Collection Materialism
A collection materialistic person loves his complete set of 1990s Spider-man graphic novels, his almost complete set of Pokémon cards, his half complete set of Victorian tableware. These objects have worth for their functions but that’s not the same worth they have for him. In fact he probably doesn’t have too strong a feeling either way about that Pikachu card (wow…Pikachu is in Word 2007’s dictionary…wow) or that 1875 tablespoon. Though they mean little to him by themselves they are all-important in terms of the *whispers the word in awe* collection.
Collection Materials and Well-being
Collectors become happy when they add to their collections and the proportion of happiness per addition is usually tied to the difficulty of procuring that addition. Back in 2000 a 10-year-old would have been much happier to find a shiny Charizard in a pack of cards he’d bought than a Machop. Trust me, he would have. Because shiny Charizards were much rarer, okay?
Besides that happiness of adding to the collection little to no other happiness is drawn from the collection. Odds are the collector collects things which he enjoys using – but this happiness through use is what I call Functionalism. The collection materialistic value of the collection of items does not give the collector much happiness. He might like to look over his album of stamps and get a certain satisfaction from reviewing the items in the collection – but that’s about it.
If objects within the collection are misplaced, lost or destroyed, of if the entire collection is misplaced, lost or destroyed, then it could upset the collector for a day or two or it could pretty much kill him or her.
Reducing Collection Materialism
Don’t start any new collections. For partially complete collections really challenge the links that exist between the items in those collections. What is/are the link(s)? I think you’ll find the link, or links, are very strenuous.
Take a pack of Pokémon cards. They’re all copyrighted to the card manufacturer and to Nintendo. They’re all to be used in the same trading card game. They’re all made of the same size card.
But they’ve been made in different factories, some in different countries perhaps, the Pokémon depicted on those cards were drawn by different artists, and those monsters were probably invented by different staff members for the Pokémon video games, at different times.
There are promotional Pokémon cards out there that can’t be used in the trading card game and I imagine the Pokémon card collectors out there don’t consider these cards to be collectible. There are also probably some Hong Kong rip-offs out there which certainly wouldn’t be considered collectable. But how different are these ‘uncollectable’ cards to the ‘collectable’ ones? How similar are they?
You can apply this thinking to any assortment of items you collect. Emphasise the differences between each item in a collection and de-emphasise the similarities.
Were they all made in the same place? By the same person? In the same period of time?
The links between Pokémon cards are more conceptual and legal – ‘official’, if you will, than physically inherent – and that makes all these cards less valid as a collection. The less valid a collection is the less important it is to you.
How weak are the links between the items in your collection?
Check out the other articles in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
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