Collections

There seems to be a fine and, at times, almost invisible line between being a packrat and being a collector.

The difference, I suppose, is in the quality of the things being accumulated.

I for instance have an assortment of 1920's home building magazines. They are ragged and brittle, with bits and pieces of yellowed paper falling off anytime someone walks by them. You could call them a collection.......because they each have within them a blueprint drawing for homes of the times, complete with material lists and costs. Believe me.......things have gone up in price quite a lot in the last 80 years.

My wife thinks of them as junk....and to tell.....they are, for I'll never build a house using any of the plans.

I have a collection of guns......mostly long guns, but with a few hand guns. The 1865 English field gun from Birmingham England and the Springfield 20 gauge....the first came from my paternal great grandfather and the second from my maternal grand father......those are collectible items because one day they will be passed on to one of my grandsons.
The rest are just tools........nice tools....tools that mean a lot to me......but tools that are meant to be and are used.

I seem to have acquired, through simply buying and selling over the past few years,
a bunch of coins of various types....mostly silver....some just worth the silver content, even though over a hundred years old......and some which are, while not great dates, very nice graded mint coins. I guess they could be classified as a collection. I bought yesterday a set of 10 sterling silver proof ingots with Norman Rockwell scenes on them. Made by Franklin Mint in 1973 their luster is as nice as when purchased all those years ago. Even has the page out of the magazine from which they were ordered, along with the certificate of authenticity and an old set of gloves with which one was supposed to handle them. All in a nice wooden case inside a nice binder.

I have a porcelain statue of a German hunter and his dog my wife gave me back in the 70's while we were stationed there. Books my mother had before she died. World War II items, items from my army days, my pilots helmet from Vietnam with my call sign and Snoopy cursing the Red Barron painted on it. Milk buckets from when I owned a dairy farm. Some of my fathers tools and uncles and grandfathers tools.

More junk and stuff than I need or use.

But, the older I get, the more I hang onto these things.. And the things that I find that are most important to me are memories. Memories of running wild and free through the woods on our family farm. Memories of my parents and grandparents....the church I went to as a child....and the graveyard where we would make scary noises and frighten the girls.
And Friends......those gone and those near and new.
Who would have ever thought that the internet would revive the old habit of writing to Pen Pals........with just a new technological twist on it.

I'm just pecking at the keyboard......being glad that I've had the opportunity to know a little about a bunch of great people who put a bit of themselves and their lives out there........where collectors like my self can pick from among the best and Brightest.

Thanks