Featured Anybody Find It Difficult To Specialize?

Although I definitely have collecting areas that I focus on (Numismatics, Ohio Art Pottery, & Political Items) I do find it hard to restrain myself from purchasing other items that I see offered at a good value and I think are neat. Recently I've purchased some stoneware, advertising collectables, and art glass on a spur of the moment binge. I enjoy these items but they are outside of my main collections and I'm a bit concerned I'm heading down the path to becoming a hoarder of sorts.

Anybody else suffer from this?

 

Hi Joe,
Geesh Joe you are preaching to the choir here.
We all started on one or two things soon it becomes 5 and then it doubles every time you go out. I have cut down to a few thousand things now and my life is better.
greg

 

I just specialise in 'anything I like'.

That takes care of it.

Anyway, I am usually constrained by 'you can't bring that thing into the house'

 

The next step is selling some of these things at a profit to buy the things you really want. Keeping some of them you like and will display does no harm. Having them and not putting them out where you can enjoy them will either make you a hoarder .... or a dealer with inventory.

 

Lately I've been picking up old postcards, "someone else's" family pictures, and travel ephemera when they strike my fancy - even though they bear no relationship to the silver and pottery that I consider my primary "collections." This place is a bad influence!

 

This place *IS* a bad influence!
I collected antique bird prints and used bird corks. Now I have tiny collections of McCoy ducks, kitsch parrot stuff, bird handkerchiefs, and I have a feeling I'm forgetting something. May not sound like much, but for an extreme minimalist and tosser like me...
Oh, yeah, and bird Christmas ornaments!

 

Yes indeed.
I have/had several iron-clad rules:
1) never buy in an area I know nothing about
2) never buy just because the price is good, or for investment
3) don't expand collecting - into areas that are merely similar to stuff I do collect.

But it turns out that stuff that doesn't fit the rules sneaks into my house anyhow. Rule 3 is especially likely to be broken, so the collection expands from just old NW Coast native wood items to include new wood...and then prints, new and old....and then baskets....and then a few Inuit things....and soon I have no wall space left, no floor space, soon I'll be sleeping in the bathtub like the hoarders one sees on TV.....

 

Oh brother....guilty!

I first gave myself permission to start collecting things, especially some I found only online, because I could find examples to handle and examine that I couldn't find locally. (17th & 18th C pottery mostly)

Then I gave myself permission to collect somewhat related items venturing into other centuries and into a bit of glass, then pewter, then silver.......

Then I gave myself permission to buy things I found at good prices while out thrifting/antiquing that I could sell to others.

Yes I think this is how hoarding can begin!

 

........or end........

 

says the man with 4 storage units.

 

Ummm
3
A car is in half of one...

 

You know I'm just kidding with you, right?

 

I have branched off to several collecting areas over the years, The thing that is curtailing me is space.....I'm fast running out of it. Somehow I manage to squeeze something else in though.
I'm definitely not a hoarder though as almost everything is on show, I can't see the point in buying something and putting it under the bed or in drawers.

 

Oh, there is a solution to that one.....I have a brother who collects antique cars. So for years he has been buying houses, which he resells with an interesting contract: the buyer gets the house only, not the garage, and my brother retains the right of access to the garage space.
Guess what goes in those garages.....
If only I could afford that solution, I'd just buy a couple more houses, live in one, store stuff in the others....

 

That's what old semi trailers are for. Storing your collection, or hoard. Things that are too good to pass up just seem to follow me home. I rehome some, sell others, and keep the rest. A lot of mine is jewelry; you'd be amazed how much of that you can stash in a small space.

 

I thought about an extension at one time but then I would just fill it up and be back to square one, It's like when you have a clear out and have some empty shelves before you know it you have filled them up again.

 

Yes....I recently ventured from perfume bottles, which I stuck to quite nicely for some time, into andirons. Now I'm stuck wondering how to convince my husband to add fireplaces to every room so I have a place to put them. Not to mention all the random stuff I bring home from flips. I try to stick to donating almost all of it, unless a piece really speaks to me, but sometimes I come home with a car packed with stuff I just couldn't leave behind!

 

Yep, I buy and sell glass, pottery and jewelry. I set up at the local flea market next to a friend who sells vintage books and gardening items. Lately she has been picking up old gardening tools, some hand forged iron. She's got me looking at iron now too

 

I know of guys that do this.
-
One is/was a butcher who was after all the Cadillac El Moroccos ever made, 49.
He was in our car club but I never learned how many he had...which was a great many I'm told.

 

My Uncle Refugio collected cars. He had a '32 little brown Dodge, a '47 Buick Riviera, a '65 Chevy something, and a '40s woody wagon of some kind. Couple more but that's all I recall.