Question about advanced collectors

[Exhibitman]

Maybe it is like pornography: I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

[frankbmd]

[familytoad]

Frank, I don't think it counts when the "chicks" are only showing off their photos of their old boyfriends

I do hope she will refrain from any further foolish following of David (cycleback)'s advice about licking the cards. The more I think about it, he may have only been joking.

As for real advanced collecting definitions, I really like the post about when "others" consider you an expert. I have 45 years into this hobby, but I don't really count them as as expert years.

Thinking back to when us neighborhood kids gathered cards from the old candy store down the block and toted them around in shoeboxes or bicycle spokes is cool, but not expert level collecting. It's not as if we were dealing with preWWI Hall of Famers at that point.

At some point, I think money does have something to do with it. Maybe if you consider it this way...making a conscious decision to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on old carboard even when you are responsible for family, house , car, pets and life...
At that point you may have moved past casual collector and at least into early advanced stage. (Knowing what you are doing at that stage is an advantage, but not a requirement)

I'm a collector who is advanced when compared to the guy at the garage sale hoping to sell his fleet of 89 Pro Set FB and Donruss Diamond Kings, but pretty far down the totem pole on this board!!

I have always thought of advanced collecting as a mountain, and the advanced collector a climber. Some who ascend the mountain have maps, compasses, sherpas to guide them, or a group of like-minded climbers to whom they are tethered. Others are free-climbers who find the challenge of scaling a sheer edifice exciting, and even an adrenaline rush. Many never leave the base-camp. But, no matter how you get to the top, some peaks vistas are simply more impressive than others. As for me to paraphrase AA Milne, I'm not lost for I know where I am... still climbing.