Why do we collect what we do, anyway? Lots of reason, we collect to preserve a small bit of history, maybe it's just our family history, but without us collectors it'd vanish one day and we'd have nothing to show for our years on earth. When we're little kids we collect all sorts of things and, generally, girls collect more than boys. In our teens the collecting bug seems to decline as we have precious little time to devote to such mundane activities. We have more "important" things to do, with school, sports, girls and boys uppermost on our lists of priorities.

As we age, though, collecting seems to revive and men are more likely to collect "stuff" than women. And men collect different things than women, for the most part unless they share a common desire for a particular collectible. Delving deep into the Psyche, we may conclude, as Freud might have, that collecting becomes a substitute for unresolved feelings in other parts of our lives. Collecting is a way of being "in control'" we collect what we want (resources permitting) and reject what we don't want. A collector can admire his or her collection (whatever it is) and feel in control and that all is well.

Or we can take another tack and compare collecting to mens' desire for the hunt and the satisfaction of "the kill," taking possession of our prey. And while in the act of collecting we sublimate our other troubles for the moment. And we get a positive sense about ourselves, the object gives us this positive feeling so out we go to collect more things to maintain that positive feeling.

And it's not just the acquiring that is important, it's also the acquired knowledge of the things we've amassed. You can't collect without the thirst for what these things might tell us about the past, who might have owned this object in a previous generation, and how these objects reflect the era in which they were created.

The collector is always ready to resume the challenge of the hunt, it's not a sometime thing, six months on and six months off. Having these objects creates a sense of responsibility to care for them, to carefully preserve them for the next generation. One thing to always keep in mind, though, is not to let our hobby, our collecting bug, interfere with what is really important in our lives and our obligations to those we love. Be a serious collector, but be also a serious participant in life itself.