When it comes to stuff you choose to accumulate - collections and tools - how do the numbers matter to you. E.g., getting a huge number vs. only a vital few - and how does materialism factor in, if at all?
A couple of examples for me:
Books: I collected first editions for years. The books had to matter to me as stories first, but beyond that, I tried to build as big a collection as my Toy Budget would allow. It was fun and about the collection, so materialism was…kinda the point? so I didn’t give it much thought.
Guitars: what I focus on now. I want the fewest guitars possible that cover the spectrum of my needs. Sure, I could do with one guitar - but having maybe three, maybe four, that cover everything from picky/delicate to big and strummy is what I really want. And materialism matters - having a guitar around that I may use only 5% of the time eats at me. Having little/unused guitars around just doesn’t feel right, and it feels like I am accumulating them for the wrong reason (yeah, I know - talk to my analyst!). But, regardless of my psychoses, I realize that I want the fewest guitars that I use the most evenly - a Haiku of guitars, if you will
Please note that on guitar boards, this is a huge topic. There are folks who have dozens upon dozens of guitars and can’t imagine selling one. And there are folks who are after The One to Rule Them All and tangle themselves up in knots pursuing it, and crowing when they think they have it…for now. And there are folks who think a single $400 Yamaha is sufficient, and anyone wasting money on high-priced guitars are idjits. And there are constant threads where folks wring their hands about this. Kinda funny, but it does point out how folks are of such different minds.
I have well over 100 archery bows but I don’t collect or feel connected to very many. I build bows for performance and only keep them long enough to get the info I need from them. Every couple of years I have a bonfire with them.
I almost hate to admit it, but I’ve started collecting vintage calculators. I decided that I would have NO Texas Instruments or HP calculators just to keep the number manageable. I look for unique displays, such as the early crystal on substrate which are LCD but have white characters on a black background. I was in high school when the first useful calculators came out so it’s a way to document technical changes before the personal computer came out.
Just for fun I’ve obtained (almost everything via eBay) a few 1950’s and 1960’s electromechanical calculators from Friden, Marchant and Monroe. Those beasts weigh about 40 pounds and are extremely noisy and hard to operate. They’re hard to find now because I think most people junked them as soon as electronic calculators became available. Having something “unique” is important to me.
I used to buy scarce and not-so-scarce books about Alaska on ebay, but most were books I wanted to read. I now no longer have any interest in them, but getting rid of a book collection isn’t easy.
I had a coin collection of what was mostly large silver US coins, along with some gold and also foreign coins from places I’d been. When it started becoming just acquisition for its own sake, I stopped and sold the entire collection to a local dealer.
Tools: as someone who worked with tools much of his working life, I only buy tools that I need and that get used on a regular basis. Digging through tool chests to try to find what I’m looking for would just be frustrating and unproductive.
Guitars: I can see how people become obsessed with them. Many are works of art as well as being able to make beautiful music. I have four at the moment, but one has got to go, and one is of sentimental value. Much as I’d love to spend big bucks on a Gibson, I haven’t the talent to warrant such a purchase, nor do I have room in our small house for additional instruments.
I collect vintage kitchen wares, mostly from the fifties and sixties. My only criterion on my “collection,” if you can actually call it that, is that the items be useful to me. Nothing is up on a shelf just to be admired - I cook with all of my old junk, or serve from it, or make coffee with it. Mostly I started because I’m a cookware snob, but I couldn’t afford to go buy brand new $200+ saucepans, but I could find good ones here and there at Goodwill or yard sales for $2-3.00. Now, I don’t really need a whole lot more, so I look for the unusual, or the really, really great stuff, but still only from low-priced sources. Raw numbers aren’t very important to me, just what will fit comfortably in my middle-sized kitchen.
I have a collection of collector’s glasses. I use the majority of them and they get faded and broken over time. Then I can buy a new cool glass at the next yard sale or commemorate-able event :). I used to have a packratty approach and never use my pretties. But I decided that was stupid. All good things come to an end, even my Cedar Point Raptor pint glass. There’s maybe a total of 7-10 that are too cool/rare/bizarre to use, and I display.
I also have a yarn collection but theoretically I plan to make things out of it. I mean, I do make things – often, even! – but not at the same pace I acquire yarn. It hasn’t gotten to SABLE* status yet, but it could get there if I let it.
I move a lot so the notion of having “lots” of anything I don’t use regularly is anathema to me. Moving brings a lot of clarity regarding “stuff.”
*Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy = I literally could not use up this yarn within my lifetime, even if I sat down and knitted all day, every day, for the rest of my natural life.
Well, I “collect” tools in the sense that if there is a job that I need to do that requires a special tool, I will usually buy it rather than rent it, even if I may never need it again.
Some walls of my shop are floor to ceiling pegboards. Covered in all sorts of old hand tools I’ll probably never use like a wood framed hack saw. Too cool to get rid of even though power tools are generally faster and easier and also because hey you never know.
On the other hand I have an antique desk and have for years been collecting antique brass desk top accessories. They have be just right.
For me it is completeness. I have a huge collection of the National Geographic magazine. I have every single issue from 1914 to the present, and every map that went in them.
Now I am trying to find a new home for them, as I need to move them out of my mother’s attic and don’t have room for them myself. Know anyone that wants one hundred years of magazines? I’d give them away for free if someone would take them all and pick them up.
I really loved looking at how maps changed. Take a look at Africa or Europe from 1914, and look at maps of those continents now. A LOT of changes.
Huge admiration! I only go back to 1956, and have very, very few of the maps.
So, for me, it would be completeness, if that were within my reach. It usually isn’t, and so I focus on “good stuff.” For instance, if I couldn’t collect all National Geographic magazines, I might focus on issues that cover, over the decades, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
I know I can’t really obtain completeness – it’s an ideal I admire hugely! – so I’m content with a “themed” sub-collection.
In a previous life, I collected knives. Mostly pocket knives and some hunting knives. The only criteria was “cool-looking” and fine metal.
As mentioned up thread, moving puts a different feel for collectables. Now, with a philosophy that less is better, I have given most of them away.
I have about 2,000 CDs and probably an equal number or LPs, plus some 78s that my father bought back in the 40s. I’ve downloaded all the CDs to my computer, and the rest I don’t listen to. I realize that, once downloaded, I could get rid of the CDs, but I lost them once when I bought my new computer. I’d hate to go through that again.
I also have a coin collection of “type” coins (one example of every design the U.S. has minted). There are some that are beyond my means, but I get a lot of enjoyment from the ones I have, looking at them in the bank’s vault.
I also have tons and tons of slides . . . photos I’ve taken since the 60s, mostly of places I’ve traveled. I don’t know what will become of them. I occasionally use one in my art, and I don’t have the heart to throw the rest away.
If you love the magazine it’s too bad you can’t come to Kansas. I’d give anyone who really wanted the collection intact. Did I mention they are boxed in chronological order, and each issue is in a slip cover?
Wow, Baker. When I emptied my Da’s house in 2003, I was able to give about 50 years of NG to the local Boy Scouts.
I too love maps. And looking at the changes. But am at an age where I want the kids to take all the old stuff .
I use my kitchen gear too- and most of it is from the 50s-60s. Especially happy with the tin lined copper French pans I got at Habitat- they didn’t know they could be retinned, and I actually had some Dad used for the teapot I kept boiling dry and melting
I have collected pocket (and larger) knives. Bought a few nice ones myself, and it became a habit for people to buy them for me for Xmas and birthdays (“I don’t know, buy me an interesting knife!”). Most of them are just sitting in a box in my closet. I carry one every day, but really don’t much care about th bulk of them any more.
In 1966 my parents began getting the NG as a gift. Later they bought the subscription themselves.
For the issues before that there’s a local used bookstore I got quite a few from. Then the library at my high scholl was a source. The head librarian was the guy who’d been there when I was in school.
Bought some online from Ebay, especially maps. Maps are often harder to find, they fall out, or get seperated from the issues by actually being used, put up on walls and such.
I also bought a very few issues from a guy online who specializes in NG stuff. His prices were high, but that’s how I got a map from 1896.
I had pretty big collections of knives and guns. I reduced both in size pretty substantially a few years ago and I am now beginning to liquidate what is left. I plan on keeping just the guns I actually use (3) and a handful of the highest value knives (to pass on t my daughter). I’ll use the proceeeds towards a new motorcycle. A combination of the loss of a parent, age, and a stroke has caused me to no longer value haviing things simply for the sake of having them.
so I didn’t give it much thought.