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I'm looking for theories or just-so story on humans' desire to collect knick-knacks.
A house down the street was having an estate sale. I could tell it belonged to an elderly middle-class couple. The house was a monument to mediocrity. Granted, I got there on the second day, so the family and public had already taken the good stuff, but there wasn't exactly empty space anywhere. It wasn't hoarded, but there were thousands of figurines and collectibles. Some over-studious daughter or granddaughter had put a price tag on every single item. I was actually surprised that I wasn't tempted by a single thing.
Not an uncommon refrain, but this couple had spent a lifetime amassing stuff that no one really wanted. So my question is: why? Is there some misaligned wealth signaling going on? I have my own temptations. I like to buy tools, I want a library someday so I'll probably start amassing books, and I'll probably keep buying guns and end up with more of those three than I need, but I can think of use cases. Am I just rationalizing while I sneer at baseball cards, stamps, Funko Pops, and porcelain figurines?
What are the modern-day Precious Moments collections? Funko Pops?
In addition to the things other people have said, collecting also comes with the thrill of the hunt: if something is rare or poorly-distributed, it becomes a challenge to acquire them, which in terms of personal satisfaction can make collecting cheap tat somewhat fulfilling. You end up developing a knowledge of store distribution and release waves, which appeals to the spreadsheet-sexual among us and is actually kind of exciting if you're into whatever you're collecting. I'm guessing that collectibles brands that do rarity and distribution tricks do much better because they generate that excitement and FOMO.
With older items, it's a lot harder to have that same thrill because eBay has destroyed price arbitrage between insiders and outsiders. Anything valuable gets sold online; there are rarely deals for actually-rare collectibles.
But also, people just like stuff so when it's possible to buy more of it they often will. Believe it or not, grandmas actually treasured their Precious Moments figurines and I aspire to that level of simplicity of heart.
Thinking about elderly people's collections in particular, though: I think it's hard for younger people to understand the environment they lived in for much of their life. In their youthful days, the United States was more agrarian and less urbanized, and they certainly didn't have the immediate access either to facsimiles of the world's greatest works of art or to an algorithmized collection of curated aesthetic delights that we do today. They also lived before the advent of the interstate highway or the wide availability of air travel. For someone in such a less-connected world, the wide availability of mass-market kitsch served as an accessible way to add aesthetic appeal to their world. I get why people hate kitsch. But it's easy to sneer at things like Precious Moments figurines when I can type four words into Google and look at an image of the Trevi fountain. It's much harder when you live in 1940s Kansas.
I guess that's a reason I have trouble relating. My grandma is in her mid 90's, grew up more remote than Kansas with a father killed while she was a teen. She keeps an immaculate uncluttered house with no collectables to speak of.
I think your grandma is the exception. Most of the folks I know around that age are precisely like the people whose estate sale you attended.
My grandma-in-law's house is filled with shit whose retail value is less than the diminished utility they provide her through additional surface areas for dust. The upper floor of her beautiful house isn't inhabitable because nobody has vacuumed in years. But nobody in the family has the backbone to throw it all out.
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