Why Do People Collect Things?

Getting along after an absence spanning some months, I'd like to follow up my initial post Collecting Mad, with a bit of a teaser. In the title, I ask the question, "Why do people collect things?" to endeavour to make some sense of this curious affinity we as human beings have with collecting things that are collectable!

It's interesting to me as an avid collector of a variety of items that can each be categorised into nice neat pigeon holes. But as I cannot speak for anyone else, as I'm not anyone else, I'm me... I will have to make do with my own conjectures, thoughts, views, opinions and ideas as to why certain of us like to collect things and certain of us do not!

I, for one enjoy looking at my collections of rare coins, or old comics, or whatever I'm in the mood for looking at. It gives me a sense of purpose, a feeling of achievement at having acquired this or that coin of some value or rarity that very few other people would have. Perhaps it goes back to childhood sibling rivalry where a brother might have a certain toy that annother brother may covet but not be able to have.

In adult life, perhaps we carry these traits on in wanting to have something that other people do not have. When it comes to collections of items, such as comics of a certain style or character, or books written by a certain author, to have a complete collection of everything that author has ever committed to print.

Some people collect autographs of famous people and I know of someone who has spent the nest part of his life following around the rich and famous in the slim hope of acquiring their autograph or even better to appear in a photograph with them, signed, of course! Perhaps that is a real instance of collecting mad...

I'm as bad when it comes to comics, having sought out many old and rare copies of an old favourite of mine from childhood, those American classics, Mad Magazine! Alfred E Neuman has been around for far too many decades now to still retain his youthful features, but keep them he does and although the magazine is quite different now from its earlier incarnations, the essence is still the same.

Have I come any closer to explaining why we collect things or perhaps why we have hobbies? Probably not, but then this blog is and never was meant to be an exact science or piece of perfection in prose. It's simply a collection of a retired old fool's thoughts on the subject of collecting things that brings him pleasure in the twilight years of his life, while at the same time putting to shame some of the much younger people who still haven't a clue as to how to use one of these computer contraptions and write a blog in the first place!

Well, its certainly a far cry from that old mechanical typewriter that I have gathering dust in the loft somewhere!

That's all for this post. It hasn't really gone anywhere, but then, what does it matter? It proves that even an old chap like me can make sense of all this so there is hope for us all yet!

By for now!

Steven Garret
Collecting Mad