Thinking Aloud On a Sunday

~ beetleypete

Compulsive collecting.

I woke up thinking about films this morning. To be precise, films on DVD. This was because I spent some time on Saturday looking for a film, one I bought on DVD earlier this year. I know I bought it, as I can recall it being delivered. I also have the confirmation that it is on my list of items ordered from Amazon, and they emailed me to ask me to review it. But I couldn’t find it on the jumbled shelves in the tiny room grandly called, ‘my office’.

I also knew that I hadn’t watched it. It had gone onto one of the top shelves, the one reserved for new DVD purchases that I haven’t got around to viewing. They lie there in their plastic wrappers, waiting their turn to to be taken down and watched. But new ones arrive, placed in front or on top of them, and they manage to escape my viewing radar. Some of those film purchases date back to as long ago as 2012, but I continue to keep buying new ones, and stacking them with their unwatched companions.

I have ‘collected’ in fits and starts throughout my life. As a child, it was toy cars, and model soldiers. I never seemed to have enough of either, and used any pocket money of gift occasion to increase my hoard. In my late twenties, I had a phase of collecting part-work magazines, storing them in smart binders available from the publisher. When I finally gave them away in the 1990s, I was embarrassed to admit that at least half of them had never actually been read. And there were the books. Despite giving away hundreds of used paperbacks to charity shops, I still moved here with box after box of books, many of them never opened, let alone read. I am now reading less than two books a year, but still buying more. I bought one last week, and found that I had insufficient space to store it on the shelves. So it sits next to me on the desk, wondering if it will ever be read, I suspect.

Once I became interested in photography, in the mid-1980s, I started to buy lots of camera-related items. This reached a peak with the arrival of Ebay, and from 2004 until 2012, I bought up lots of old cameras, some ‘collectible’, many not. My intention was to show them off in some way, perhaps in a display case. But that never happened. What did happen was that I continued to buy more cameras, digital ones this time. The old ones, and my precious film cameras with them, had to be consigned to a box in the loft, where they still reside. To be honest, I would be pushed to find the actual box they are in, and have to confess that collecting them was ultimately pointless.

I have to put a stop to this compulsion, now that I am living on pensions, instead of a large salary. So I buy DVD films second hand, at a fraction of the cost. I buy used books for just 1p, plus postage. That makes it seem more responsible, but doesn’t solve the problem. I am overwhelmed by my collections, and I really do have to stop.

Soon.

83 thoughts on “Thinking Aloud On a Sunday”

  5. I am not much of a collector. I don’t like “stuff” and I am always trying to get rid of things. I do have a LOT of enamel pins though but I justify it by wearing them on my bags, coats and jackets so they feel… useful, I guess.

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    1. You do well to avoid ‘stuff’, Abbi. I have so much stuff I try not to look at it all.
      Enamel pins are small, so you can definitely have lots of those. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  6. Thankfully I’m a digital hoarder now and my only investment is extra hard drives for the two servers (one as a backup of the first) that sit in the cellar. If I had everything in hard copy; films, box sets, music, pictures and books, then I would be building an extension 🙂

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    1. If only I had been young enough to get to grips with computers from the start, then I might be in your enviable situation, Eduardo. The same day I wrote this, I ordered another DVD! 🙂
      Cheers, Pete.

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  9. I never got into collecting any one thing. I like gadgets and electronics that are unique, so when visiting thrift stores, I pick up a router, or old computer to use the parts. Living on limited income as someone else mentioned, I buy cheap and fix up for my use.

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    1. I see you more as a keen fixer and enthusiast, Ron. I am talking collections that fill half of a spare room, and also reside in seven or eight large boxes around the house. You did well to avoid that compulsion. But even in a large trailer, you might be tight for space if you had all the stuff I have accumulated. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  11. We have drawers and shelves of books, CD’s,D​VD’s and now a growing pile of Blurays!​ I am giving away my read-and-won’t-read-again books to the hospital library where Phil works, and unless it’s a ‘special’ book by one of my ‘special’ authors, I only read on kindl​e so as not to take up space. I have a few stupid collections – “interesting” salt & pepper pots, Kimmidoll keyrings, china tea cups & saucers, but all in the name of photography!

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    1. I have ‘resisted’ blu-rays because of their cost. Even though I have a blu-ray player, I buy the cheaper normal DVD flms, and put up with the ‘upscaling’.
      At least you photograph your stuff, FR. I could do that with my cameras I suppose, but I would have to find them first! 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. I used to collect the cards in PG Tips tea packets. I had numerous albums of every variety. My favourite one was ‘Flags of The World’. No idea what happened to those.
      Good to know someone collects more stuff than I do, TC. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. I have never sold on Ebay or Amazon, Marina. Mainly because it is such a ‘mission’ to get to the Post Office, and queue to send the packages. I think I would rather give them to charity, if they would take them. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  16. I am a collector as well Pete….movies and books, as CD’s are now part of the past, unless they are special editions, meaning I will pay 4-5X more than I originally bought them in order to get some outtakes, unreleased tracks and live versions of my favorite Artists…do they pile up? Yes, they do…as for books, I am currently at 60-70 still to read….I have some work to do!

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      1. Pete, I am trying to read a bit every day – printed pages still, although my wife now reads off a kindle…I like the feel of a book in your hands….just finished Burt Reynolds’ autobiography, written 3 years ago…hilarious, candid and self-deprecating…he turned down an offer to spend the night with Greta Garbo – he didn’t realize who it was!

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    1. I started collecting Art Deco ceramics and collectibles a few years back, Lucinda. I thought I would display them when I moved, (like the cameras) but there isn’t enough room to do that. They are packed away carefully in plastic storage boxes, in the garage. One day, they will probably all be thrown out by my step-children. 😦
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  19. In my youth, and up through early adulthood, I collected coins. Eventually, when I hit hard times financially, I had to sell them all for a fraction of what they were worth.

    Fortunately, I didn’t get very far with VHS before DVDs came out. But now I have so many of them that I have no room left on my shelves, and haven’t ordered any more for at least five years now. I have a long “wish list,” though.

    I also have collected hundreds of books over my lifetime—99% of which are French language books. Most of them have been read at least once. I don’t plan to buy any more. But since I plan to write a few books of my own, my shelves haven’t quite seen the last of it…

    I still have my collection of 1:18 scale cars and trucks, but am considering getting rid of all but the most prized ones.

    I once collected “Alien,” “Star Trek,” and “X-Files” figurines. I still have them—in a box somewhere.

    The strangest collection I have consists of small plastic ice cream spoons in a wide range of colors that I collected at the cafeteria in Nice, France during my junior year abroad in 1974-75. They all had a hole in the handle, so I strung them together, and the string is quite long. I still have the spoons after nearly 45 years!

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    1. Ice-cream spoons is an unusual one indeed, David. I didn’t mention the VHS collection, as that still haunts me. I had close to 500 VHS films still stacked in virtual ‘towers’, when It was time to move to Norfolk. I tried to give them away to charity shops, but they wouldn’t take them. Then I offered them free to anyone who would collect them. But the best offer I got was someone who wanted to charge me £40 to take them away! I ended up throwing them into the local council waste skip. 😦
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  20. Return to eBay and sell, sell, sell. But, and this is important, do not buy to restock.
    Warmest regards, Theo
    PS I give this advice as I sit in a room so full of restocked stamps that I can not find the ones to use on outgoing mail. 😦

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      1. being much smaller does not mean one accumulates a small volume, besides, they often come in albums which are just a fancy name for a book that bulges away from the spine,\Warmest regards, Theo
        I still say, sell, sell, sell and I am going to start today to try to sell myself out of this clutter.

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  22. We are lucky – or unlucky – to have a very large attic so everything not actually required for daily living goes up there. My son came to clear out his bedroom recently – several bags of stuff to charity shop, everything else up in the attic. I sometimes worry the floorboards won’t take much more!

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  23. That’s why they invented attics, basements, and garages. So you could make tunnels out of them built by all the stuff we gather.
    My Mom was a lover of garage sales. She eventually had 3 or 4 sets of everything for a house (kitchens especially) just in case someone moved, she could help them out. When she finally downsized, it took a dumpster to get rid of all her collections.
    We do love our treasures!

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  24. I’ve got also dvd collection, and some are still unpacked. I’ve used to collect mugs from every place I’ve visited. However, I had to stop to do it at some point as lack of space in my cupboard. Collecting books is my another weakness. Cannot stop myself. Enjoy your afternoon! 😊

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      1. I can do that except with books….I am always finding ones on subjects I like and just half to go on a quest to acquire it…….I know it is a sickness my whole house is becoming one big book case….my better half is starting to complain a bit….LOL chuq

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  26. Haha….I can relate so very much to this post! As my blog reflects myself a lot: I just have way to many hobbies, and I keep buying new stuff. Like you I have an enormous dvd collection, many still in wrappers, and I keep adding new ones anyway. Movies, tv series, anime…it just keeps growing and growing. The we move on to books: pretty much the same thing. Boardgames? Ditto. I’m glad I quit gaming about 7 years ago and pretty much sold most of my collection, else I would still have that to deal with as well. So why keep buying stuff? No idea…sometimes it’s just hard to resist something. I keep telling myself to stop too…but…then I see a shiny new book, or dvd …and I want it. Well…it could be worse I guess. Some people spent their money on drugs, smokes or alcohol. I like to spent it on stuff like this. So far I have little to no regrets!. Great post Pete, have a great sunday! 😊

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      1. Haha…well my downfall is probably visiting cons, and specialty shops (I even purposely don’t enter certain stores anymore because I know when I do I’ll probably buy more stuff lol 😂😂). (But yeah…amazon is a close second for me too 😊).

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  28. I have a collection of sewing machines in the attic… Some holiday memories, some teapots, some dolls house furniture… As you say, they just sit there. 😊
    When I find the time, I going to photograph them all, to remind me of the memories… Then sell them for some extra pennies to make more memories with. 😊

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    1. That sounds like a good plan, Sallyann. Old sewing machines are considered to be ‘collectible’ by some people these days. I see them promoted as ‘designer’ pieces, for home decoration. And Tea Pot collecting is an industry in itself. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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