Collectors.

I had a few different topics in mind when I sat down to write this post, but as I logged in, I noticed that one of the "blogs of mention" or whatever it is that they link to with the hopes of supporting lesser-known blogs, and I could tell by its title that one of the blogs was dedicated to a vice which is nearly particular to the uncool nerds: stamp collecting. First, a caveat - I am not here to bash stamp collectors. My father is one. I just don't understand it. Having said that, I still stand by my claim.

The real question that seeing the aforementioned blog brought to my mind is: how do you define a collector? Most people would consider me to be a guitar collector. I prefer to think that I just happen to have a hell of a lot of guitars, and I know a lot about them, and guitars in general. Same with CDs - it's not like I actively seek out rare or out of print CDs, I just try to get music into my ears. I don't care about having original copies, usually; I'm often content just to borrow an album from a friend or anything like that. I tend to hoard books, but that speaks more to my tendency to re-read books, rather than my desire to have a lot of them. Hell, right now 90% of my darling books are residing in meticulously sorted boxes in my garage.

I have also noticed that the concept of collecting is somewhat foreign to the younger generations. Yes, I realize that at twenty seven I sound like a prick when I make generalizations about "younger generations", but I don't give a damn. How many kids these days have a stamp collection? Baseball cards are all but gone. (that's another blog, since that is all a product of corporate greed) Magic cards, the rage of my later grade school days have fallen to the wayside, but paved the way for things like Pokemon cards or Yu-Gi-Oh or Card Captors or whatever shit it is the nerdy kids are into these days. Action figures are not nearly what they once were (what kid didn't have a somewhat respectable group of Star Wars action figures back in the 80s??). All of it has been replaced by the desire to have the cool new technology before your friends do. Think about how many high school kids thought they were so ahead of the curve when they had their Sidekick like a year or two ago; they were such a status symbol that kids even wore them around their neck, though it's also due in part to the fact that they are too friggin' big to stick in a pocket. Still, imagine what must have gone through all those kids' heads when Apple unveiled the iPhone. Now that Apple is lowering the price, will ANYONE out there buy a Sidekick anymore? Hells no.

Sorry, got on a bit of an old man kick there for a minute. Back to collecting. I think at the core of the definition of "collecting" is the hands-off mentality. People who have stuff tend to use it. I read books and comics. I listen to my CDs, and when I have the opportunity to, even listen to my old LPs. I play all my guitars, though not at the same time. Collectors are the folks who worry about original packaging, resale value, original issue, and the term coined by collectors for collectors, "mint condition." These are the people who, as kids, refused to take their toys out of the packaging to play with them, preferring instead to look at them and examine every angle through the opaque plastic boxing. The teens who went to shows, bought a t-shirt of the band, hung on to the ticket stub, and put the whole thing artfully in a display under Plexiglas.

So what's the lure? Is it a sense of competitiveness? Is it genetic? Or are there some people who take more joy in seeing something cool or fun than interacting with it at the risk of causing it some slight damage. I could go on a whole tangent about the process of making new guitars into "relics", but that might take a whole other page. Let me know what you think, I'm curious as to what drives us as a culture to collect whatever it is that floats your boat. Maybe it will help explain why I have an entire shelf jam-packed with baseball cards in the uppermost reaches of my closet.