The psychology behind collecting

"oly" wrote in message
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On Feb 2, 11:08 am, Edwin Johnston wrote:

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It's my opinion that collectors involve themselves in attempting to
create order out of chaos. They pull things out of society that are
being scattered and organize them back together.

I guess that I am not a collector. Chaos is my second middle name,
Pack Rat is my third middle name.

Et tu, oly? It makes for one helluva monogram, don't it?

- JCPRM -

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"Arizona Coin Collector" wrote in message
m...

It's also can make good economic sense.

"It's a way of investing," Greenberg said. "Many
collectibles increase in value over time."

If by "Many" he means "A tiny fraction of", then I agree.

I would think that the "over time" part is the key. If you save
almost anything long enough, it will increase in value as a nostalgic
collectors item. Unfortunately, most of us usually will not live
long enough to profit from this foresight.

Even if the value does increase, given the token appreciation of some
"collectibles," the money might have been better invested in an
FDIC-insured bank account drawing 0.3%.

Most of the things I'm thinking about are items that would not have
been considered collectable and would have had zero value when new--
things like empty coffee tins, oil cans, cereal boxes, beer cans, etc.
After 50 to 100 years, anyone who would have saved instead of discarded
this type of thing would not only be considered balmy, but would be
able to sell many of them for a pretty penny. Things like this often
do better as long term investments than items that are considered
"collectibles" when new. You just have to put up with the raised
eyebrows from friends and neighbors.

I suspect that many of the props from period movies, like 1930s boxes of
cereal and soap, were bought or rented from prop houses at a pretty
penny. All you need to do is hang on to all your trash for 50 years or
more.

I looked into buying an empty example of the early-1950's Wheaties cereal
box I remembered as a kid that had the sports figure cards on the back,
but didn't want to pay the asking price of several hundred dollars for
one. I ate the cereal out of many of these boxes and saved all the cards
on the back, never considering saving one intact. I also saved all the
foreign coins from the mid-50's Wheaties box promotion, too. Hundreds of
empty beer can brands from the mid-1930's to the mid-1950's routinely
sell for well over $100, with several going for five figures. Obviously
most were discarded at the time, hence the stiff price for nice ones
today. I've got one I reluctantly paid $125 for back in 1980, but which
now sells for $1,000 to $1,500. I have them on display, so I would
hardly consider them as "trash", even though a non-collector might.

"One man's trash..."



I wish that I had saved a few of the Tennent's Lager cans with the lovelies
on them, a series of illustrations of attractive young ladies, very non PC
now of course. Billy