Collecting

Hobby of locating or acquiring items of interest

This article is about the hobby. For other uses of the general concept, see Collection (disambiguation).

File:Text document with red question mark.svg

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

|

Collecting

* Collectable
* Antique
* Antiquities

Terms

* Ephemera
* Premium
* Prize
* Souvenir
* Special edition

Topics

* List of collectables
* List of hobbies

* v
* t
* e

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 a lifelong pursuit or something started in adulthood. Collectors who begin early in life often modify their aims when they get older. Some novice collectors start purchasing items that appeal to them 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.

File:NutcrackerCollection.JPG

A collection of nutcrackers

## Contents

* 1 Types of collection
* 2 Value of collected items
* 3 Psychological aspects
* 4 History
* 4.1 On the Internet
* 5 Notable collectors
* 6 See also
* 7 Bibliography
* 8 Notes and references
* 9 External links

## Types of collection[edit | edit source]

File:Stamp album sleeve.jpg

Stamp album used for collecting stamps

See also: list of collectables

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[edit | edit source]

File:Herbert Kullmann May 1914 sale catalogue.jpg

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 aspects[edit | edit source]

See also: Psychology of collecting

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[edit | edit source]

File:1655 - Frontispiece of Museum Wormiani Historia.jpg

"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[edit | edit source]

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.

## Notable collectors[edit | edit source]

* Alfred Chester Beatty — various collections
* Barry Halper — baseball memorabilia
* Bella Clara Landauer — various, primarily ephemera
* Charles Wesley Powell — orchids
* Demi Moore — dolls
* Donald Kaufman — antique toys
* Forrest J Ackerman — books and movie memorabilia
* Geddy Lee — bass guitars
* George Gustav Heye — Native American artifacts
* George Weare Braikenridge — primarily art of Bristol
* Hans Sachs — posters
* Hans Sloane — natural history
* Harvey H. Nininger — meteorites
* Henry Wellcome — medical objects
* James Allen — antiques and photographs
* Joaquín Rubio y Muñoz — antique coins
* J. P. Morgan — various, primarily gems
* Kenneth W. Rendell — historical documents, primarily World War II
* King George V — stamps
* Magnus Walker — Porsches
* Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland — primarily natural history
* Philipp von Ferrary — stamps and coins
* Raleigh DeGeer Amyx — historical memorabilia
* Sam Wagstaff — various collections
* Tim Rowett — children's toys and novelties
* William Dixson — primarily Australiana

## See also[edit | edit source]

* Antique toy show
* Collectable
* Ephemera
* Hoarding
* Scientific collection
* Category:Collectors

## Bibliography[edit | edit source]

* Blom, Philipp (2005) To Have and To Hold: an intimate History of collectors and collecting. ISBN 1-58567-377-3
* Castruccio, Enrico (2008) "I Collezionisti: usi, costumi, emozioni". Cremona: Persico Edizioni ISBN 88-87207-59-3
* 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, ISBN 0-394-83165-9, (hardcover in library binding ISBN 0-394-93165-3)
* 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. ISBN 3-8258-9258-1

## Notes and references[edit | edit source]

1. ^ 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.
2. ^ For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection requires that an antique "must be over 100 years of age at the time of importation". U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP Information Center (27 September 2019). "Duty on personal and commercial imports of antiques, artwork". Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
3. ^ 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]
4. ^ Mueller, Shirley M. (2019). Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play. Seattle. ISBN 978-0-9996522-7-5. OCLC 1083575943.
5. ^ Schwager, David (17 January 2017). "Why Do We Want This Stuff? Eight Views on the Psychology of Collecting". CoinWeek. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
6. ^ Thomason, Alison Karmel Thomason (2005). Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia. Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Limited. ISBN 0754602389.
7. ^ 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).

## External links[edit | edit source]

File:Wikiquote-logo.svg

Wikiquote has quotations related to Collecting.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Collecting.

* Journal of the History of Collections
* Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick Collection. (Art collecting.)
* "Amass Appeal" Essay by Richard Rubin, AARP Magazine, March/April 2008.
* Mueller, Shirley M. (2019). Inside the Head of a Collector : Neuropsychological Forces at Play. Seattle. ISBN 978-0-9996522-7-5. OCLC 1083575943.

* v
* t
* e

Cultural heritage and historic preservation

Topics
and issues|

* Agents of deterioration
* Archival processing
* Archaeological science
* Archaeology
* Archive
* Bioarchaeology
* Calendar (archive)
* Conservation and restoration of cultural property
* Conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property
* Conservation and restoration of movable cultural property
* Conservation science (cultural property)
* Collecting
* Collection (museum)
* Collection catalog
* Collections maintenance
* Collections management
* Collections management system
* Cultural heritage
* Cultural heritage management
* Cultural property
* Cultural property documentation
* Cultural property exhibition
* Cultural property imaging
* Cultural property storage
* Cultural resources management
* Database preservation
* Deaccessioning (museum)
* Digital library
* Digital photograph restoration
* Digital preservation
* Disaster preparedness (cultural property)
* Film preservation
* Finding aid
* Fonds
* Found in collection
* Heritage asset
* Heritage science
* Inherent vice
* Intangible cultural heritage
* Integrated pest management (cultural property)
* Inventory (library and archive)
* Inventory (museum)
* Media preservation
* Mold control and prevention (library and archive)
* Museum
* Optical media preservation
* Preservation (library and archive)
* Preservation metadata
* Preservation survey
* Provenance
* Repatriation
* Ruins
* Sustainable preservation
* Treasure
* Web archiving

Roles
and expertise|

* Archivist
* Art dealer
* Art handler
* Auctioneer
* Collection manager
* Conservator-restorer
* Conservation scientist
* Conservation technician
* Curator
* Exhibition designer
* Mount maker
* Objects conservator
* Paintings conservator
* Photograph conservator
* Preservationist
* Registrar (cultural property)
* Textile conservator

Methods
and techniques|

* Aging (artwork)
* Anastylosis
* Arrested decay
* Cradling (paintings)
* Cultural property radiography
* Detachment of wall paintings
* Desmet method
* Display case
* Digital repository audit method based on risk assessment
* Historic paint analysis
* Inpainting
* Kintsugi
* Leafcasting
* Lining of paintings
* Mass deacidification
* Overpainting
* Paleo-inspiration
* Paper splitting
* Reconstruction (architecture)
* Rissverklebung
* Textile stabilization
* Transfer of panel paintings
* UVC-based preservation
* VisualAudio

Conservation
and restoration
of immovable
cultural property
by item type|

* Archaeological sites
* Frescos
* Heritage railways
* Historic gardens
* Outdoor artworks
* Outdoor bronze objects
* Outdoor murals

Conservation
and restoration
of movable
cultural property
by item type|

* Aircraft
* Ancient Greek pottery
* Bone, horn, and antler objects
* Books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera
* Ceramic objects
* Clocks
* Copper-based objects
* Feathers
* Film
* Flags and banners
* Fur objects
* Glass objects
* Herbaria
* Human remains
* Illuminated manuscripts
* Insect specimens
* Iron and steel objects
* Ivory objects
* Judaica
* Lacquerware
* Leather objects
* Lighthouses
* Metals
* Musical instruments
* Neon objects
* New media art
* Paintings
* Painting frames
* Panel paintings
* Papyrus
* Parchment
* Performance art
* Photographs
* Photographic plates
* Plastic objects
* Rail vehicles
* Road vehicles
* Shipwreck artifacts
* Silver objects
* South Asian household shrines
* Stained glass
* Taxidermy
* Textiles
* Tibetan thangkas
* Time-based media art
* Totem poles
* Vinyl discs
* Woodblock prints
* Wooden artifacts
* Wooden furniture

Intangible
cultural heritage
preservation|

* Ancient music
* Applied folklore
* Dance notation
* Early music
* Endangered language
* Ethnochoreology
* Ethnomusicology
* Ethnopoetics
* Family folklore
* Folklore
* Folk art
* Folk dance
* Folk etymology
* Folk instrument
* Folk medicine
* Folk music
* Folk process
* Folk play
* Foodways
* Folklore studies
* Heritage language
* Heritage language learning
* Indigenous intellectual property
* Indigenous culture
* Indigenous language
* Language death
* Language preservation
* Language revitalization
* Living history
* Oral history preservation
* Preservation of meaning
* Primitive music
* Tradition preservation
* Traditional knowledge

Notable
projects|

* Conservation issues of Pompeii and Herculaneum
* Conservation-restoration of Ecce Homo by Elías García Martínez
* Conservation-restoration of The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins
* Conservation-restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper
* Pompeian frescoes
* Conservation-restoration of the Shroud of Turin
* Conservation-restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes
* Conservation-restoration of the Statue of Liberty
* Conservation-restoration of the H.L. Hunley
* Conservation response to flood of Arno, Florence
* Modern and Contemporary Art Research Initiative
* Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template