The psychology of collecting
Your face could resemble a well-worn shoe, your family may have deserted you for the coldest parts of Canada, your car could be an escapee from the junkyard, but if you know everything about tourbillons, carburetors, calibers, and (in my case) nibs, then
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that collectors are simply moneyed hoarders while users are simple, practical-minded folk who’ve never forgotten what things are for. I propose that the truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in between many users are wannabe collectors, and most collectors have never stopped being users. It’s pointless to think of, say, a Waterman or a 3 Wahl Eversharp oric as being Must a pen you can write with, like a cheap ballpoint they may have been utilitarian tools once, but somewhere along the way they crossed the line and became Mewelry and art obMect.
At least that’s how I e cuse amassing and periodically gloating over, say, my dozens of 3arker Vacumatics, a 3 s- s pen that forms the core of my collection. This was the pen I wrote my short story “3enmanship” about. It’s a story about a story that I’ve often told, but the sum of it is that I found this 3 Vacumatic 2versize in a pen shop in Edinburgh, paid a month’s salary for it, suffered buyer’s remorse, then decided to write a story about the pen, which won first prize in a contest that made me back my salary.) I know enough about Vacs that I can put you to sleep by mumbling mantras such as “Vac nomenclature covers a fascinating maze of models and colors — the -unior, the MaMor, the Standard, the Slender, the ebutante, the 2versize, the Senior, which is not to be confused with the Senior Ma ima, since the Senior came out only in 3 . ”
About years ago it wasn’t pens but laptops — yes, Apple Macintosh 3owerbooks, particularly the uo line the granddaddy of the MacBook Air and all those super-slim laptops people toss into their briefcases today). I had and still have) about a dozen of these machines, which I used to take apart to upgrade the memory and hard drive back when megabytes made you king of the hill), before putting them back together again and then pressing the power button to hear that unmistakable startup chime that told me I had done everything right, so I could then step out and face the world and slay dragons and then sign memos.
So why do otherwise presumably sane people like me get our kicks by amassing strange obMects most other people wouldn’t give a second look or drag into their homes even if you paid them to do it I asked myself this question again last week as I changed out the inks another ritual for the devotee) in my glorified Bics. Why do we take them out week after week, not to write a novel or a draft S21A but endless iterations of “I love this pen I love this pen”
)irst of all, you want to be reassured that they’re still there. Collectibles have a way of walking away on little cat feet, and collectors have a si sense about what’s missing from the picture.
Second, you want to reassure yourself that you know why they’re there — that the obMects have some aesthetic and monetary value. 3erhaps that value’s known only to a very few people, which is not a bad thing, because it’s proof of your connoisseurship, of a certain esoteric form of e pertise that’s taken you some time and e pense to cultivate. It’s like getting a 3h in the truly little, truly fun things and what’s a 3h these days e cept a lot of knowledge about very small things, hardly any of which is fun ).
ou may be a total loser in nearly every other aspect of life — your face could resemble a wellworn shoe, your family may have deserted you for the coldest parts of Canada, your car could be an escapee from the Munkyard — but if you know everything about tourbillons, carburetors, calibers, and in my case) nibs, then you have good reason to face the world with pride if not arrogance you have, after all, one of the world’s largest collection of GI -oes, or Tonkas, or Ken dolls, or whatever floats you boat.
Third, let’s go online and ask the e perts. r. Mark McKinley, in a much-quoted piece on “The 3sychology of Collecting” in K 1DW D 3 FK W, goes back in time to note that “ uring the s and s there were aristocratic collectors, the landed gentry, who roamed the world in search of fossils, shells, zoological specimens, works of art and books. The collected artifacts were then kept in special rooms cabinets of curiosities’) for safekeeping and private viewing. A cabinet’ was, in part, a symbolic display of the collector’s power and wealth. It was these collectors who established the first museums in Europe, and to a lesser e tent in America.”
Since I’m sure I don’t collect Sheaffers and Esterbrooks to show off my power and wealth, let’s see what M. )arouk 5adwan who holds an M. Sc., so who presumably knows what he’s talking about) says about the subMect “Since early years human beings used to collect food in order to feel safe and secure. Because acquiring food was a difficult process with uncertain outcomes humans learned to ease their an ieties by storing the food they needed. The same need, which is to feel secure, is the primary motivating force behind the creation of collections.
“Because life is uncertain and can easily make a person feel helpless some people use their collections to create a private comfort zone that they can control. By arranging and disarranging their collections compulsive hoarders can regain the sense of control over their lives. These actions reduce an iety and helps those people cope with the uncertainty of the real world.”
So we go back to basic needs and instincts food and security. McKinley puts these together “)or some, the satisfaction comes from e perimenting with arranging, re-arranging, and classifying parts of a-big-world-out-there, which can serve as a means of control to elicit a comfort zone in one’s life, e.g., calming fears, erasing insecurity. The motives are not mutually e clusive, as certainly many motives can combine to create a collector — one does not eat Must because of hunger.”
That’s a brilliant insight — “one does not eat Must because of hunger” — and it leads to my favorite e planation of the psychology of collecting, propounded by 5obert and Michele 5oot-Bernstein co-authors of SD N WK K N WK G W DW 3 S ) in “The Collection Connection to Creativity” 3 FK GD , May ) “The fact is collecting e ercises a number of important mental tools necessary for creative thinking. The collector learns to observe acutely, to make fine distinctions and comparisons, to recognize patterns within her collection. These patterns include not only the elements that make up the collection, but the gaps in it as well. /earning how to perceive what isn’t there is as important as knowing what is And the collector also knows the surprise of finding something that doesn’t fit the collection pattern Is the mismatch a fake An e ception Something that belongs in another collection Broken patterns are often the ones that teach us the most by challenging our preconceptions and e pectations.”
3atterns, designs, mismatches, aberrations early in 3 , Must for a few months, 3arker came out with a special Vacumatic, with the word “Vacumatic” etched in the gold-filled cap band. It’s one of the holy grails of 3arker collectors, one of the rarest and most e pensive of finds, and I have one. That should make it the crown Mewel of my collection, but it isn’t it’s the pen that made me write a story about it that’s the rarest one of all, that gives me a lifelong e cuse for picking up tubes that squirt inks.
If you like pens, Moin us at )ountain 3en 1etwork-3hilippines, www.fpn-p.org. We’re marking our si th anniversary this week )
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