Why do you collect?

[Kutcher55]

In a word, nostalgia. I try to collect things that are connected to my earlier days.

Back when I was a kid I had the Picture History of the Boston Red Sox, and read it twenty different times. So I need the players from that book.

Yaz hit a home run to win my dad a car when I was six years old. So I collect Yaz in particular.

In the first Red Sox game I went to, Freddy Patek hit 3 home runs and a double, so I need his 1980 Topps card.

I got into the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers when I was a teenager. So I collect those guys.

I have always felt the 75 mini set has a certain mystique, so I collect that.

I used to bowl at the Sammy White bowladrome as a kid, so I PC his stuff.

etc.

[tachyonbb]

I collected as a kid, when I was 12 I completed the Topps 1960 set. My daughter had an interest also and she scored a T206 card in a Topps pack. That started my trek down the T206 rabbit hole. I only pick up a couple of cards a year but have fun looking at the cards. I am currently working on the 1954 and 1964 sets.

[mortimer brewster]

Collecting keeps me off the streets of Western New York. If I didn't collect I would be a menace to society.

Seriously, it's a nice diversion from the everyday pressures of life.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Kutcher55

In a word, nostalgia. I try to collect things that are connected to my earlier days.

Originally Posted by bmattioli

I have collected all my life. Like many others here you are born to collect..

Originally Posted by JollyElm

My venture into the collecting world started with the first long, fun walk through the woods and neighborhoods (in the days when moms actually allowed their children to go off on their own) to finally reach the stationery store and buy a pack of cards with my older brothers, and has always stayed interwoven in my life, come what may.

I see the pursuit as a cardboard time machine, whether that involves marveling at cards that came out before we were born (and sending you off to read about those times and players) or remembering your childhood baseball card escapades with your friends.... So, yeah, nostalgia.

Yes, that's precisely it. Nostalgia is what prompted me back down the collecting rabbit hole because I have the collecting(hoarding?) gene.

I marveled at the cards that the older kids had in the schoolyard when I started first grade. These included Topps Flags of the World, TV Westerns and Zorro:







I was awe struck by the 1958-59 Topps Hockey cards and 1959 Baseball cards when they hit the playground. By that summer I had the financial wherewithal to start buying and collecting the 1959 CFL cards myself. I then dabbled in each year's Hockey, Baseball and CFL cards together with certain non-sports sets such as Sports Cars, Spook Theatre and Civil War News. Then in the summer of 1963 a buddy and I went big time into amassing every single card we could get our hands upon and gathered up about 6500 different ones. But I then turned over my half of my collection to my buddy when I went off to boarding school in Kennebunkport, Maine in 1965. He then turned the collection over to the snot nosed kid across the street a few months later.

But the memory of those cards never left me. By 1969-70 I was looking back and wishing I still had the 1959 and 1960 CFL cards I'd had as a kid. And in 1979 as a young man with a good job I decided to re-amass the treasures - e.g. cards, comics, model kits - of my formative years.

It's snowballed from there. I have far more of all these items now than I ever imagined having as a kid. But possessing them has always brought me delight, and I've now reached the stage in my life where they bring me the comfort I envisaged they would one day (once I'm too old and grey to be the young punk hot rodder I was as a young man).

But I'm actually unhappy when I've not been able to add to my various collections for a year or two. Therefore I have of course frequently questioned my motivation. Sure they're a mental snapshot that provides me with a very real link to my younger days, but why am I so resistant to just letting go of bygone days? Am I actually addicted to collecting? Am I any less pathetic than an alcoholic or a drug addict? Well, at least this collecting business neither destroys my health nor kills brain cells. (Participating in various collectible forums actually helps me improve my writing skills!) And like I say, my collections now actually bring me comfort!