Do You Collect? If So, What And Why?

A while back on the podcast I had a great conversation about collecting action figures with Nathan James Norman of the Untold Podcast. It was really eye-opening to me as he explained that his love for collecting was partially related to that desire we have for our dreams/fantasies to become reality, and how having an action figure brought those fantasy characters one-step closer to being tangible, much like we often see movies as the culminating medium for our favorite fictions.

Anyway, just thinking about some things I've collected over the years and whether or not I'll be keeping them or selling them as I prepare to build another IKEA bookshelf this week. And it made me wonder WHY I collect the things I do.

I don't think of myself as a collector, and yet I've collected a lot.

I have about 15 years of comics from when I used to buy them regularly, but now I keep them mainly "just in case" I or my boys would want to read them someday.

I've kept most of my video games for the same "just in case" factor, although some I actually do return to now and then. I have a row of PS1 games that are a pain to get running on my ancient PS2. Some of them I could even purchase easily digitally, but I've kept them in part because it feels like a neat piece of history and because selling online seems like a hassle(yet I know I'd get more than taking it to a local game store).

I've got nearly every item ever published for the Mayfair Games "DC Heroes RPG". At first it was because I used it all, but eventually it turned into a short-lived completionist effort.

I'd guess that around 1/4th of my movie collection includes movies I'm very unlikely to watch in the foreseeable future, and yet the "just in case" factor prevails there too. (I HATE the idea of re-purchasing or renting something I've sold.)

I have fewer board games that I only keep "just in case". With rare exceptions they all seem to get used often enough, by myself or others.

So yeah. My "what" is all that crap I just listed and my "why" is generally "just in case", I guess. lol!

How about you?

I collect money so I can pay for my kids' braces.

I suspect many of us have the same types of "collections". I've got: boxes and boxes of comic books; shelves of paperbacks and hardbacks, mainly fiction, biography, and religious; stacks of movies and video games, etc. Yet I don't think of these things as collections. Each one of them was bought for a purpose, used for that purpose, and kept for their future use.

When I think of collecting, I think of it as collecting for its own sake. To illustrate:

-the display of baseballs in collector cubes on top of my central bookcase - not a collection. I can tell you exactly where we bought each of those balls and who was playing the game. These are memories.

-the set of Doctor Who minifigs in the TARDIS display box next to the baseballs - collection. These toys will likely never get played with, and were bought solely for the sake of possessing them.

-the tub of Star Wars Galactic Connexions collectible chips on my game shelf - not a collection. These get used as game pieces and are not filed, categorized, or displayed.

-the complete set of Magic the Gathering: the Dark in a binder under my desk - collection. They no longer see play and are carefully stored.

-the tray of Dice Masters at the top of my gaming shelf - not a collection. Although carefully sorted and stored, I play this game whenever I get the opportunity.

So there you are. Not so helpful, I'm afraid. But just to validate your own choices, I do consider "just in case" a legitimate reason to hold onto something that still retains usefulness, provided there aren't more persuasive arguments for disposing of it and replacing it when necessary.

A similar question was asked in another group I'm in recently, and I was forced to conclude that I collect collections. Why, I can't really say; maybe it's some form of OCD expressing itself, but some part of my mind has to be looking for something, trying to fill a gap, complete some imaginary checklist... Collecting stuff is just a relatively harmless way of exercising that need, if that makes sense.

Anyway: my main collection is model cars. Specifically, classic Minis. I've been collecting them since I was about 11, and despite having slowed right down over the last few years, have somewhere around 400 - I really need to find time to catalogue them all properly!

At some point the models expanded into Coca-Cola branded cars & trucks, which then expanded into all kinds of Coca-Cola memorabilia... currently I have around 100 vehicles, a couple of dozen cans, bottles, glasses etc and a few pin badges and other small pieces that don't take up space. A lot of it I've sold on recently to fund my new obsession...

I've shown off my retro computer collection here before; obviously it comes with software and magazines, but I only add to those if things are really cheap. Clearly I have the collecting gene, and to start collecting games would be a slippery slope! (I have wondered though, if being a writer I should collect copies of word processing software for these various old systems...)

I've also got collections of coins and stamps that I inherited as a kid and later lost interest in (but don't feel I can sell them on while my parents are still around!).

And then there's the things that aren't really collections: I still have all my space Lego from the 80s (along with a few more recent Star Wars sets!), but that still occasionally gets played with by my kids; a bunch of old vinyl records that get played occasionally; the entire Kinks back catalogue on CD (which get played more often); and sets of books by my favourite authors - which in most cases won't be read again any time soon, but... just in case!

jorowi wrote:I collect money so I can pay for my kids' braces.

Holy crap that's my lol of the morning! Thank you for that.

mindspike wrote:I suspect many of us have the same types of "collections". I've got: boxes and boxes of comic books; shelves of paperbacks and hardbacks, mainly fiction, biography, and religious; stacks of movies and video games, etc. Yet I don't think of these things as collections. Each one of them was bought for a purpose, used for that purpose, and kept for their future use.

That's a really insightful distinction!

So do we need a new term to describe non-collection collections? Library? Catalogue? Stash?

UKSteve wrote: Coca-Cola memorabilia... currently I have around 100 vehicles, a couple of dozen cans, bottles, glasses etc and a few pin badges and other small pieces that don't take up space.

Dude, if you have a picture of that collection I'd love to get it from you! My bro-in-law is a BIG Coke fan and has a few things like that around the house.

Paeter wrote:Dude, if you have a picture of that collection I'd love to get it from you! My bro-in-law is a BIG Coke fan and has a few things like that around the house.

This is most of it - there are a couple of boxes stashed in the garage, but this is the good stuff!

I used to collect rocks. Because I was dirt poor.

...well, okay, I collected fossils that I found in the gorge by my childhood home. Central New York was once at the bottom of a sea, and the bedrock is all layers of shale that you can find fossilized shells and trilobites and worms and seaweed and such in.
I also collected igneous rocks that were brought here by the glaciers from Canada in the last Ice Age.
Unfortunately, despite my digging all over the place, I never found any mammoths.

UKSteve wrote:

Paeter wrote:Dude, if you have a picture of that collection I'd love to get it from you! My bro-in-law is a BIG Coke fan and has a few things like that around the house.

This is most of it - there are a couple of boxes stashed in the garage, but this is the good stuff!

SWEET! Just sent a link to a my bro-in-law. Thanks!

mikel.withers wrote:
Unfortunately, despite my digging all over the place, I never found any mammoths.

You will someday. I believe in you.

mikel.withers wrote:Central New York was once at the bottom of a sea, and the bedrock is all layers of shale that you can find fossilized shells and trilobites and worms and seaweed and such in.

Near me there are "Petrified Sea Gardens" where you can see all kinds of fossils. It's a National Historical Landmark and I go to church with the grandson of the person who opened the park. Unfortunately, the park closed in 2006 and isn't open to the public.

Paeter wrote:

mikel.withers wrote:
Unfortunately, despite my digging all over the place, I never found any mammoths.

You will someday. I believe in you.

It isn't beyond conception, in 2000 a (relatively) local family found a mastadon
http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2013/07/hyde-park-mastodon-in-ithaca.html

Our family seem to have amassed a fairly decent collection of Pop figures. Just kinda happened. One, then two, and on it went.

Doctor Who, Star Trek and DC comics characters, a few Star Wars and various oddities.

I take all mine out of the packaging, but the wife seems to like to keep them in their boxes.

mikel.withers wrote:

Paeter wrote:

mikel.withers wrote:
Unfortunately, despite my digging all over the place, I never found any mammoths.

You will someday. I believe in you.

It isn't beyond conception, in 2000 a (relatively) local family found a mastadon
http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2013/07/hyde-park-mastodon-in-ithaca.html

Whoa, crazy! Now I really DO believe in you! They probably wouldn't let you keep it if you found it, though, huh?

AdamCollings wrote:

I take all mine out of the packaging, but the wife seems to like to keep them in their boxes.

You play with them? Pose them somewhere?

I have something of an action figure collection slowly developing only because people seem to think I would be into them. So over the years I've kept getting random action figures for birthdays or "just because" gifts. Also some used to come with the DVDs and blurays of DC animated movies I bought. Used to just stand them up on top of my bookshelf, but I don't think I'll be doing that as I reconstruct the rest of my office.

Paeter wrote:
Whoa, crazy! Now I really DO believe in you! They probably wouldn't let you keep it if you found it, though, huh?

Probably not. However, I could decide who I called to come dig it up, I think. I might not be a Young Earth Creationist, but I would give ICR a call, see who they knew in the field.

Paeter wrote:

AdamCollings wrote:

I take all mine out of the packaging, but the wife seems to like to keep them in their boxes.

You play with them? Pose them somewhere?

I have them all sitting on top of a tall bookcase full of DVDs at the moment. Kinda hard to see them. I'd like to come up with some better kind of displaying option, but there are no good options in our tiny house. Those figures that aren't specifically mine are scattered all over the house.

Sooner or later we're gonna have to move to another house, though that will take some serious faith to find the money. It's gonna have to be sooner I think, since my daughter is approaching puberty, and she still shares a bedroom with her brother.

When that day comes, I'd love to have some kind of study or office, in which case I can display lots of geeky stuff in it.

Paeter wrote:

mikel.withers wrote:

Paeter wrote:

mikel.withers wrote:
Unfortunately, despite my digging all over the place, I never found any mammoths.

You will someday. I believe in you.

It isn't beyond conception, in 2000 a (relatively) local family found a mastadon
http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2013/07/hyde-park-mastodon-in-ithaca.html

Whoa, crazy! Now I really DO believe in you! They probably wouldn't let you keep it if you found it, though, huh?

Just don't tell anyone about it! Though that does kinda defeat the purpose.