ON COLLECTING
I've talked here, directly or indirectly, about many of my
collections, but I haven't really opened up the subject of
collecting as a whole. That's funny really because privately I feel
like more of a success in the task of collecting things than most
of my other endeavours in life. I haven't thought about why I feel
that way until now. It's probably becuase the goals are entirely
set by me. I like to entertain the idea of showing someone, well,
some girl, around it all, but it's never happened and fundamentally
that doesn't matter because it's all about what _I_ find
interesting. The goal is achieved when I feel satisfied by looking
though the things I've obtained, they don't have to interest
others, they don't have to work. I can pursue those too, but that's
a separate activity, if it fails it doesn't harm how I feel about
the collection itself.
As such I don't get too hung up on the sorts of popular collecting
patterns - hoping to complete a set of everything within a range,
or to climb up the chain of item values. Nor do I bother to
document anything very well - certainly not to the extent of all
those people with collection websites that must have taken endless
hours to compile. I do try to display things in attractive
arrangements where space allows, but that's about as active as I
get in collector behaviour beyond actually buying the things I
collect.
Perhaps that's unusual, perhaps not. As usual I don't have a firm
reference with other people because I don't know any similar
collectors. The one I did know was certainly my grandfather on my
mother's side, whose militaria collection was as extensive as the
physical limits of the house would allow (a little more than that
actually - the attic of their house collapsed under the weight of
it once). He definitely liked showing it off and talking about it
with people. Indeed he often gave public talks. Walking sticks were
one of his other passions, and for a talk on them I took some
photographs of his collection, some of which I later uploaded here:
gopher://aussies.space/1/~freet/photos/ambulistics/
I inherited many of the odd bits from his militaria collection,
joining bits and pieces inherited from my other grandfather who
worked on aircraft instrumentation during the war, and some bought
cheaply from ham radio hobbyists. Some is valuable, much isn't,
however things like documents, which usually have very minimal
value, still facinate me particularly. Photos and documents are
also the few things I can really share with interested people,
presuming they exist, via the internet in the History Snippets
section here or on the Internet Archive. It's a shame that the
process is so time consuming though, and often sub-optimal without
spending lots of money on expensive scanning/photographic gear. My
motivation certainly isn't helped by the fact that online
catalogues show similar items in the collections of Australian
libraries who have actual funding (from my tax money, no less) to
preserve documents and _they_ don't do anything to digitise them
(or do, and then charge for accessing the digitised versions). What
am I doing living poor and spending time on digitising documents
when people who are paid a wage for preserving them don't do that
themselves (publicly, at least)?
But perhaps it's those sort of frustrations with people that the
core hobby of collecting itself counters. You don't have to worry
about the person/company/government who made an item, or even who
else wants the item if you don't intend to sell it, once you have
it everything is in your control. I do want to be in control of
things at heart, and as much as people escape me, my collectables
are stuck inanimately within my grasp.
I might follow this up with some posts about my specific
collections. Or not.
- The Free Thinker
