[btkpath]

Well now that I have your attention….

My wife has been great regarding my spending $100's, if not $1000's (occasionally $10000's) on little pieces of old cardboard. It was a long learning curve for both of us, but her acceptance of the hobby solidified when she realized that for every major purchase I made for myself, I made sure she received an (at least) equally "valuable" piece of jewelry (we all do what we have to do…….).

However, the biggest issue from her perspective right now is the amount of (as she puts it) baseball porn that I have neatly placed in virtually every room and bathroom of our house (and we have a lot of rooms!). With the increase in the number of auction houses and the seemingly unending one-upmanship that seems to occur between the auction houses, I now have huge numbers of multi-volume, boxed sets of holographic covered, glossy catalogs all over the place. I am a reasonably neat person, but I too don't have a good solution to this issue. There are some catalogs that I immediately discard (due to complete disinterest in the contents), but the vast majority are filed chronologically by auction house on shelves, piled neatly in floor corners and present in innumerable magazine racks throughout our house.

I would fully admit, that the vast majority of these catalogs never get re-opened once the auction is finished, but every so often I do find myself perusing through an old catalog or two, marveling at the merchandise, remembering my bidding, kicking myself for not bidding more aggressively, etc., not to mention salivating over these little pieces of cardboard (hence my wife's comparison to porn!).

Anyway, I was wondering what strategies others have used to get over this catalog obsession. Like a bandage should I just pull it off and get rid of most/all of them? Should I just keep those that are not available online? Only keep the past 5 years? Should I get a larger house? Should I up my dosage of medication?

Any (thoughtful) advice would be appreciated.