Over the years I have heard of so many different kinds of collections that it is difficult to establish a definition.
I personally have always gone for the rule of 3! If you have 3 bottle caps, 3 coins and 3 buttons what do you have? You have four collections, a collection of bottle caps, a collection of coins, a collection of buttons and a collection of flat round objects!
According to Wikipedia a collection (plural collections)
- A set of items or objects procured or gathered together by a person, group, or other agent.
- Multiple related objects associated as a group.
My parents started each of their seven children a collection at the age of five. This gave my father who traveled as a pilot with the Air Force a challenge to fuel the collections and a way for my mother to teach the system of organizing a collection. As a child I received dolls to play with and dolls to put in my collection from that fifth birthday. I still have most of those dolls but was is interesting is the play dolls are the most valuable now not the plastic storybook dolls or the dolls from around the world that were purchased for my collection. Keeping some kind of system of your collection as you go will help you in the future even if you just tape the receipt to the back of the box, of course than you have to keep that box which does not always happen.
When working as a representative for various companies over the past years people would often ask what is the next “hot” collectible whether in toys or art. My standard response that I still use is “collect what you LOVE, spend a bit more than you can afford with trying to get the best in your budget, for quality is better than quantity, and if you’re trying to collect for investment vs. enjoyment do your homework. Nothing sees a fad faster than toys and art…what is hot today could be gone tomorrow!
