I probably wouldn’t be regarded as a collector of anything, had I not fallen backwards into the world of rare books. A relative was moving out of her house and into a nursing home, and we were cleaning her place out. There were a couple of books that I wouldn’t mind reading, so I asked if I could take them. Sure, help yourself, the answer came; so I helped myself to a few books that I wanted.
I later found out that the two that I particularly wanted were quite rare—first editions, first pressings, no longer produced except perhaps in paperback, if they were still produced at all. I set out to learn as much as I could about rare books; and long story short, I did. I’ve collected them ever since.
Point is, that I’d probably collect nothing at all, if I hadn’t got into rare books. No stamps, coins, baseball cards, figurines of any sort, and so on and so on. Of course, I accumulate stuff, and have a huge CD and DVD library, and plenty of cheap nothing-special books that I enjoy re-reading or referencing. But to answer the OP’s question, based on my experience, not collecting anything is not unusual at all.
I accumulated comics when I was younger. I didn’t have enough money to accumulate that many…I think I had 4-5 long boxes. I lugged those boxes to a few residences, then decided it was time to get rid of them. We had a daily walking route with a tiny library and over the course of a couple years, nearly all of them went into it. My hope was they want to young’ins, but my reality part of the brain makes me think there was a fellow gen-x’er that started poaching them.
Beyond that, I don’t collect. I have several guitars and several bicycles, but they all have their place (if I need another bike or instrument, I need to get rid of another). I have plenty of books and I am paring them down over time and trying not to buy more since I now have a Kindle and have a great strategy to get them from the library.
I try to buy as little as possible. I still buy tools and materials for art and woodworking, but beyond that, I don’t want more shit in my life.
I don’t collect, but absolutely accumulate. The closest I would get is TT-RPGs, for a while I’d buy any discounted (read discontinued) RPG manual that looked interesting and mine it for ideas for campaigns, characters, settings. Some I never got to play, because, duh, discontinued, and I was one of the few owners. But they were all read and maybe later referenced in another game. Most of them are on my shelf still, though I’ve been lacking a group for over a decade now. Sadness.
My wife is a big collector - thankfully mostly of smallish stuff. A lot of trading cards, mostly from TV series or Movies she’s enjoyed. So several seasons of My Little Pony, lots of MST3k, Farscape, Dark Crystal, and a number of others. So maybe a dozen + 3-ring binders of cards in plastic pocket-sheets. It was a fun thing for her, back in the days where micro-transactions to “complete a set” on Ebay was a cheap and easy thing. Not so much these days.
And lots of CDs and DVDs accumulated, all of which get enjoyed and normally stored digitally for easier home/in-car use.
The only thing I collect is a fine selection of empty 750ml beer bottles, and the only reason is that in South Africa we get a small deposit/discount on a full bottle on return of the empty.
In my early teens I collected soft-drink cans, but much like a stamp collector, only unique ones. It is precisely as nerdy as it sounds, and unlike stamp collectors there is very, very little interest in the field.
As far as I knew, I was probably the only can collector in the entire world.
My initial reaction to the topic is that no, I don’t collect things, but on second thought, I do in general collect books because I like to keep all the books I’ve read and like the look of them on my bookshelves. But in particular – and this is actual collecting in the true sense – as a big fan of the writings of PG Wodehouse, I’ve amassed a collection of a great many of his books, many of them first editions, sourced from online booksellers all over the world. When there’s a passion about not just the content, which might be available in paperback or as a Kindle download, but for owning an original first edition with the original dust jacket, that’s getting into the true collector’s mindset.
I’ve found that physical objects are key to revisiting memories and experiences. Grab that thing that you acquired in a different time and place, maybe a different phase of your life, and you are transported there, for a while. You start remembering and feeling all kinds of stuff.
Exactly right, and well said. That’s not always what collecting is about, but it’s a big part of it. Reminiscence is certainly what that big console radio in the basement is all about for me.
Which is why I am attempting to hold on to certain objects that I have, if they have no true memory of a place, person or time then they mean nothing to me at this point in my life. Still, I can only drag so much stuff with me.
But some people don’t even experience that, they prefer their own memories without attaching them to a physical object and I get that. In the end that is all we have, unless of course we have a snow globe of a cabin we grew up in that we cling to on our death bed.
I’m not sure if I am a ‘collector’ or not. I have a library at home that’s filled with hundreds of different sorts of books on various subjects that interest me. I’m sure there’s over a thousand books. Does that count? Otherwise, I don’t possess any items for the sake of simply possessing them or just admiring their aesthetics.
I don’t disagree but I think a lot of the physical objects we use to revisit memories aren’t really considered “collections”. People don’t really refer to collecting ticket stubs from concerts they attended or photographs of places they’ve been. People don’t have a collection of their own kids’ school programs ( graduation and such). Those items only get called collections when there is no association with the person’s own memories - like someone who buys other people’s ticket stubs on ebay.
( And I wish I could tell my younger self to save things like concert tickets because now I find myself trying to figure out when and where exactly it was that I went to that Aerosmith concert , and I can’t because there are multiple years and multiple venues it could have been )
Ironically, none of my buds or family collect anything. Age might have something to do with that. If you are a working person without a lot of money to spend on things you hang on a wall or mount somewhere or if, as a working person, you don’t have a lot of time to put into the work necessary to be a good “collector”, that might deter one from collecting things. Is the group you were with older and financially very comfortable?
Um. Definitely older, as in, I don’t think any of them was less than 50, and many (including me) well older. “Financially very comfortable” is harder to answer. Yes, in the sense that they almost all live in their own houses in suburban towns in a fairly high cost of living area.
OTOH, unless you know someone really well… Few of them are currently working, so presumably they’re living off accumulated/inherited? holdings. Is that sustainable? Or are they spending them down? Have they taken out mortgages and are using up their equity, with predictable difficulties ahead if they live “too long”?
In the case of one woman I know fairly well, she’s mentioned in the past that her many collections have a negative impact on her. She’s long widowed, living alone in a five bedroom house, and has several times mentioned that it overwhelms her and she’d like to downsize – but “where would I put everything?”
I think that might be the worst effect on collectors who have taken it past the “normal” point (if there is such a thing.) Depending on your passion, the collection might consume a heck of a lot of space and time/effort to keep it clean/safe. Thousands of stamps might take no more than a few binders on a bookshelf and need to be dusted a couple times a year. I know a woman who collects dolls, each of them dressed in the attire of a different country or region or time period, displayed on her beds and couches and tables and some in cabinets or individual glass cases. She spends probably hours a day to keep her displays looking clean and tidy, protecting them from too much sunshine, dusting, fixing/replacing pieces of attire that get damaged or faded or whatever. She says it keeps her busy, which might be the real point of it all.
Well, I certainly don’t need 50 different kinds of fig trees. But I do use them in my “regular life”, as in eating the figs.
As long as I can still squeeze my car into the garage (where the potted figs are kept in dormant winter storage) they don’t interfere with activities of daily living.
About the only real collection in our household is Mrs. J.'s blown glass Xmas ornaments, which only come out (in part) for the holidays, are enjoyed for a few weeks and then go back into storage.
i do have at least a couple hundred t-shirts, but they are in regular wardrobe rotation.
Collect what you want - just have consideration for your descendants who may not be eager to inherit them, and consider selling or disposing of the items before you croak.
As I’ve said in various decluttering or aging threads, you can’t wait until you croak. If you are going to dispose, it needs to start before you become too infirm / lazy / rigid in thinking enough that the disposal task is larger than you are now up to. Which can occur 10, 15, 20 years before you die.
It is psychologically very hard to say “Welp, today is the day I accept that my destiny is to die and so I’ll start preparing by selling off my most prized and fawned-over possessions. Not tomorrow or next week or maybe someday. Today.”
A tall order for anyone, and doubly so for someone of a collecting bent.
I don’t collect anything in the “collector” sense of actively gathering together a set of some object/item where the intent of the collection is to just be, and the worth of the collection is measured by the rarity of the items in it. Baseball card collecting or stamp collecting are what come to mind as the “classic” collecting hobbies.
I do have sets of things, but almost all of them are either things that are mementos from places I’ve been (I’ve got a lot of fridge magnets from vacation destinations), or they’re things that I use in the furtherance of some other hobby. I mean, I’ve got a pretty decent set of cameras and lenses, but I don’t collect them, and I haven’t bought any just for the sake of having it, even if at least one is definitely vintage, and pushing being a museum piece (Kodak Medalist II).
To me, the dividing line between “collecting” and accumulating is that “collecting” is done for the sake of posessing the object itself as the primary purpose, while accumulating is done for the sake of using the objects in some other endeavor.
I think personality-wise, collecting doesn’t really line up well for me or my wife. One of my sons does seem like he could be a collector at some point though.
