The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining items that are of interest to an individual collector. Collections differ in a wide variety of respects, most obviously in the nature and scope of the objects contained, but also in purpose, presentation, and so forth. The range of possible subjects for a collection is practically unlimited, and collectors have realised a vast number of these possibilities in practice, although some are much more popular than others.
In collections of manufactured items, the objects may be antique or simply collectable. Antiques are collectable items at least 100 years old, while other collectables are arbitrarily recent. The word vintage describes relatively old collectables that are not yet antiques.
Collecting is a childhood hobby for some people, but for others, it is a lifelong pursuit or something started in adulthood. Collectors who begin early in life often modify their goals when they get older. Some novice collectors start by purchasing items that appeal to them and then slowly work at learning how to build a collection, while others prefer to develop some background in the field before starting to buy items. The emergence of the internet as a global forum for different collectors has resulted in many isolated enthusiasts finding each other.
The most obvious way to categorize collections is by the type of objects collected. Most collections are of manufactured commercial items, but natural objects such as birds' eggs, butterflies, rocks, and seashells can also be the subject of a collection. For some collectors, the criterion for inclusion might not be the type of object but some incidental property such as the identity of its original owner.
Some collectors are generalists with very broad criteria for inclusion, while others focus on a subtopic within their area of interest. Some collectors accumulate arbitrarily many objects that meet the thematic and quality requirements of their collection, others—called completists or completionists—aim to acquire all items in a well-defined set that can in principle be completed, and others seek a limited number of items per category (e.g. one representative item per year of manufacture or place of purchase).[1] Collecting items by country (e.g. one collectible per country) is very common. The monetary value of objects is important to some collectors but irrelevant to others. Some collectors maintain objects in pristine condition, while others use the items they collect.
Value of collected items
Herbert Kullmann, picture sale catalogue by Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, May 1914.
After a collectable has been purchased, its retail price no longer applies and its value is linked to what is called the secondary market. There is no secondary market for an item unless someone is willing to buy it, and an object's value is whatever the buyer is willing to pay. Depending on age, condition, supply, demand, and other factors, individuals, auctioneers, and secondary retailers may sell a collectable for either more or less than what they originally paid for it. Special or limited edition collectables are created with the goal of increasing demand and value of an item due to its rarity. A price guide is a resource such as a book or website that lists typical selling prices.
Products often become more valuable with age. The term antique generally refers to manufactured items made over 100 years ago,[2] although in some fields, such as antique cars, the time frame is less stringent. For antique furniture, the limit has traditionally been set in the 1830s. Collectors and dealers may use the word vintage to describe older collectables that are too young to be called antiques,[3] including Art Deco and Art Nouveau items, Carnival and Depression glass, etc. Items which were once everyday objects but may now be collectable, as almost all examples produced have been destroyed or discarded, are called ephemera.
Psychological factors can play a role in both the motivation for keeping a collection and the impact it has on the collector's life. These factors can be positive or negative.[4]
The hobby of collecting often goes hand-in-hand with an interest in the objects collected and what they represent, for example collecting postcards may reflect an interest in different places and cultures. For this reason, collecting can have educational benefits, and some collectors even become experts in their field.
Maintaining a collection can be a relaxing activity that counteracts the stress of life, while providing a purposeful pursuit which prevents boredom. The hobby can lead to social connections between people with similar interests and the development of new friendships. It has also been shown to be particularly common among academics.[citation needed]
Collecting for most people is a choice, but for some it can be a compulsion, sharing characteristics with obsessive hoarding. When collecting is passed between generations, it might sometimes be that children have inherited symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Collecting can sometimes reflect a fear of scarcity, or of discarding something and then later regretting it.
Carl Jung speculated that the widespread appeal of collecting is connected to the hunting and gathering that was once necessary for human survival.[5] Collecting is also associated with memory by association and the need for the human brain to catalogue and organise information and give meaning to ones actions.[citation needed]
History
"Musei Wormiani Historia", the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities
Collecting is a practice with a very old cultural history. In Mesopotamia, collecting practices have been noted among royalty and elites as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE.[6] The Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty collected books from all over the known world at the Library of Alexandria. The Medici family, in Renaissance Florence, made the first effort to collect art by private patronage, this way artists could be free for the first time from the money given by the Church and Kings; this citizenship tradition continues today with the work of private art collectors. Many of the world's popular museums—from the Metropolitan in New York City to the Thyssen in Madrid or the Franz Mayer in Mexico City—have collections formed by the collectors that donated them to be seen by the general public.
The collecting hobby is a modern descendant of the "cabinet of curiosities" which was common among scholars with the means and opportunities to acquire unusual items from the 16th century onwards. Planned collecting of ephemeral publications goes back at least to George Thomason in the reign of Charles I and Samuel Pepys in that of Charles II. Collecting engravings and other prints by those whose means did not allow them to buy original works of art also goes back many centuries. The progress in 18th-century Paris of collecting both works of art and of curiosité, dimly echoed in the English curios, and the origins in Paris, Amsterdam and London of the modern art market have been increasingly well documented and studied since the mid-19th century.[7]
The involvement of larger numbers of people in collecting activities came with the prosperity and increased leisure for some in the later 19th century in industrial countries. That was when collecting such items as antique china, furniture and decorative items from oriental countries became established. The first price guide was the Stanley Gibbons catalogue issued in November 1865.
On the Internet
The Internet offers many resources to any collector: personal sites presenting one's collection, tools for tracking conditions and number of items collected, item identification tools, pricing guides, online collectable catalogs, online marketplaces, trading platforms, collector clubs, autograph clubs, collector forums, and collector mailing lists.
Some of the most popular collecting websites are StampWorld, Delcampe, and Numista.
Some of the most spread collectables online are stamps and coins.
Chaney, Edward, ed. (2003) The Evolution of English Collecting. New Haven: Yale University Press
Schulz, Charles M. (1984) Charlie Brown's Super Book of Things to Do and Collect: based on the Charles M. Schulz characters. New York: Random House, 1984, paperback, ISBN0-394-83165-9, (hardcover in library binding ISBN0-394-93165-3)
Redman, Samuel J. (2016) Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Shamash, Jack, (2013) George V's Obsession – a King and His Stamps
Shamash, Jack (2014) The Sociology of Collecting
Thomason, Alison Karmel (2005) Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia. Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
van der Grijp, Paul (2006) Passion and Profit: Towards an Anthropology of Collecting. Berlin: LIT Verlag. ISBN3-8258-9258-1
Notes and references
↑ For example, book collector Rush Hawkins (1831–1920) sought the first and second books from every European printer before 1501, while illuminated manuscript collector Henry Yates Thompson (1838–1928) maintained a collection of exactly 100 items, selling his least preferable items to make room for new ones.
↑ For example, the arts and crafts sales website Etsy requires "vintage" items sold on their platform to be "at least 20 years old". "Vintage Items on Etsy". 18 October 2017.[permanent dead link]
↑ Mueller, Shirley M. (2019). Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play. Seattle. ISBN978-0-9996522-7-5. OCLC1083575943.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Thomason, Alison Karmel Thomason (2005). Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia. Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Limited. ISBN0754602389.
↑ Chronologically some essential works are C. Blanc, Le trésor de la curiosité (1857–58), E. Bonnaffé, Les collectionneurs de l'ancienne France (1873), l. Courajod, La livre-journal de Lazare Duvaux (1873), L. Clément de Ris, Les amateurs d'autrefois (1877), A. Maze-Sencier, Le livre des collectionneurs (1893), G. Reitlinger The Economics of Taste (1961), G. Glorieux's monograph, À l'Enseigne de Gersaint (2002).
Coin collecting is the collecting of coins or other forms of minted legal tender. Coins of interest to collectors include beautiful, rare, and historically significant pieces. Collectors may be interested, for example, in complete sets of a particular design or denomination, coins that were in circulation for only a brief time, or coins with errors. Coin collecting can be differentiated from numismatics, in that the latter is the systematic study of currency as a whole, though the two disciplines are closely interlinked.
Costume or fashion jewelry includes a range of decorative items worn for personal adornment that are manufactured as less expensive ornamentation to complement a particular fashionable outfit or garment as opposed to "real" (fine) jewelry, which is more costly and which may be regarded primarily as collectibles, keepsakes, or investments. From the outset, costume jewelry — also known as fashion jewelry — paralleled the styles of its more precious fine counterparts.
A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time. Hobbies include collecting themed items and objects, engaging in creative and artistic pursuits, playing sports, or pursuing other amusements. Participation in hobbies encourages acquiring substantial skills and knowledge in that area. A list of hobbies changes with renewed interests and developing fashions, making it diverse and lengthy. Hobbies tend to follow trends in society. For example, stamp collecting was popular during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as postal systems were the main means of communication; as of 2023, video games became more popular following technological advances. The advancing production and technology of the nineteenth century provided workers with more leisure time to engage in hobbies. Because of this, the efforts of people investing in hobbies has increased with time.
Philately is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection and appreciation of stamps and other philatelic products. While closely associated with stamp collecting and the study of postage, it is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps. For instance, the stamps being studied may be very rare or reside only in museums.
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth century with the rapid growth of the postal service, as a stream of new stamps was produced by countries that sought to advertise their distinctiveness through their stamps.
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects.
A collectable is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector. Collectable items are not necessarily monetarily valuable or uncommon. There are numerous types of collectables and terms to denote those types. An antique is a collectable that is old. A curio is something deemed unique, uncommon, or weird, such as a decorative item. A manufactured collectable is an item made specifically for people to collect.
Philatelic investment is investment in collectible postage stamps for the purpose of realizing a profit. Philatelic investment was popular during the 1970s but then fell out of favour following a speculative bubble and prices of rare stamps took many years to recover.
An antique is an item perceived as having value because of its aesthetic or historical significance, and often defined as at least 100 years old, although the term is often used loosely to describe any object that is old. An antique is usually an item that is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human history. Vintage and collectible are used to describe items that are old, but do not meet the 100-year criterion.
Phillumeny is the hobby of collecting different match-related items: matchboxes, matchbox labels, matchbooks, matchcovers, matchsafes, etc.
Nazi memorabilia are items produced during the height of Nazism in Germany, particularly the years between 1933 and 1945. Nazi memorabilia includes a variety of objects from the material culture of Nazi Germany, especially those featuring swastikas and other Nazi symbolism and imagery or connected to Nazi propaganda. Examples are military and paramilitary uniforms, insignia, coins and banknotes, medals, flags, daggers, guns, posters, contemporary photos, books, publications, and ephemera.
Scouting memorabilia collecting is the hobby and study of preserving and cataloging Boy Scouting and Girl Guiding items for their historic, aesthetic and monetary value. Since collecting depends on the interests of the individual collector, the depth and breadth of each collection varies. Some collectors choose to focus on a specific subtopic within their area of general interest, for example insignia issued prior to the 1970s Boy Scouts of America requirement that all insignia have either the fleur-de-lis or the acronym BSA; or only the highest ranks issued by each nation. Others prefer to keep a more general collection, accumulating any or all Scouting merchandise, or Scouting stamps from around the world.
Deltiology is the study and collection of postcards. The word originated in 1945 from the collaboration of Professor Rendell Rhoades (1914-1976) of Ohio and colleagues at Ohio State University. A biographical sketch of Dr. Rhoades life by his wife Nancy, was provided to the Canadian Friends (Quaker) Historical Association in 1994. Dr. Rhoades had responded to a contest by Editor Bob Hendricks in Post Card Collectors Magazine to create a more scholarly name for the hobby of postcard collecting. 'Philocartist' was a term used in the early 1900s, possibly coined by the noted early philatelist Fred Melville in his 1903 publication The A.B.C. of Stamp Collecting
Baseball Hobby News was a United States-based news-oriented magazine about the field of baseball memorabilia collecting. Founded in 1979 by the husband-and-wife team of Frank and Vivian Barning, who served as editor and publisher, respectively, the magazine was published on a monthly basis until 1993.
As with many consumer products, early bicycles were purchased solely for their usefulness or fashionableness and discarded as they wore out or were replaced by newer models. Some items were thrown into storage and survived, but many others went to the scrapyard. Decades later, those with an interest in cycling and history began to seek out older bikes, collecting different varieties. Like other forms of collecting, bike collectors can be completists or specialists, and many have extensive holdings in bike parts or literature, in addition to complete bicycles.
Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–1963) was an American electrician and a collector of printed ephemera, including postcards, posters, cigar bands, and other types of printed materials dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1960s. He is best known for collecting trading and baseball cards in The American Card Catalog, otherwise known as the ACC.
Button collecting is the collecting of various types of clothing buttons.
Knife collecting is a hobby which includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining knives. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating an assortment of different knives. Others focus on a specialized area of interest, perhaps bayonets, knives from a particular factory, Bowie knives, pocketknives, or handmade custom knives.
Can collecting is the hobby of collecting cans, both aluminum and tin plate cans. There are many types of cans that can be collected from around the world, each with many different brands as well as brand variations and themes. Among the most popular cans to collect are soda ones, beer ones, and car oil ones, the latter of which are sometimes branded with well-known petrol company names. Other cans that may be considered as collectibles are milk cans coffee cans, syrup, salted peanuts, crayon and advertisement-oriented lithograph tins.
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