Collecting as a Hobby

Late last week, I became the proud owner (??) of about ten thousand lapel buttons. They were part of a number of collections of an elderly lady who passed away last year. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, and I certainly don't want them all. I've looked at about one-quarter of them and there are a few gems in there, but this is not something I want to try to find space for in my less than one thousand square foot condo.

I've been thinking about collections, hobbies, past-times, and especially collecting as a hobby over the past few days. Some people have turned their hobbies into lucrative businesses; others have turned their collections into their fifteen minutes of fame - like the lady on Letterman a few years ago that collected oddly shaped potato chips. It made me laugh at the time, but I did wonder if it was a staged performance. I wondered about taking someone's eccentricity or mental illness and splashing it all over national TV. There are occasional newpaper articles about someone's huge collection of something. Most often, these are just normal people who let something get out of hand. One thing about collecting something, anything, is that it gives others an instant idea for a gift. "Hazel collects Care Bears? Well, I know what I can give her for Christmas". Often collectors don't do the collecting themselves, but get pieces from well-meaning friends and family members.

I have fallen into the collection pit a few times. I enjoyed it for awhile and then I either lost interest or the collection became a chore.

Three things I've collected in my life:

-pens. In my early and mid-teen years, I collected company pens. I do have a very active stationery gene, and growing up in a poverty-stricken environment, the pens seemed a wonder to me. I could get FREE pens. Sometimes I used them, but they mostly just lived in a shoebox, and every so often, I would take them out and look at them, sort them, and see if they all still worked. I don't remember when I quit 'actively' collecting, but I remember throwing them away.

-elephants. All sorts of elephants - stuffed, brass, glass, pottery, wooden, small, large, trunk up, trunk down, Asian, Indian. I had received a stuffed blue elephant as a birthday present, and decided to collect them. I collected and displayed my elephants for about ten years. I don't think I ever counted them, but I had LOTS, and they were taking over my house. Eventually, I had too many. They didn't look good anymore, because they were everywhere. I got very tired of dusting them and taking care of them. Gradually, I started getting rid of some of the ones that had no meaning for me, and eventually was able to part with all of them, except three very little miniature ones that my sister bought for me in Hawaii.

-teapots. I still have about 30, but the collection did top 80 a few years ago. The ones I've kept have some meaning for me or are unusually shaped. Looking at them now, I could pare it down to about 15 that I would really want to keep. The work to clean them and donate them stops me from 'cutting down'. They live on the top of my kitchen cabinets, so aren't in my face every day, like the darn elephants were. My teapot collection started with two very special ones: one from my Mom, who got it when her sister Clara passed away. It was a wedding present Auntie Clara had gotten in 1923 (maybe from my Mom; I don't know). The second is a dark green china teapot, of the type used in many small restaurants. I was given this one by my Auntie Florence, from a hotel she and Uncle Art operated for a few years.

The teapot collection, coupled with my mother's death, started another collection. Old stuff. Things from my Mom's kitchen, and then the occasional garage sale find of something that reminded me of my Mom or my childhood. This collection right now is boxed away. I would like to have these old dishes and tools and implements out on display as part of my decor, but I have no room. Why? Because my hobbies of scrapbooking and family history have turned into collections of papers, tools, cutters, history books, and binders - I have no room left on my shelves.

I laugh at the button collection and at other huge collections and I wonder about my own desire to collect. Perhaps a part of human nature that can get out of control. And sometimes I regret having pitched the pens, the elephants, some of the teapots, Games magazines, and other various items I've saved and purged over the years. Mostly, though, I think I finished a stage in my life and had to move on. And it will happen again.