Two incidents in only a day has brought me to the conclusion that collecting is either a lost or dying pastime. Which makes this a perfect subject for Tasteful Thursday. I have made good progress on obtaining all the Garbage Pail Kids cards. There is still a long way to go with them but I am happy to say I now have more than half of them. It's tricky. I have been trying to get the sets through online auctions and have found I am not the only one out there trying to get them. But it's been fun trying to find the best deals and it is a joy when they finally come in the mail. I've been putting them into card holders and feeling like a proper dork doing so. But it is fun looking at them and sharing them with others who can appreciate them, which for the most part are only guys who fall between the ages of 26 and 30.
It's this whole business of collecting cards has sparked some interesting reflections on today's youth. When I was purchasing the card holders, the young clerk asked "Do you have baseball cards or something?" "These are for a collection of Garbage Pail Kids." "Is that like a card game?" "No, they are just collectible cards, like baseball cards but fun and enjoyable to look at." "Oh I see, so these are an investment." "No, I don't want to sell them." "Then what do you do with them?" "I enjoy them. They're just something fun to look at and collect. Like a hobby. No games, no money, just something to enjoy and maybe share with a future son or friends." At this point I literally got a stare, so I told him to have a good night and he broke out of the stare and wished me the same and I left.
Then I showed them to Sarah, who likewise was having difficulties. In this case she never experienced collecting. Her older brothers never collected anything. And she never had a doll collection or anything like that. I pointed out that while I also did not have any collections as a child, there were many things I enjoyed and this happened to be one of them. Like I didn't have a comic book collection but I enjoyed reading them. But collecting can be enjoyable and relaxing. And I think that's lost on many people nowadays. With everything going electronic, it's hard to find many physical objects that people would think of collecting. People don't need to collect the albums of their favorite singer when they can just purchase everything in a digital format. And some people will say that's great, because it saves space, and most of those collections just collect dust. Well that's true, but in moderation having a few special items to share with others is nice. No one wants to go to a home where there is nothing of interest to be seen. So I have my cards. Put them on a coffee table and you've got a great accenting piece.
Now this is Tasteful Thursday, not Terribly Cluttered Thursday. There is a good taste limit to how large a collection can be. In my opinion I think that limit is when you can no longer appreciate the individual aspects of the collection. For example, take a comic book series. If you have 1,000 issues in that series, it would be very difficult to enjoy them as individuals. It has likely gotten to the point where you are collecting the comics for the sake of collecting the comics. The enjoyment of them as individuals is gone, because there are too many to enjoy. It's the point where to basically everyone else the collection has become too big but the collector can't come to realize this. My cards are going to fit into one manageable binder. They aren't going to fill 100 of them.
If you noticed I mentioned Sarah saw the cards. Yep, we are still hanging out. In fact we even hung out a few times since she saw them, so they didn't chase her away! And I happily think she liked looking at the cards I had to show. The idea of collecting was foreign to her, but I think she was able to come to an appreciation of the enjoyable nature of it.
It's this whole business of collecting cards has sparked some interesting reflections on today's youth. When I was purchasing the card holders, the young clerk asked "Do you have baseball cards or something?" "These are for a collection of Garbage Pail Kids." "Is that like a card game?" "No, they are just collectible cards, like baseball cards but fun and enjoyable to look at." "Oh I see, so these are an investment." "No, I don't want to sell them." "Then what do you do with them?" "I enjoy them. They're just something fun to look at and collect. Like a hobby. No games, no money, just something to enjoy and maybe share with a future son or friends." At this point I literally got a stare, so I told him to have a good night and he broke out of the stare and wished me the same and I left.
Then I showed them to Sarah, who likewise was having difficulties. In this case she never experienced collecting. Her older brothers never collected anything. And she never had a doll collection or anything like that. I pointed out that while I also did not have any collections as a child, there were many things I enjoyed and this happened to be one of them. Like I didn't have a comic book collection but I enjoyed reading them. But collecting can be enjoyable and relaxing. And I think that's lost on many people nowadays. With everything going electronic, it's hard to find many physical objects that people would think of collecting. People don't need to collect the albums of their favorite singer when they can just purchase everything in a digital format. And some people will say that's great, because it saves space, and most of those collections just collect dust. Well that's true, but in moderation having a few special items to share with others is nice. No one wants to go to a home where there is nothing of interest to be seen. So I have my cards. Put them on a coffee table and you've got a great accenting piece.
Now this is Tasteful Thursday, not Terribly Cluttered Thursday. There is a good taste limit to how large a collection can be. In my opinion I think that limit is when you can no longer appreciate the individual aspects of the collection. For example, take a comic book series. If you have 1,000 issues in that series, it would be very difficult to enjoy them as individuals. It has likely gotten to the point where you are collecting the comics for the sake of collecting the comics. The enjoyment of them as individuals is gone, because there are too many to enjoy. It's the point where to basically everyone else the collection has become too big but the collector can't come to realize this. My cards are going to fit into one manageable binder. They aren't going to fill 100 of them.
If you noticed I mentioned Sarah saw the cards. Yep, we are still hanging out. In fact we even hung out a few times since she saw them, so they didn't chase her away! And I happily think she liked looking at the cards I had to show. The idea of collecting was foreign to her, but I think she was able to come to an appreciation of the enjoyable nature of it.
1 comments:
Collecting is awesome. I love the challenge!
WAM
Post a Comment