OT: Do You Have a "Collector" Gene?

[marzoumanian]

I’ve always wondered if I was born with a “collector” gene. I started collecting U.S. pennies when I was a kid, just by looking through my change. Then it was U.S. stamps. I still have my old Scott Minuteman album and started collecting stamps again when I retired seven years ago.
I began following baseball when I was 10 (late bloomer) and was collecting Topps baseball cards regularly in 1967, at 12. That’s probably why cards from this year still remain my favorite.
Okay, I know that none of us are born with a “collector” gene. But now that I’ve stopped collecting baseball cards, I have been wondering what started me on this collecting journey decades ago. Of course, I started out like we all do: Love of the game and the players who excel at it. Like many of you, I stopped when I graduated high school and am fortunate mom didn’t throw out my collection. The key question I want to answer at this stage of my life is: Why did I start collecting baseball cards again 13 years after graduating high school?
Part of the answer is a mix of classic cliches. One is reliving my childhood, when I had almost no worries and no bills to pay. Then there’s the desire to complete my sets from the late 1960s and early 1970s. And let’s not forget the thrill of the hunt. Going to card shows throughout the country in search of that raw star card or high number in near mint or even mint condition was, in a word, fun.
As an adult, collecting baseball cards allowed me to enjoy the sport I have loved for decades. When I would work on my collection I didn’t worry about my job obligations or paying my bills. It was just me, my cards, and my memories. You could call it my cocoon. While I’ve read that collecting cards can be addictive, I’ve never crossed that line. Why? Because when I got back into the hobby in 1985 I set a goal for myself: Collect every Topps baseball card set from 1952 to present. Did I deviate from this goal by purchasing non-Topps baseball card sets? Yes. But I still stuck to that original goal and almost accomplished it.
Shirley Mueller, MD, has addressed reasons why we collect. She says one of the most common psychological reinforcers for collecting is the pride we feel buying new items. Then there’s finding a rare piece at a modest price point. We all know that feeling. And we can’t forget the thrill of the chase. That’s why I always enjoyed going to card shows both locally and throughout the country, carrying my neatly-typed want lists. I was a set collector, which meant I would go from booth to booth, scanning each table for any sign that the exhibitor would have the cards I needed. It got to the point that I would know which booth to automatically skip and which to make certain to visit. It took effort but the quest was fun. And isn’t that what any hobby should be?
I will admit there have been times when I’ve wondered if I am a hoarder. For example, if I subscribe to Sports Illustrated, I don’t like to throw an issue out until I’ve finished reading it. So, magazines have a tendency to pile up in my living room. I’ve been able to reduce such stacks by paging through each issue and tearing out articles I feel I must read.
But when it comes to baseball cards, I’ve concluded I’m not a hoarder. Setting a goal 37 years ago was a big help. I’m no longer an active collector now. I decided it was time to move onto other activities I wanted to enjoy before I die, like travel and reading some of the many books I’ve accumulated over the years.
The other day I came across an essay in The New York Times by Ahmir Questlove Thompson. He leads The Roots, the house band for “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” He wrote about the joys he finds in collecting. In his case it’s vinyl records and print magazines, including near-complete sets of Ebony and Rolling Stone.
“A collection starts as a protest against the passage of time and ends as a celebration of it,” he wrote. I like that. It resonates with me.
I say embrace and celebrate the passage of time. Revel in it. You deserve to, no matter what your friends, wife or significant other might say about your card collecting habit.

P.S. If you would like to read more of my monthly columns, visit www.markearzoumanian.com and then click on “Love of the Hobby.”

[Hankphenom]

It could be a reflection of our hunter/gatherer past, or the human drive to achieve, or any number of other psychologies at work, but it's there, for sure. I love it when somebody declares that they're not a collector and I point out the four or five decorative pairs of salt and pepper shakers on their window sill. "Oh, I just got those when my aunt passed away, and I had always liked the way they looked." Uh, OK. I don't think there are many people who don't have more than one of something for the sole reason that having them gives them pleasure. Like most things, it's a bell curve, with most people like my example above in the middle, and most of us here tending toward the outer edge.

[ullmandds]

I DO believe in the collector gene...most of us in my family have it. Started rummaging/scavenging through the neighborhood trash as a kid...older kids in the neighborhood provided GI Joe, Bazooka comics in the trash. To this day I am a scavenger...always looking for things of value that are free. My sister has taken this to new heights in nyc scavenging all kinds of crazy stuff out of the trash...it's unreal what people/business throws away...many perfectly good, new objects, things. She devotes a good portion of her life to placing these scavenged items where people in need can benefit from them.

Oh and theres baseball cards too!!!!!

[bmattioli]

Hi, I'm Bruce and a life long collector.. I'll collect what I like until I'm dead..

[sb1]

Let's see.... stamps, coins, baseball cards, license plates, insulators, barbed wire, medicine bottles, fruit jars, hot wheels, magazines, GI Joe's and way too many more, ALL before the age of sixteen, most continue to this day along with many other areas of interest...Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Tintypes, cabinet cards....and the occasional car....

[JollyElm]

'Collector' gene? Ha! My mom called it the hoarding gene...and I got it.

[Republicaninmass]

Apparantly someone was walking around the national saying it was a type of Asperger's. I kid you not

[HexsHeroes]

.
Started with Mercury dimes, onto all vintage/tougher date coins, modern rookie baseball cards, vintage baseball cards, vintage baseball autographs & photographs, quality whiskies. Shorter list than some. Far too long in the eyes of my better half. Her words . . . "don't leave me with all that cr*p" when you die".

[nwobhm]

Originally Posted by marzoumanian

I’ve always wondered if I was born with a “collector” gene.

It's called OCD.... I never met a collector that didn't have it.

[skelly423]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

'Collector' gene? Ha! My mom called it the hoarding gene...and I got it.

There's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. I think it comes down to the number of cats that live among your "collection".

Whatever you choose to call it, I've got the gene. Baseball cards, hockey cards, coins, paper money, watches, I've got boxes of all of them.

[ullmandds]

my collections include studio pottery, dice, danish/mid century modern furniture and stuff, art, coins, baseball/sportscards and memorabilia...I try to keep things under control!

[butchie_t]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

'Collector' gene? Ha! My mom called it the hoarding gene...and I got it.

What Elm said!

Ditto for me.

We are beginning to pack things up for a move later this year. It is amazing how much one can "collect" cough.....over 20 years in one house.

Freakin' AMAZING!!!!!

[butchie_t]

Originally Posted by nwobhm

It's called OCD.... I never met a collector that didn't have it.

I would rename it to BCCD - Baseball Card Collecting Desire. And the Macro of that would be; SCCD - Sports Card Collecting Desire (covers all bases...pardon the pun)

This sounds much nicer than a disorder.

[rjackson44]

collect art ,antique,s toys, hockey cards, type cards.my mom and sister are big collectors

[darwinbulldog]

Almost certainly, collecting as a hobby is influenced by multiple genes, and yes, I happen to have a combination that has predisposed me toward collecting. Neither of my parents is much of a collector, nor is my spouse, but it's pretty clear that at least one of my children is wired the same way I am in that respect.

I was going to add "but she also hoards trash in her room." Then I looked down and noticed the pile of used mailers, cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, and packing peanuts I've had stuffed under my desk for the past several years.

[jchcollins]

If there is indeed any type of gene, it no doubt started for me on my mother's side of the family. They were not collectors per se, and not really hoarders with a problem either - but they just never threw anything away. This stretches back several generations, as can be attested to by the luggage receipts (train, not airline...) I have in my basement from the mid 1800's, letters to my great great grandmother with Civil War references in them, and perhaps most interestingly - land deed records that I have no idea who they even belonged to, which date back to the late 1700's. Much of it (as you will sometimes hear said about cards) is random ephemera that shouldn't have been around for the next 5 years after it was made, let alone the next 150 or 250.

For me, collecting is not so much a completion / order thing as it is a pride of possession thing. I know that at least when I first started buying cards at age 9 in 1986, set collecting was all the rage - and even to this day I know people in the hobby who could care less if the card they needed to complete their set was Mickey Mantle or Mickey Vernon; to them it was about the complete set and the order and symmetry that represented. But that was never me. I am now collecting some vintage sets, but they truthfully are not my priority - and likely will take me years more to finish with.

For me, and this goes back to probably age 10 or 11 - it was when I first realized there were not just brand new Topps cards in packs for sale, but "old cards" (today what we would call vintage...) that that first real audible click occured in my brain that said more or less "Hey. This is going to be a huge interest for you." There was something about being able to hold something that was there at the time from the past that just did it for me. This was the late 1980's for me, so my thought process would go something like "You know, Hank Aaron may be retired and 50 something years old now, but here is his baseball card from 1964, the year he hit 24 homers and batted .328..." In this way, old cards instantly became my little passport to a bygone era. In the 80's, the 1960's to me, even though only 20 years earlier - an era when my parents would have been in high school and college - might as well have been ancient history. Also in this particular example, the fact that the image on the card has a smiling Hank pictured with a bold "M" on his cap was an even bigger bonus. Here was a team that technically didn't even exist anymore! How frigging cool is that? The example almost seems silly to me on the time passage today and doesn't not jive at all. 20 years ago today was 2002. I was married and we had just bought our first house. As far as pop-culture, nothing to me seems extraordinarily different - even though I know it is. This is called getting old. But I digress...

Like the original post mentions, I went through the typical cycles with my collecting. Stopped for the most part buying new packs when I started high school in 1993. Found old cards again with some of the early online auctions as a college senior in 1999. Quit again when I went back to grad school in 2003, and remained dormant in the hobby until after my kids were past the "little" stage when I again got interested around the holidays in 2014. For me it is the pride of possession overall, but I would agree with the notion of it being my cocoon. When I'm flipping through old cards, I'm not worried about work or the bills or the news or anything else. I'm 12 years old again without a care in the world.

What continues to surprise me about this hobby and me personally is it just never gets old. I'm 45 and now have been back at this pretty passionately for the last 7 years or so. And yep, I get off on it just as hard as I can every time just like when I was a kid. I hope to be able to for decades to come.

[Exhibitman]

Absolutely has to be innate. I've been collecting something since I was a kid and am always seeing new stuff I'd not mind collecting. Neither parent has it, though, so it must be a recessive gene. My father in particular could never see the value in any of it. He used to work for a company that did entertainment public relations, and nearly 40 years ago ordered me to spend one spring break clearing files and moving about 50 file cabinets. The drudgery became a monumental pick when I realized that the stuff they were junking was a treasure trove of entertainment memorabilia. i asked him if i could keep the contents and he said sure. He had no idea that there was value in there because he never collected anything. I think I got paid about $30 for my work but hauled away five figures in entertainment memorabilia that he was just gonna throw away. I took that stuff to shows, started a wholesale business to the souvenir shops in Hollywood, made thousands in extra income as a student, all from that pick. I've still got stuff I picked that day, and some vintage baseball cards I bought with the proceeds. It even got me into the 1991 Anaheim National on a dealer's pass. I waited in line five hours day 1 to get in then found a dealer who had entertainment stuff and was interested in a trade for some T202s. I came back the next day and had him walk me in as part of the deal. Here is a card from that trade (i subbed to SGC later on):

[bmattioli]

Originally Posted by nwobhm

It's called OCD.... I never met a collector that didn't have it.

The disease OCD is often mistakenly used when describing a collecting habit. It is a terrible disease and very controlling to those that have it.. Somedays are worse then others.. Anyone who suffers understands..

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by bmattioli

The disease OCD is often mistakenly used when describing a collecting habit. It is a terrible disease and very controlling to those that have it.. Somedays are worse then others.. Anyone who suffers understands..

That's true. It is a misuse of the term. I would say that the more accurate assessment is that a larger % of collectors than in the general populace are on the spectrum...what used to be called "Aspergers Syndrome". Aspies tend to have certain traits that favor collecting as opposed to neurotypicals (NTs): tunnel vision focus on specific subjects (like cards or Star Trek), encyclopedic knowledge of arcana related to the subject (like T206 variations), relatively poor social skills, atypical and muted emotions, and strong tendencies towards organizing things. It favors solitary pursuits and development of deep and narrow expertise, but feelings, forget that. Or as my wife often says exasperatedly about me and my daughter: "living with you two is like living with a pair of Vulcans". Of course she is correct; she's also highly illogical, as are most NTs.

[todeen]

My wife doesn't have it. And she hates that I do. I believe in the gene though. Minimalists like my wife lack a clear understanding of the joy I get from buying, receiving, sharing.

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[Yoda]

Just because I have 4,782,231 baseball cards doesn't necessarily make me a hoarder. Does it?

[Deertick]

Originally Posted by skelly423

There's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. I think it comes down to the number of cats that live among your "collection".

Whatever you choose to call it, I've got the gene. Baseball cards, hockey cards, coins, paper money, watches, I've got boxes of all of them.

Uh-oh. What's the cut-off? Asking for a friend.

[Vit-d]

I’ve got it.

I am not one of the worst of the worst, but for the past 20 years or so, I’ve always had some sort of item that I am on the hunt for. Baseball cards, comic books, action figures, etc. Right now it is the little “Homies” Gumball machine figures from the early 2000s.

The reason I suspect it might be a gene is because I know my grandfather on my dads side had it too. He was a big collector of postcards, old tin type photos, and buttons. He used to go to swap meets and collectible shows all over the place looking for those things.

[todeen]

If we're going to call it a gene, rather than an inclination, than yes, I do. My grandma collected furniture and milk glass and brass. My mother started collecting milk glass and brass with my grandma and started to cross stitch and quilt. Their milk glass collection is top notch and includes the boars head and swimming fish bowl. You should look those up. I started with cards and memorabilia, and picked up the furniture tic once I moved out. My mother's uncle is an outdoorsman, and spends his money on fishing tackle. He used to have a gun collection, but his house was broken into and he lost that; he never attempted to replace it. My dad collected records and memories. From him I got involved with family history. So I also have a photograph collection of family, although many of those are copies.

My wife doesn't have it. Her father doesn't collect because he likes new stuff and will get rid of old stuff to have new stuff. He is also a gift giver, and will spend his money on everyone else. Her mother is a minimalist. When she was 20, the stage coach hotel that her family lived in caught fire and burned down and she lost all her possessions. From then on she has been a minimalist. When my wife was 10, her father experienced a work lockout that lasted 24-36 months. So then they didn't have any money to spend on hobbies anyway. That led my wife to be a minimalist, and she hates my baseball card collection.

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[todeen]

Originally Posted by Vit-d

The reason I suspect it might be a gene is because I know my grandfather on my dads side had it too. He was a big collector of postcards, old tin type photos, and buttons. He used to go to swap meets and collectible shows all over the place looking for those things.

Like others on this site, my mother started taking me to antique stores when I was 6 or 7. She said we were good at understanding hands-off. She also told me she wouldn't take my kids to antique stores!



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[Den*nis O*Brien]

.... I would suggest that you not dismiss the "Collecting Gene" theory. I say this from the following personal experiences........
I was surrendered at birth for adoption in 1947 and had no knowledge of my biological family and no contact. I have been a life long collector, scrounger and salvager. I worked a route of neighborhood garbage pick up days with my coaster wagon in the mid 1950's I still have a great catchers mitt from those picks. And of course hoarded my wax pack treasures from the corner store. In the 1970's my wife and I survived by picking auctions, garage sales and etc. I found my birth mother and biological sister in the late 1980's. They were both avid and passionate garage sale, resale shop, alley trash can pickers that had an incredible "Radar" for valuable treasures. They each had a niche collection that they kept but made a tidy living on the balance. I was bowled over by some of the items they found in one dollar gallon zip lock bags at a few resale shops. They just had instincts and a love of hunting treasures. So make of that what you will but I firmly believe in "The Gene".

[brian1961]

Dennis, your personal story was very moving, and I thank you for sharing it.

I definitely have the "Collector gene". I took a break from working on income taxes, so though I'd like to elaborate, I better get back to work. However, I surely have it, and have had it as long as I can remember.

--- Brian Powell