now that my rant is over would you like to see my extensive collection of Star Trek memorabilia plates? The paint is toxic so we cannot eat from them so i just leave them in this box and bring it out when guests come over.
It's hard to choose the line between "don't yuck someone else's yum" and not wanting to endorse others' self-destructive tendencies.
Part of me wants to chastise you for gatekeeping other people's enjoyment[1], but I do agree that it can slip into dysfunction, and also agree that some companies downright push people in that direction (looking at you, microtransactions).
The Lego I would put in its own category because it was endlessly fascinating and rebuild-able. I used it all the time. The dinosaurs were at least educational.
But the keyrings were just hoarded and gathered dust. I'm trying to decide now if this was unhealthy and trained me to covet stuff, or if it was a good inoculation against the behaviour later in life. I now have zero interest in collecting anything just for the sake of collecting it. I'd rather be minimal where possible, and after accumulating a lot of crap in my early 20s (when owning stuff was a novelty) I now also try to avoid the "I might use that someday" trap.
I too like fountain pens and have about six, moderately priced, all made by 'Cross'. I put various coloured inks in them (I usually have about 3 good to go at any one moment) and ... I virtually never hand write anything.
The thing I have most of is certainly cables and tech widgets of various descriptions, but I don't try to collect them, somehow they just sort-of happen.
Make of that all what you will.
Mmm. That does remind of the quite nice social interaction some types of collecting gives. For example, a neighbour was a thimble collector so whenever visiting somewhere, we would look for a thimble. It gave us some entertainment as a tourist, like a treasure hunt, and then the nice moment to give it to the neighbour and show we were thinking of them while away.
It can go wrong though. I've known a few friends who have become associated with "a thing" because their family saw they owned one of "the thing" and now it's the exclusive theme of all presents but they don't have the heart to correct them and reveal all their presents were unwanted!
On the “associated” thing - not so much about collections but there was an interesting article on the guardian website a few months ago, about a woman who came to realise that ‘I like Prosecco’ was not a substitute for a personality, but she had run with it for so long that that was all she ever got as a gift, and she discovered her friends knew very little else about her. A one-dimensional character trap.
As an adult, I go by the motto of “Don’t save the candles”, which is to actually use the things you buy, even the expensive cutlery and the scented candles.
That makes me think that someone who is a hobby cable collector must have the easiest time of it!
People do collect all sort of non-expensive things (pebbles, seashells, ...) so it feels like just a coincidence that collecting pens means also collecting a lot of tools that will never be used.
So, yeah, I truly do not understand collecting Beanie Babies, Funko Pops, or fountain pens. But, I do collect coins. I find them interesting on multiple levels. I can't think of too many other hobbies that give one a good excuse to study history, economics, art, metallurgy, and more. So many things that happen involving humans and human societies also involve money and commerce. Going back to the rarity aspect, I own quite a few coins that are anywhere from quite scarce to truly rare. It also really helps that they don't take up a ton of space, either.
I don't see anything particularly maladaptive about it, except that it's a hobby that can take up arbitrarily much time and money. But, that's actually one thing I like about it: I could definitely have fun collecting coins on less than a $100/month budget, even though I actually spend quite a bit more than that on it. The acquisition process is fun as well. I like going to coin shops and coin shows. Buying online or at auction is slightly less fun, but it gives me a greater opportunity to find what I'm really looking for. When dealing with things that are, as I said, fairly scarce, the hunt itself becomes part of the enjoyment.
Not sharing this as a serious alternative, just sharing this as something nerdy and cool. It's a little more involved than coin collecting lol... but this guy making his own Carnyx (Celtic war horn) ticks many of those boxes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWTFIDAbDtY
A Carnyx being played:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRIQp4qZrrE
Engaging with history in very practical ways like this is very cool. I'd love to make my own Round House one day.
More of a business than a hobby, but still.
Like you, this isn't the mass market consumerism type of collecting, but is maybe a bit closer to it than your idea of somehow getting a working PDP-11.
Me too. Thankfully, buying old PDP-11 manuals on eBay and assembling a PiDP-11 satisfied that urge. I also live close to two good computer museums that have plenty of PDPs to poke around on, when they're working. Watching the graybeards diagnose and fix things on these 50+ year old machines reminds me why I don't want to do that at home.
In all likelihood, you and I find collecting sad and empty because we’re not collectors. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For all we know, collectors have found more fulfillment than we will ever know.
Undoubtedly for some it is a dysfunction; but for most, I suspect it taps into something common to most of us and is encoded by our evolutionary past given that for most of human prehistory we were equipped to deal with scarcity. For many with collecting hobbies, the target items are very specific and their practices don’t preclude moving effectively through life.
It's purely acquisitive and about the buying and getting and just seems quite sad and empty. Those afflicted become slaves to the companies pumping out items purely for this class of consumer. For example, "limited editions" and such are not rare because the product warrants it, it's just designed scarcity to press the buttons of the collectors and extract the most money from them. Or it's bidding wars on vintage items like wine where huge price inflation happens just for the collection kudos not the virtues of the item itself.
For example, I like fountain pens, but I can't really read r/fountainpens because it's mostly people building huge collections of pens and getting excited about buying a new pattern or colour of pen they already own. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing their full collections of 100s of fantastic tools that will sit idle for the vast majority of their life until the owner passes and a relative has to liquidate things they don't understand.
It looks like a dysfunction to me - a stimulation seeking addiction which is not satisfied by the next acquisition and will never fill the emptiness, the need, the dream, of the collector. I know people will be super defensive about their collecting but I would love for that money and energy to be redirected towards higher degrees of self-actualisation. It feels like a failure scale the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and get stuck in a loop down the bottom. Instead of creating novelty or growing, there is something safe, comfortable and unchallenging to just acquire.