Confessions of a Collector Part 3

 

Wow I forgot that I had written a third part to this about a book by Hunter Davies.

To jog the memory Part 1, Part 2.

 

I have just completed a very interesting book about collecting by the journalist Hunter Davies. He writes with such as easy and friendly style that you are drawn in. A little hint of you wants to get on the phone and call to say -'Hey I collected that...'

In Confessions of a Collector, Hunter maps the course of his collecting obsessions. He refers to his collecting as 'obsessive' because that is what he becomes, absolutely obsessed, with collecting every possible item he can. He rarely refuses to an offer of items relating to his collections.

The Beatles are his longest and most expensive collecting obsession, but he doesn't draw the line there. His collections span subjects such as football, autographs, suffragettes, Penny Black stamps, Prime Ministers, Coronation mugs, magazines and other pieces of assorted ephemera like postcards, invoices and letters from the Victorian era. He never apologises for collecting, but it is obvious that he a little troubled by his need to keep matchboxes, napkins and coasters from places he visits.

There is an pause in the showcasing of his collections, a chapter called 'Joys and Pains of Collecting.' In this interlude he asks: 'Why do we collect?' and 'What is the joy in collecting?' Questions I have asked myself many times.

Why...oh why...?

Being a cleverer gent than myself, Hunter has determined that there are 9 reasons why people (although not exclusively, but mostly men) collect.

1. Hunter-Gathering.

Apparently going back to ancient roots. There is delight in going out foraging, looking for treasure, or even scraps that might just turn out to be interesting. It takes cunning, patience and knowledge to bag the 'Big One'- just like hunting. The more you collect , the less likely you will come home empty handed, without a kill.

2. Possessing.

Possession gives you a great feeling, knowing you own something. Spinning out the pleasure for several days in order to truly savour the latest find.

3. Completion.

It feels pretty good to complete sets, runs and rows of objects, hunting down and then finally bagging that missing item, till at long last you have filled all the gaps. Although collectors often create their own gaps, just as they create their own hunt in the first place. Set ourselves goals and just when we finally finish the task we set ourselves, we create another. In the process building something unique.

4. Knowledge.

How else would we know that-  'Rick Monday hit 3 homers in a game in 1972',  Robin Yount's older brother Larry, pitched for the Astros and that one day he would like to be a professional golfer or race motorcycles or 'Which team suffered the most shut-outs in one season?' Well we know this from the backs of baseball cards. Likewise knowing the history of a sport can be completely fascinating. I like to know the provenance of my cards and packs, it makes collecting them a little more interesting particularly here in the UK. How did unopened packs land on these shores? What is a 1939 Goudey card doing as a bookmark in a book shoved in the back of a charity shop? It would be interesting to know, perhaps even more interesting than knowing that no one has ever a home run out of the Yankees Stadium, although 1963 Mickey Mantle came awfully close. Knowledge is good, knowledge is power.

5. Escape.

A wonderful escape and distraction from the humdrum of a busy life. I started poking around looking for baseball card collectors in the UK in late 2007, as a distraction from a new, stressful job, that I was hating. Laying awake at night thinking about the solutions to problems that may develop the in next day or week. In the process I found Ben Henry, A Pack a Day and Thorzul. The therapy, the easing of my psychological problems, this means of escape was soothing my troubled soul and I had found people of a similar ilk. All I had to concern myself with now, was when a little yellow package would be slipping through my letterbox.

6. Investment.

My dad would say 'A Mug's Game.' Hunter suggests, 'Never collecting to make money - only acquire what interests you'. If this is your reason for collecting certain items in the hope that it will one day pay off your mortgage or university tuition for one of your children. Stop right now. Look at all those people who bought boxes of cards in the ninety's. I've often thought about buying a load of cards to 'cherry pick' the ones I want and sell the rest to invest in more cards but my wife, four children and so may other things like food snap me back to reality.
7. Perfect for Loners
Hunter points out that there are may hobbies people take up in which to interact with others, he lists sports mainly and hints that certain collectors can happily be in their own little worlds collecting in the privacy of their own house. I must disagree with this one entirely. For as long as I have been collecting baseball cards, I have searched for collectors with similar habits, to discuss, compare and 'swap'. I didn't really find many people of a similar persuasion until I started blogging. A whole massive world (literally) of relationships developed and new ones being created regularly. I feel the pursuit of baseball collecting has become far more enjoyable since I started trading/getting in contact with other collectors. I am no longer alone..sniff, sniff.
8. Identity
I collect, therefore I am. There is importance and self worth in being a knowledgeable collector. It is unfortunate that there are very rich collectors who can outbid, gobble up all the 1of 1's, super refractors and mega relics depriving the rest of us those unique pieces for our collection. Yet, in moderation, the feeling of many collectors that their hobby somehow sets them apart is no bad feeling. 'There is nothing wrong in self worth.'

I really enjoyed reading this book.

Confessions of a Collector: Or How to be a Part-Time Treasure Hunter
Hunter Davies
224 pages
Publication Date: 15 Oct 2009 | ISBN-10: 1847246044 | ISBN-13: 978-1847246042
 

 

Confessions of a Collector Part 2

This is the continuation of Part 1
I recently completed this fascinating book by Hunter Davies, a well known journalist/novelist in the UK. He talks about being an accumulating collector. He hypothesises that there are two distinct species of collector, accumulators and serious collectors. 

The serious collector goes out of their way to collect, and actively searches for items. You don't have to spend much money, or acquire masses, but you do have to be serious enough to go forth and collect. Then there is the accumulator, a much more passive animal. A collector who doesn't really throw anything away and amasses 'stuff'.

He suggests that he started as an accumulator and then moved onto serious collecting. As he became older he had more time on his hands, more money, his children had grown older and then there was the dawning realisation that he had accumulated some interesting items along the way.  Although he says he has about 100 collections on the go, for the sake of writing this book he condenses them into 16 specific categories, although he adds that there is overlapping of his collections.

I tried to think back to all the collections that I have started, because like Hunter I never went out and actively collected. For instance- my primary collecting area for many years has been baseball. If baseball items became available for sale on e-bayUK I would bid. In the earlier days of e-bayUK, I'm talking 2000ish, I won many of the baseball cards items listed, usually unchallenged. At this time there didn't appear to be any active baseball collectors in the UK. Primarily it was cards that people had bought back from holidays, or been given by someone who had been on holidays. Occasionally vintage cards came up for sale. I'm talking about pre-1980, hoping not to offend with the vintage tag. These attracted some attention but considering what they were, it was minimal. Gradually more collectors appeared and more baseball cards, I then became more discerning and only went for the interesting and unusual or cards that I had never seen before. I accumulated 1000's of cards. Thankfully I was able to trade most of them away and become a serious collector of Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox and vintage. I'm still not that serious, don't get me wrong I enjoy baseball cards, but if I was a serious collector I would own the black parallel 2005 Bowman rookie. But I don't.

So thinking back to other collections I have had such as stamps. My dad worked for a company that dealt with Japanese companies, so I had many Japanese stamps and coins. I also accumulated matchbox cars, I didn't think to keep the boxes because I wanted to play with the cars not the boxes. For a while I collected train tickets. I had masses of train tickets. There was in the 1970's a radio station called 2SM which produced, on a piece of paper, a top 40 singles list. It came out every week and we had a record shop very close so I was able to get those and some posters advertising records. Later I accumulated a large stack of 'singles' records. 

I have already mentioned the aluminium milk bottle tops. For a while I collected money boxes. The local banks produced different money boxes sans money. My biggest collection was football cards - rugby league and Aussie Rules. When I was collecting, Scanlens was the biggest producer of cards in Australia. The designs I realise now are similar to the baseball and football cards in the USA. I collected, traded, ticket off my checklists every year. I even save the labels from Ardmona peaches to send for complete sets of cards.
Even back then I collected stickers; my bedroom door was adorned with overlapping stickers. Two I remember specifically- A large Fußball macht spaß German sticker which roughly translated is Football is fun and a bright orange sticker that said I'm mad about muffins. Where these came from is anybody's guess.
Another ongoing accumulation was Ephemera, all manner of magazines, Asterix and Tin Tin books, clippings from newspapers, postcards, computer punch cards (again from my father's work), cards from Weetbix and Sanitarium cereal boxes. Boy did I collect some crap. But reading Confessions of a Collector, it appears that I wasn't alone.
Think back...what were the most obscure items you collected?

Confessions of a Collector Part 1

I have just finished reading this book by a pretty well known newspaper columnist in the UK, Hunter Davies. Not a hack rag tabloid phone hacker either, he is a proper journalist. If you're a Beatles fan you may recognise Hunter as the only person to write an authorised biography of the Beatles. He describes himself as a compulsive collector and goes into great details about his numerous collections. He also talks about why he chose particular areas of collecting.

Hunter started with stamps. I am sure there are many of us, of a certain age, who collected stamps. Unfortunately the glory days of stamps and stamp collecting are behind them. I still carefully remove stamps from envelopes and packages, mainly because it is so unusual to have stamps now. It is all pre-printed and computer generated labels, which is disappointing because stamps can be very interesting. 

Whenever we receive a parcel or letter from my parents in Australia, it always has stamps. I not sure if the Australian postal system doesn't have printed labels or whether my parents, being 80plus, use stamps out of habit.  They are a minority. Recently the Royal Mail issued Thunderbirds stamps and this bought the stamp collector within me back again.

Hunter talks about swapping stamps, laying awake scrutinising his stamps and learning a great deal about other countries from stamps like: kings and queens, plants and animals, holiday celebrations, science and space, that sort of educational stuff. But he also talks about them being therapeutic. He was ill with asthma in his childhood and all the allergy testing and prescribed medicines didn't work. However he found that the distraction of immersing himself in his collection would offer relief. He also collected cuttings from newspaper about his favourite football team, postcards from interesting places, marbles and comics. Then he went off the university and forgot about his various collections. This all sounds very familiar.

In my pre-secondary school childhood I collected football cards (I even kept the wrappers), football programmes and a weekly magazine called Big League. For a short time I collected milk bottle tops, the aluminium foil type that came in many different colours.To this day I'm not sure why. Maybe I was just attracted to shiny things. Then other interests took over: playing sports, school work and I became interested in statistics and gathered information from the newsapaper about cricket and football, keeping my own league tables, man of the match awards and other useless pieces of information.

Hunter then goes onto describing becoming a 'born again' collector. It all came flooding back to him- the joys and delights of collecting. It was a gradual thing, over many years, he just took a  while to realize it.

I know exactly when I became a collector again and it wasn't over many years. It was in October 1980- a warm spring evening. No not really. I don't remember in that much detail. But it was October 1980 when I was given a stack of 1980 Topps baseball cards, 84 to be exact. The rest, I had to wait a little longer to collect.

Epic Journey of 1994 Flair

When I discovered these packs of e-bay way back in December 2008, without giving it a thought I bid, as you do now and again. I won but unfortunately the seller wanted to charge a rather astronomical price for postage to the UK. I tried very hard to negotiate but to no avail. So I was in a tricky position and then discovered that the parents of a friend (of a friend) were going to the US for a holiday and asked that they be delivered to a US address in Massachusetts. They were duly posted and I forgot all about them. Last week, a chance meeting with the mentioned friends, I obviously don't get out enough, the cards in question were bought up! I took a little drive to the parents house in London and low and behold these cards had been sitting there waiting for me to collect. Not only that but they had also purchased some other cards for me as well, which is pretty nice considering I hardly knew them. (Just a pity they were 2008 Topps.)
To cut this long story short...I now have in my hot little hands 4 packs of 1994 Flair in their cardboard jackets. The reason I had purchased these cards in the first place was due to the

distinctive packaging. Fleer appear to have tried very hard with the Flair range of cards and I wanted to be part of this effort. I have now cracked these packs and have shared the luxurious contents over at Pursuit of Red Sox.

As usual they are up for trade.