned. “And if the subject ever comes up in the future, I’m going to blame the loss of my owls on having hired a TERRIBLE moving company.”
Several, but they’re not the sort that tends to ‘stuff’, at least how I do them. The longest term one so far is writing fiction, which really doesn’t take much beyond paper/pen/computer. For a long time I constructed crossword puzzles, which again don’t require stuff. And I used to be really into gardening, but once you have your shovels/trowels/watering can/clippers… Though I suppose you could build quite a collection of harvesting baskets or something.
The only danger zone with writing for me was reading how to books about writing fiction, but again, I believe in passing books along so someone else can benefit from them so it didn’t turn into a ‘collection’ type hobby.
