Do you collect anything?

el Fenomeno wrote: »

Most collections are a waste of money unless it's something that retains their value or increases....but I'm curious to see what other people have..

If they give people pleasure I say no harm done really. Many museum collections came from personal collections, and sometimes of things that had no apparent value when new or when being collected. Museums themselves have their origins from when personal collections were opened to the public. During the European age of exploration wealthy types started to collect oddball stuff from around the known world to show off to their mates. Some of these so called "Cabinets* of Curiosities" grew massive and some were opened to the wider public. At the start they were slapdash with curation, but books and the printed word started to increase the gra for indexing and study so they followed suit. I would agree that some collections, if not most end up dissipating or in a skip after the collectors peg it. That wastage is often how some things become rarer over time. There's a reason that something like the number 1 issue of the Superman comic might go for a million quid. It was seen as throwaway.

I've definitely got the collecting bug ever since I was a kid. I'd have collections of old books, antiques, human spaceflight stuff, watches, antiquities, minerals and fossils, a fair few vintage film posters, even some early IT stuff. My own very humble cabinet of curiosities as it were.

It's a very human thing and can be seen in our very earliest history where "cavemen" would collect unusual looking stones and shells and the like. The more modern we became the more that was in play.

banie01 wrote: »

Also have thanks to one of the darker corners of boards.ie developed an expensive addiction to watches!

I need help!

*Cabinet being an older word for a private room rarely heard today. Private being the thing as even the wealthy tended to have people living on top of them. Though you'll sometimes read or hear the UK government is "in cabinet" and that's where it comes from.