01/25/2023
THE REASON YOUR COLLECTION BLOWS!
Every once in a while, someone posts their collection (or a selection from it) for everyone to see. Usually, the person posting plays the role of the modest collector who just wants to share his joy with other collectors and is inevitably touched when he gets such a positive response from the community. I enjoy those pages, melodrama and all. I like seeing what other people own and I like hearing stories about the acquisition process.
Here's the thing; what was posted as a "pretty book of the day", was an early Marvel in NM or better than at that time just wasn't seen on the market very often and as I view each new posting and watched the image load up, I'd typically be blown away by what appeared. I'm over it.
What impresses me now is completely different. It's not about the individual books and their grades anymore. It's not about top census books, QP and PQ. What I find impressive these days is self-control and an unrelenting pursuit of a particular collecting focus. That, to me, is impressive because it's the one thing that most of us lack in our collecting pursuits. I know this because I see this collecting ADD at work here daily and I see this behavior in myself as well.
I can't count the number of times that I've seen someone post some killer books and get responses like "man, my collection is a pile of dog turds next to yours" or "I wish my copy looked half as nice" etc. For those of you who think this way, guess what? Your collection DOES blow, regardless of what's in it or what other people think of it because you're always comparing it to someone else's collection. And there will always be a better collection out there!
Collecting ADD is a symptom of not being content with what you have and "trying to keep up with the Jones". How many times have you shifted your collecting focus after looking at someone else's collection? How many GA collectors has one poster created? How many horror collectors has one poster created? Who knows, but I bet most won't last.
And for those of you who are BA collectors in the "I don't take anything less than NM with White pages so don't offer me a 9.2 or a 9.0 or anything with cream on the label because I spit on those filthy readers" camp, let me ask you; do you own a copy of HULK #181 in that grade or any of the other major books for that matter? Are you in the market for them? Part of collecting ADD is people changing their collecting goals AROUND a particular grade instead of adjusting their grade expectations so they can actually acquire all of the books they want. I see people who have budgets of $500 a month buying 9.4-9.6 random mid-CA issues of "this week's hot title" instead of buying VF copies and banking the extra coin toward getting a major key in that grade. Why? Because posting some random CA 9.8 in the "what's hot this week" app/website will get those oohs and ahhs from others. Immediate gratification.
Just like in other areas of life, chasing the "flashy things" for the sake of status or competition is going to leave you feeling empty. It'll never end. I think most of you can agree that it's the stories behind the accumulation of a collection that tend to be the most memorable, much more so than the books themselves. It may be too late to buy these books off the stands and create a Pedigree, but if you stick to one ambitious(but attainable) goal for a long enough period of time and stop cannibalizing the collection you've built up in order to shift your focus to the flavor of the month, you'll not only build up a great collection, but you'll probably have a few stories to tell too.
If you find yourself not agreeing with any of this, not even in part, then you have found the reason why your collection blows.
And for today, this is your moment of comic-zen.
Disclaimer: This post was borrowed from another poster on the CGC forums website.
