Why do we collect stuff?
Thoughts and ponderings
Just to be clear and up front, I don’t have the answers. In general that could be my motto for life, but the previous statement mostly refers to this post. This is just something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, particularly with regards to the book collection I’m currently looking at in my library, which is actually a converted cupboard as you can see from the below photograph.
I suppose I should begin with a story about a story.
A few months ago I had, what I thought, a great plot for a book. I’m one of those people who have been writing for about 35 years, give or take, and I’m still not very good at it. Every few years I get a new idea and think “This is the one. I’m on my way!” only to get 15-20 pages in and discover that it’s not number one but mostly a number two.
I’ve become quite sanguine about the whole affair. Recently, on cleaning out my library (cupboard), I rediscovered the first book I actually finished writing. If I remember correctly it was probably from 1991 or 1992 so I would have been 20 or 21 years old. A 300 page manuscript that I typed up on my wonky typewriter with the type fading in and out when the ribbon was running out of ink when I couldn’t afford to buy a new one until I got paid.
I don’t think I’m being unkind to myself to say it was utterly awful but I’m sure everyone’s first book is that bad. Right?!
Anyway, I digress. In the 30 years since, I have finished writing two other books and they were not much better. I have folders and poly pockets full of quarter and half-finished manuscripts that will never be completed. However, this one was THE one. I was sure of it.
The plot, now stop me if you’ve heard this before, concerned a rather lost middle aged guy (write what you know everyone says) who returns home due to his estranged father’s illness and, when back in the family home, discovers that his old book collection can actually travel him back in time to specific parts of his life that he wishes to change.
At this point, I had never read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig although I had recently finished the excellent How to Stop Time, and this made me keen to read his new book. And that was when I discovered my new book was, give or take a few details, already a far better existing book, by a far better author. So, to say I was slightly annoyed would be an understatement. However, it didn’t compare to 18 years ago when I was 100 pages into writing a story about Templar Knights, the holy grail and Roslyn Chapel when I had a high speed car accident which broke both my legs and meant I was in plaster and house bound for 3 months. My wife kindly bought me a new book by Dan Brown called The Da Vinci Code to while the hours away, and that was all I wrote.
With regards to my Midnight Library unintentional rip off, I had come up with the idea when picking books from my collection to see when they were published and thinking where my life had been at that time. So, even without the HG Wells side of things, to me they really were time travel devices and I wished that I had written something on the front inside page to record when I read it and what my thoughts were. I know some people would object to defacing a book like this, and I’m pretty much in the same boat, but it would have been nice to get that glimpse into my past.
It was about this time that I came across an article in The Guardian about purging our book collections so other people can read them and how owning a lot of books makes people feel “smug and middle class”.
The author made some interesting points but clearly I disagreed with the main thrust of the article. I don’t feel smug about my book collection in any way, as can be proven by the fact I keep it in a cupboard that no one else ever sees or goes in! So, when I joined Substack I was pleased to see the excellent Joel J Miller clarify why people collect books in his newsletter “Why Build a Personal Library?”
However, both these arguments did get me thinking about the act of collecting physical objects. I know people can also collect NFT’s (non-fungible tokens) but that’s one area that I struggle to understand never mind discuss, so I’ll stick to the physical if everyone doesn’t mind.
When I thought about what I collect, then books would be the main one. I have about six hundred at the moment, which I have gathered over the last 40 years or so. Most of these are horror, fantasy or science fiction with some crime thrown in there for good measure. When I was younger and reading Donaldson, Tolkien and Eddings amongst many others, the more fantastical the cover art with dragons and heroes etc, then the more appealing it was to me. The same went when I began to migrate to horror with King, Herbert and Barker. Obviously the stories intrigued me but so to did their garish, scary and grown up looking dust covers. So, the aesthetics definitely played a part in the beginning of my library.
Then there would be DVD’s, but I did purge these a few years back so now I really only have special editions of my favourite movies. And they’re more about bonus material and content rather than how cool the boxes were. Although the Blade Runner Final Edition steel box was awesome! CD’s and albums were, again, something I used to collect and I do still have two cabinets full of them but all songs are now streamed from my phone.
Music is an interesting one. In an article from April, Daniel Tencer from Music Business Worldwide noted that vinyl sales have now exceeded CD sales in the US with 41.3 million records compared to 33.4 million CD’s.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/50-of-vinyl-buyers-dont-own-a-record-player-data-shows/
He notes the “coolness” of vinyl could be driving this demand but that 50% of people who bought vinyl didn’t own a record player and customers are quoted as saying the records are bought on “how they look”. However, there is also the argument that the sound from vinyl is actually better than digital, so it doesn’t appear quite as straightforward as buying them as a collectors item or status symbol.
When I was growing up, there were books around the house and both my parents were avid readers, but mostly these were kept in boxes under the stairs, not on display, and then cleaned out on a regular basis but records were the main thing that I remember my folks collecting. They had a special cabinet under the record player with hundreds of albums and singles, including an original copy of Love me Tender by Elvis Presley if I remember correctly, so perhaps this is where I got the bug for collecting. Saying that, this was music that they played on a daily basis so they weren’t collecting for collecting sake.
We bought my son, who is 15, a record player and some albums for his Christmas last year and they are lying gathering dust in the cupboard whilst he continues to stream all his music. That being said, it’s not like the family habit has completely passed him buy as can be seen from this photo of his room.
Posters, vinyl pops, statues and guitars are just some of the items that he collects. The guitars are clearly an outlier, as he does play them, but most of the others just sit on shelves and gather dust. When I asked him why he collected them it was because they look cool and he likes the bands/movies/TV shows that they come from. So, again the aesthetics are important but also the emotional tie to something that he cares about and wants to be a part of through the memorabilia that he buys.
However, when I posed a similar question to one of my best friends when he told us he had an old Spectrum 48K home computer, a VHS player and a CD Walkman lying up his loft, it was not that he used them or had any sentimental attachment to them. It was just that he was a hoarder.
So, to return to my original question, why do we collect stuff?
I think we have to differentiate between those that collect for pleasure and those that collect for profit.
My book collection does not contain any rare editions but I have a few signed copies that might be worth a few bob. Same goes for my DVD collection which tend to be steel books or box sets. My son also has some pieces that he knows he can sell online and make a profit. However, to both of us these items are precious so we wouldn’t even consider selling. Plus, that is not what made us buy these items in the first place.
When my son was growing up, it was the time of Pokemon and Match Attax cards. I remember him having hundreds and hundreds of these in boxes with the driving desire being that he had to collect them, or at least a specific group of them, to complete his collection. The price we paid for some of these bits of paper on eBay seem ridiculous now and most of them reside forgotten in the same boxes, buried somewhere in our garage, but if it made him happy at the time, was it so bad.
There is also the element of nostalgia to consider and the need to look back or hold onto things that remind us of our past. During the pandemic and lockdown, a lot of people returned to things they did as children as it made them feel safe in a time of trauma and the continuing uncertainty in the global outlook probably adds to this desire.
12 years ago, when my dad passed away and we were moving mum into sheltered housing, I remember clearing out their house and, as well as their record collection, we found my boxes of the film magazine Empire dating back to the first copy in 1989 and also multiple binders of the computer magazine Zzap64 going back even further. Along with my brothers car magazines and copies of White Dwarf and Dragon from our role playing days there was enough paper in that spare room for about hundred forests!
Without a second thought, I chucked all of them in the skip as what use were they to me. I had more than enough on my mind at the time to bother about something from decades ago. Over the last couple of years I have, on occasion, regretted my decision. Reading about the old computer games and seeing the dodgy graphics would have been good fun (and would have certainly helped the current article I’m writing about that exact subject!), plus some of them seem to be selling for a fortune on eBay but really they would have just moved from that house to this, to start gathering dust once more. However, it shows as you get older, the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia come out more and more.
Clearly emotion plays a large part in when you collect things as a hobby but does it affect collectors who are focused on profit over personal pleasure?
Rare books, stamps, wine and coins have been collected and sold on for centuries but what about modern memorabilia? People make a career out of buying and selling on items for profit, so maybe sentiment cannot come into it otherwise you’re sinking your chances of being successful.
On researching this article, I was reminded of Episode 1 from Season 2 of Better call Saul where someone gets their collection of baseball cards stolen and complains that one of them was a “Mickey Mantle Rookie Card” and worth a lot of money. Mike gets it back for him as, let’s face it, Mike is the best character in the show, and can sort pretty much anything, but it led me to think what kind of value is in old baseball cards as it’s not something I was familiar with. It turned out to be a market worth billions of dollars where the most valuable one sold, just last year, for $12.6m which is absolutely incredible. So, clearly there is a lot to be made from the collectable market and with the most expensive Pokemon card selling for $5.2m, maybe I should start trawling through the garage.
People might argue that this really is the ultimate goal in collecting things, so you can then sell them on for vast profits but, to me, that’s a bit cold and calculating, even if we are left, once more, with stuff cluttering up our spaces.
If we can’t decide maybe we should look to the movies for advice. In Heat, Robert De Niro’s master thief Neil McCauley mantra for life is “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds when you feel the heat around the corner”.
Now, I’m not asking us to turn to a life of crime so perhaps George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, in the far more sedate, Up in the Air when he suggests putting all your possessions in a giant backpack and then setting it on fire – “Imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. It’s kind of exhilarating isn’t it?”
As much as I enjoy both these films, I don’t agree with either of these philosophies, no matter how edgy and cool they sound. You spend years building a home and surrounding yourself with things that make you comfortable and happy. If that gets you through each day then I don’t have a problem with that.
However, as I ease into my fifties, a new lifestyle trend from our cousins in Sweden has entered into my realm of consciousness.
Dostadning, or “Death Cleaning” in English, is a method of downsizing from author Margareta Magnusson in her book, “The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning : How to Free Yourself and your Family from a lifetime of Clutter.”
It’s not as morbid as it sounds but rather a simple way of getting rid of all your clutter so you don’t leave it up to your children or relatives to deal with when you die. Gradually go through your possessions, and whatever you don’t need to keep, just give it to charity or gift it on to friends and family. Having emptied my parents house, as I mentioned above, I can see the merits in this approach and it does make sense, because, plot spoiler, you really can’t take it with you.
So, in the end, as I told you at the start of this post, I don’t have the answer as to why we collect stuff but I’ll leave you with a little anecdote.
Whilst trawling eBay, upsetting myself at how much magazines I chucked in a skip 12 years ago were selling for, I came across something that I couldn’t believe.
Many years ago, when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, my favourite character was called Thalo who was a thief or a bard or something like that. However, I could clearly remember his Grenadier Dungeons Explorer lead figure that had been lost to the mists of time. Standing with a bag of loot in one hand and a short sword in the other, he battled through monsters, castles and evil wizards but couldn’t survive multiple house moves.
And yet here he was again, after all this time, selling for £2.75!
I haven’t played D&D in over thirty years and I’ll probably never play it again, but seeing that figure brought all the memories of those great adventures with my friends flooding back, so I bought it straight away, without a second thought, and he’s sitting on my desk right next to me as I write this. And you know what? That makes me happy.