> I was watching "high Fidelity" last night, and it got me thinking about how men collect things (if you've read the book he gives an excellent reason as to why men do this, and why women are to blame, but I'll leave you to find that one out...). Basically, men like stuff. In the movie, the major characters obsess about records, and the rarer the record, the more they obsess about it. The musical quality of said record, is, as can be expected, a moot point.
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> Pretty much as a direct result of watching that movie, I went upstairs and rearranged my bookshelves. Not that this, of course, is my entire library. No - that covers another two bookshelves in Scotland and four packing boxes in a loft in Nottingham. And videos. I have a lot of videos - and soon maybe a lot of DVDs too.
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> And sports equipment - look in my cupboard and you might think that I was re-stocking the Commonwealth games - tennis gear, squash racquet, basketball, fencing foil and mask, a variety of odd shaped pads and body armour....
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> What I was wondering is, is this a general case - are all men doomed to collect books and CDs and vids and musical instruments and comics until we no longer have the capital or the physical energy to do any more, so we just sit around collecting dust?
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> What does everyone else collect? I can't be the only person thats made his friends have Blackstar do a video hunt just so that they could find a copy of the alternate ending of "Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness" or an ex-rental "Pump Up the Volume"?
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> "He may not be clever but he sure is...ummmm..."
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> Bourne
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> Oh yeah; IMDB lists (in the goofs section) for High Fidelity that they mention "Evil Dead 2" but actually discuss "Evil Dead 3" (e.g. "How can he make shotgun ammunition in the 14th century?") - This should be an "incorrectly regarded as" as Evil Dead 2 ends with Ash blasting a flying Deadite after being sucked throught he time portal - which could have provoked the conversation mentioned in High Fidelity.

We're all collectors. Some only collect debts and problems, but most of us, regardless of gender, are collectors. I have a lot of fun buying the stuff people collect and then selling it at a profit. Often, I don't make a profit. Sometimes I lose money, but I always have the satisfaction of placing a "treasure" in the hands of someone who will value it. There is a distinction between a collection and an accumulation. I accumulate books, tools, bicycles, and fishing rods. I collect motor scooters, coins, De-Liars and pocket knives. The accumulations give you something to trade. At least that's the theory.
My advice to anyone who is planning on becoming a collector is to collect something small and cheap. You are going to have to store this stuff forever, so a school bus collection is going to fill up the barn pretty darn fast. Stamps, however will fit in a drawer. Then there is the cost. Objects made for the collector will never be worth more than you paid for them. People who market Beanie Babies, collector plates, etc. will try to tell you that you are going to get rich. They will even sell you a book predicting how much the value of their product will increase. Forget it. You will lose money. Collect something that will at least hold it's value. That means something that has been collected by two or more generations. If it is 100 years old and people are still collecting them, it's a good chance that future generations will be interested.
Cheap collectables are interesting things that cost little or nothing. You can enjoy assembling a collection that includes as many variations as possible. And, if you want to, you can dream about them "catching on" and becoming priceless. I think that is how baseball cards, comic books, beer cans, bottles, barf bags, bottle openers, shoe horns, political buttons, hub caps and fruit jars got started. Just remember that if you collected 1000 baseball cards ten years ago, only about half of them would be worth more than you paid and only about 1% will be worth real money.
Now that I think about it, I had a collection of beach sand from beaches all over the place. I don't collect it any more, and I don't know what ever happened to it, but I'm sure it's worth as much as I paid for it. Nothing.
How"What? Me worry?"ard