Knights & Knaves Alehouse

xyanthons last post in the marvel-thread made me think of a good friend of mine (he's even registred at this board as "meandthefarmer") is a BIIIIIIIIGGGGGG collector and his girlfriend hates it. it's the same with me and my wife (but on a much smaller level).

they asked me the question: "how many collections can you have before it must be seen as a form of mental illness?"

a second question is: "when you have completed a collection - what do you do with it? keep it in boxes in the cellar, keep it on display in your house/appartment, sell it...?"

my collections at the moment:
- d&d from chainmail to rules cyclopedia
- bike races on dvd
- cds from a few assorted bands (only regular cds . no wild bootleg chases any more)

i've collected MANY things in the past, but at a certain point - and when i've had to carry the stuff around in boxes two or three times, because my wife wanted to move house again, i tend to sell my collections of stones, stamps, ad&d-stuff, comics, records...

I collect and have collected:

Video Games -- Still collect these on occasion, but now my focus has shifted more towards "balancing" my collection--I have too many games of certain genres and not enough of others.

Books -- I've honestly thought of dumping all of these except for a few key favorites, and those key favorites I want to recollect in hardcover.

Comics (specifically TMNT) -- I stopped collecting these when I realized that collecting comics was unfeasible to someone who has no real source of income, and that most comics are overrated, stupid tripe written by angry teens or other idiots trying to push a "message."

Manga -- I actually ditched my entire manga collection in favor of Japanese editions, so I really don't have much of a collection anymore. I wouldn't mind having more, but I'm holding off until my language skills become more adequate.

Anime DVDs -- Right now this is on hold, because anime is too expensive and my collection, though small, is pretty balanced. That and I'm not really interested in most of the shows that are currently available in America and can't yet afford shows I have to import from Japan.

Cartoon DVDs -- Currently these are my focus.

Certain movies -- I haven't bought a non-animated movie in years and really, I find most of them to be as stupid as I found comic books, and even the ones I find good I can't bear to watch more than once, so I can't really see this collection getting any bigger.

RPG books -- Stopped collecting them because the only person I ever played with moved away.

Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh cards -- stopped collecting them because I didn't have the money and I was beginning to realize how utterly pointless both games were.

There's a fine line between "collecting" and "hoarding". Unfortunately I occassionally step over it: I've got a few motherboards with a blazing P120 CPU and an awfully low amount of RAM I won't throw out "just in case" (in case of WHAT?! - I dunno, but by god I got 'em!), I have ZIP disks galore even though the ZIP drive I have is a POS parallel drive (heck all ZIP drives suck), I've got old DOS software that, even if I got it working on XP through DosBox, would still run too fast...hmm...

Just too much junk that for one reason or the other I can't get rid of. :-/

I've got some low-quality medieval coins I collected at one point ... but not much else, actually.

"Collector" has a lot to do with your attitude about what you're accumulating, too. I have a lot of D&D books, but I write in them. Being a true "collector" of something, IMO, implies that you're looking for complete sets and not doing anything to lower the quality of what you've got in the collection. So, my D&D books don't really qualify as a collection, because I fail on both counts.

Obviously as I stated in the earlier thread I "collected" comics. I don't consider myself a true collector because I wasn't adamant about keeping them in pristine condition to maximize value. I read them quite a bit. I had collected from the time I was five until I was 27 or so (about seven years ago). Ever since I was very little, I wanted to be a comic book artist or do RPG art, or well, just about anything in that vein. I tended to justify my collection in terms of that. I would "use" them as study material to try and "keep up on the industry". You know, I was sort of like the waiter that collects all the info and trade magazines on the acting industry trying to make myself feel as if I was going to eventually make it in the industry. Finally, I realized that I just didn't really have the drive that it takes to be a serious comic book artist.

You know, a lot of the comics I got from friends and others who decided that they had grown up and didn't want their collections anymore. I am done collecting comics and plan on giving my collection to my son at some point. He's only 2 1/2 right now. However, he is showing some interest in comic book super heroes so I'll probably hand over at least a portion of my collection when he gets old enough to read and enjoy them.

Anyway, today I do "collect" RPGs. Now that I have a pretty good income, I feel that I can go back and get the stuff that I wanted but could never afford. I am pretty much happy with where my collection is at this point. I am a voracious reader and a very visual person, so I do like to have art books (I love medieval books of art and that sort of thing). I pretty much read so I don't collect in the sense of just acquiring stuff to accumulate value. I really like to pull it off the shelf, read through it and enjoy it thouroughly.