I am curious how many of you collect things. Please let the class know what you have collected and why?
Please use the “comment” section (below) for your responses.
This is an experiment to make sure you are all checking the blog. These are not graded but I expect a response from each student.
Even though it is a collection-in-progress and quite small, I have a collection of different currencies. So far I have all the different quarters with the 50 states on them, the Dominican Peso and Coins, Japanese coins (mostly pennies and nickels), Mexican coins (which look ridiculously similar to Dominican coins), and a single Euro coin from finland.
I love traveling so its no surprise that I would keep the money! At first I had simply kept the Dominican peso because I had not used it and found it in a jean pocket, the same goes for the Japanese coins. It just feels like you own a bit of history by keeping it 🙂
I don’t collect things so much as I hoard things – I absolutely refuse to throw anything out, and subsequently I end up with various little collections of random things. You name it: Pokemon cards, novelty action figures, international currencies, a whole slew of random magazines (mostly fashion-related) dating back several years, postage stamps I find interesting, shoes…it goes on!
My dad collects paintings. When I was younger, my parents used to buy me miniatures when they were affordable because they thought it was cute. However, my dad has a pretty refined art eye and most of these have since been resold at a profit. (Although, I made no initial investment, they were on the wall of my playroom and so I got a commission:-)
In the present, I’m more like Kerishma. I haven’t changed clothing sizes since my Bat Mitzvah. I usually buy music in CD form and hold on to the discs. I also have my share of magazine back issues. However, inspite of regular trips to the library, I think I’m more of a book hoarder than anything else. My dorm room is half the size of my bedroom and could probably fit all of its contents—-except for the bookshelves.
Kerishma and Jennifer: How do you store your stuff/collections? Are they in any kind of presentable display? Do you ever show your collections to others? Danielle: What type of miniatures did your parents give you? Where are they now? I assume your books may be displayed on bookcases. Are they organized in any fashion? Can you find the book you are looking for? How do you decide which book to buy next?
Sadly there is no presentable display, just all the different currencies in a box. Despite this fact, I do like to show it off to whoever is around! I have a certain pride attach to it and a little speech attach to every piece as others see it
By miniatures, I meant paintings 3″ by 6″ and smaller. They used to line the walls of the room where my brother and I kept most od our toys. The more paint-by-numbers-esqe stuff is still there, but the better art (such as a set of four pieces by Cecil Bell) is in the hands of more serious collectors.
My books are in 5 or 6 different bookshelves, in the hall, in the closet, in my room and in the playroom. I also have three or four piles of books that are about 12 books high. The books on my main bedroom bookshelf are organized by author and series, but the other books are just organized on the logic that the more recently I last read it, the closest to the door or my bed. Its not as sloppy as it sounds and I usually find what I want based off of intuition. I tend to buy books at flea markets and garage sales using the same criteria, I use when selecting books to borrow from the library. I look at the cover art and read the back cover and a few pages. If I know the author, it’s even better. I tend to by new books on release day when I am particularly fond of the writer or series.
I also agree Kerishma; I hoard things: old clothing, seashells, pictures, cards, brochures and tickets. I never really go out of my way to collect these items, but I also will almost never throw them away. My excuse or inspiration for this is that I want to make something out of them someday, and on occasion I have. I display my cards and pictures all over my room’s walls and keep my seashells in baskets. Besides my excuse that I want to make something with these things, I also feel that I am attached to them by memory.
I don’t really collect anything mostly because I hate clutter. I have an obsession with throwing out things that I perceive as useless. I guess you can say that I am a neat freak. The closest thing that I have to a collection is my stash of $2 bills. I have a total of seven of them. I started saving them as soon as I heard that the government will no longer be making more of them. I am proud to say that they are all almost in mint condition. However, I must admit that my motive for collecting them is a selfish one: I hope that someday they’ll be worth a lot more than their face value.
Many collectors collect because they believe the objects collected will increase in value. This is not considered a selfish act; it one form of a collectors’ rationale.
I agree with Kerishma; I hoard things: seashells, old clothing, cards, pictures, brochures, tickets. Why I consider this hoarding and not collecting is because I do not go out of my way to obtain these items. My excuse or reasoning for not throwing them away is that “someday I will make an art project out of them” and on occasion I have. However, I believe the primary reason I refuse to discard of them is for memories sake. Sometimes I feel like without a physical reminder of something, I might forget it.
Abby and Melissa: Many collections start from the desire to retain memory.
i don’t really collect anything. When i was little i collected everything known to man though. Any card came you know about me and my brother probably collected it. I also used to collect legos.
I wouldn’t say that I collect anything as much as I have certain items with strong memories attached to them. There’s no reason or organization involved, just particular associations that make some things more important to me. My bracelets, for one, each remind me of exactly what I was doing when I made them. Some were given to me by friends and family, one I’ve had since I was little, and the rest I’ve just added throughout the summer. I also notice songs that remind me of people, and whenever I hear them I’m immediately taken to the place I first heard it and who I was with. I’m not so concerned as to what an item is as to what meaning it holds for me, which may be why I don’t have any substantial collections.
How might you organize the things with memories attached to them?
In some ways I feel like I don’t really need to organize them because I have constant daily interaction with most of the things. The pictures I have on my wall and the bracelets I wear all bring me back to a memory whenever I see them, which is quite often. As for the other items which I don’t necessarily have with me all the time, it’s really fulfilling to me to come across them again almost accidentally after not seeing the in a while. It’s like a new discovery of something that has a lot of meaning to me, and it’s exciting to just stumble upon them sometimes.
I don’t intentionally collect anything, per say, but I guess like everyone else, my interests have, over time, become something of collections.
I too have a lot books. Everything from “The Art of Simple Food” to “The Poetics” to “A Beginner’s Guide to the Unexplained”.
Design interests me. I have an album filled with magazine articles that catch my eye, for whatever reason. I clip them out and keep them for reference purposes: hair or makeup design, inspiration, fashion ‘looks’. It currently overflows a 3 inch binder.
The rest are silly things: Pokemon cards, menus/ business cards of places I’ve been or want to go (I LOVE food), nail polish (every color and metallic you can think of), clothing, shoes, and makeup. Oh and tea. I love tea. But that collection comes and goes- you can’t really save it or it will go stale. But I drink a lot of it.
Why wouldn’t you consider the book of design images a collection? You are collecting images — continuing to search for and add to the binder which is a place to reflect on them. The tea collection could be considered a collection that changes over time. How might you document this type of collection?
I guess I never considered my portfolio of images a collection because it doesn’t have any sentimental value to me- it’s more of a resource.
And I imagine I could definitely record my tea collection by saving wrappers, tea tags, and labels. (I drink a lot of loose leaf tea, so it’s not so easy). AND I just found a little tea shop a few blocks from Hunter- with over 150 types! I already started taste testing…. I’m going to jot down notes about what I’m drinking.
From about second to eighth grade, I collected baseball cards. I stopped as a result of simultaneously being overwhelmed by the amount of cards I owned and realizing that my collection would always, no matter how much time and money I devoted to it, be not really that great. Collecting baseball cards is an enormous scam; the image perpetuated by the industry is that buying a baseball card is an investment. However, as soon as you buy a card, its value instantly depreciates. Baseball cards are overproduced and the supply vastly exceeds the demand. Its an incredibly discouraging hobby.
Why can’t you own something that has no value except to you? Why does a collectible need to increase in value to have value for you?
Actually I am very much like Judy. I enjoy throwing out things that seem useless. I think I developed this habit because I have moved a lot of times before and having a lot of things around simply became too much to handle. However there is one thing that I just cannot seem to throw out – my manga books. I started collecting manga books since I was a kid. It’s not that I ever read any of them more than once, but I just get this weird kind of happiness from having complete sets of manga. What’s even cooler about my manga collection is that for some series I have them in 2 or 3 languages. For a series called Full Metal Alchemist, I have the original Japanese version, and the Korean and English translations as well. I stopped buying manga almost for a year now because I have been financially unstable and manga books are actually quite costly, but I plan on looking online or trading in some series for new ones.
Michael Kimmelman wrote in “The Art of Collecting Lightbulbs” that some collectors collect to make sense of the world. Do you think that your desire to have a complete set comes from this instinct or from some other need?
I am actually not sure why I hold on to my manga books so dearly.. But having incomplete sets just bothers me I guess. If I get one volume of a series, I can’t stop the urge to get the rest of the series. When I was little, I used to save up all my allowances just to get new books, and I liked saving my money for a specific purpose. In fact I still have this habit. I usually set up a goal or something expensive that I would like to buy, so that I am more motivated to save money.
It sounds like you are very goal oriented- psychologically speaking, you certainly seem to collect for the sake of completion- the fact that it ‘bothers’ you not to have a complete set is definitely a sign that subconsciously, you seek order and structure.
I think we all seek control in different ways. And when things change, and we feel a loss of control, we cling most to the things that give us a sense of order.
I have responded to many of the individual posts. All are welcome to read these and to continue the dialogue with me. Feel free to comment on each others’ reflections. I have not heard from everyone.
I can relate to Tom’s frustration with baseball card collecting, as I was also immersed in the hobby at a similarly young age. I don’t think it was entirely the depreciation of the card’s value that made me lose interest, but rather, like Pokemon, or Yu-gioh, or Magic Cards, it was just a childhood phase. As I stopped caring about baseball, with no monetary initiative to pursue my collection, I gave it up. That’s why my only constant collection has been in a subject area I will always love: music. Everyone in my family is a musician, and we collectively own enough basses, banjos, pianos, drums, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, tambourines, xylophones, and guitars to open a small instrument shop (or start a very big band). My personal portion of the collection consists of three electric guitars (which I don’t play enough but I’m too attached to to sell), an acoustic guitar, two electric keyboards, and a piano.
I have always been a collector of letters, whether it be a birthday or congratulation cards, a personal note, or just a thought jotted down on a scrap piece of paper. I’ve been collecting them for years, and I even have birthday cards that date back to my fifth birthday. I guess I would have to say I collect them for nostalgia’s sake. I often flip through them rereading all of the things that the people closest to me went out of their way to let me know. If I ever threw them away, I feel as if a part of me would go with them, so instead I just keep them. They’re all stashed away in several binders and are, for the most part, kept in chronological order.
I don’t really have a collection of anything, unless you count a modest collection of books. There are a few things that I might consider collecting for nostalgia’s sake if I had the money, but such is not the case. I moved around a lot as a child, which is not a great atmosphere for collecting.
It sounds like you are very goal oriented- psychologically speaking, you certainly seem to collect for the sake of completion- the fact that it ‘bothers’ you not to have a complete set is definitely a sign that subconsciously, you seek order and structure.
I think we all seek control in different ways. And when things change, and we feel a loss of control, we cling most to the things that give us a sense of order.