The thing that always intrigued me about collecting is that the possibilities are so limitless and personal.

People can collect anything — and they do. Sugar packets, back scratchers, air sickness bags, rare coins, comic books, toothpaste and clam shells.

A guy named Graham Barker is in the Guiness Book of World Records for the world’s largest collection of “navel fluff” — jars of it he’s picked out of his belly button over the decades.

It seems most kids collected something. Often comic books, stamps or sports cards.

But collecting is, for all practical purposes, nearly dead.

A Wall Street Journal story noted that of the estimated 37 million Americans who identified themselves as collectors in 2000, just 11 percent were under the age of 36.

The usual suspects are to blame: Computer games, MP3 players, Playstation. Kids aren’t interested in sitting at the kitchen table at night going through the bag of postage stamps ordered from the back of a magazine, or eagerly tearing open the pack of baseball cards that came with a stick of gum from the local grocery store.

Part of the blame goes to the corporate marketers who wanted to capitalize on the innocent pastime of childhood collecting. Sports card makers began running off hundreds of millions of “collector” card series until the avalanche of cards made collecting them unsatisfying and rather pointless.

Companies tried — and often succeeded — to create instant collectibles. Those little stuffed Beanie Babies, expertly marketed, were snapped up by eager collectors. Well-planted stories in the media told of people making thousands of dollars, setting off a feeding frenzy. Today, millions of people have tubs full of Beanie Babies they can’t sell at a garage sale for a quarter.

People began catching on that something mass-marketed as a “collectible” is by nature not collectible. If any dope with a credit card can get one, what’s the point?

I think the biggest blow to collecting has been the Internet. The beauty of the Internet is that you can find anything, anywhere, in seconds, which sounds like a benefit to collectors. Instead, it just took the fun, challenge and profit out of it.

Previously, if you wanted a collection of those little souvenir spoons from Fort Lauderdale and Yellowstone and New York City, you had to travel the country. Your collection was a personal display and memory of your trips. Right now, you can go to eBay and buy any set of collector spoons from anywhere in the world at bargain rate prices.

I do a little collecting of first-edition books. Much of the fun was in the hunt. Stopping at second-hand book shops and garage sales hoping to run across a gem.

It was the same for anyone collecting. Combing antique shops and sales, going to auctions, hoping to add to the collection and maybe find a valuable item at a low price.

With a Google search you can find as many of whatever you want.

Years ago I found a first edition of Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22.” A pricing guide at the time had it worth hundreds of dollars. When I typed in “Catch 22” in a book collecting Web site today, there were thousands of first editions of the book for sale, for as little as $15.

The phenomena is the reason antique shops are nearly non-existent today. They can’t compete with an endless supply of cheap items on the Web.

Giving people easy access to a lot of low-cost goods should be a good thing. In this case, I’m not so sure.



Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or

email him Tim by clicking here