Collection, Accumulation, Insanity

June 18th, 2017 by Proprietor

Taking a blog break from my usual Brady Bunch related post to write about something any collector deals with, when does a collection turn into an accumulation, and when do you move into insanity?

Someone once wrote that anything you buy is one step closer to the landfill. The concept being that you buy something, and the ultimate end result is it will eventually end up in the landfill, whether it is valuable or not, and no matter how long it takes.

As a collector, everything you buy is one step closer to insanity. Insanity being the hoarding of stuff for the simple sake that you cannot get rid of anything.

When you are a collector of something, be it cards or comics or cars, you have a purpose. You start out with an objective, but enthusiasm eventually overrides the objective. A collection is done for specifics. An accumulation is done because you have to have it without any real purpose. Insanity happens when you do not know what you have, but you cannot let it go. Letting it go is selling it or throwing it away or giving it away.

There are people who help others de-clutter their lives. Those people give advice, if you take something, put it in a box in a closet, write a date on the box, six months go by, and you do not know what is in the box, it is time to get rid of whatever is in the box. It is something you did not need or did not care about.

This is sometimes what happens with collectors. Comic books are a great example. I have talked to many comic book collectors and they brag about the number of comics they have. Rooms full of shelves with boxes on them. Sometimes number of comics is like a manhood measuring contest. The more comics you have the more serious of a collector you are. Many of the comic collectors have read the gross volume of comics they have, some have not. One collector I had talked to was intent on getting every back issue of Amazing Spiderman. Did he read them? Sometimes. To me it is not really a collection, because I collected comics I read. It is more an accumulation with some purpose.

As stated, insanity happens when you cannot let it go. There are collectors who have multiple copies of a certain comic, when they bought the first copy it was not in great shape, and then the collector bought a better copy, and an even better copy. The collector will not sell off the other copies of the comic for some unreasonable fear or another. This is insanity. Multiple copies, and not wanting to sell lesser grade copies.

I have moved out of collecting for now. I still have little bits of my collections still hanging around. The choice pieces that mean something to me or are more valuable, and I did not want to sell them. It is sort of an accumulation of small collections. Surprisingly, I do add to those collections on occasion. Comics I am always adding in some way. I have one or two series that I want to complete yet, I have read every issue, but I am missing a few. Action Figures, if a certain figure does catch my eye from time to time, I might buy it. I am a nightmare to action figure collectors, because I rip the figure out of the box, and display it. DVDs and CDs now seem to be a collection I am adding on to. The whole Brady Bunch write ups and posts are based on the Brady Bunch DVD set I purchased months ago, and watched. But, I watched the DVDs. So I am not crazy.

Thanks for stopping by.

PS: Added new page to the website about the characters that have appeared in the comics.