[quote="bloke"]Some believe that they become an important person when they own such items and others use the items to try to feel closer to history....
However, I can't see how either pursuit (the celebrity of being the owner and/or the trying to feel closer to a former user of an item) can achieve a sustained success/happiness....
Wouldn't it be more enjoyable for more folks to try to become the person who makes the history (or even simply the "__story") with an item(s)[quote]
Sustained success or happiness?? I'd never look at these things as any more than a reminder, which is why I'd never really "collect" a large number of any one thing. My "collection of old odds & ends" has a few musical items, a few farming items, some sports items, some books, some furniture -- each piece reminds me of something or someone that I consider myself BETTER if I remember them often. Maybe it's what others accomplished with less than I have; maybe it's a person who overcame obstacles or humble beginnings; maybe it's just that some interesting but obsolete thing was once "new and improved"; maybe it's just that I'm not such hot stuff (I can't look at my baseball stuff without chuckling to remember how really TERRIBLE I was at the game!) These are incentives for me TO make my own story!
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Joe Baker, who doesn't really "collect", but just "keeps" carefully selected items.
Here's something you don't see very often
Forum rules
This is for posting links to off site deals that you are not personally selling,but wanting to pass along good deals
This is for posting links to off site deals that you are not personally selling,but wanting to pass along good deals
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TMurphy
- 4 valves
- Posts: 831
- Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 11:29 pm
- Location: NJ
I think I agree with Mr. Baker here. An example:
My father was honored by the NJ Boxing Hall of Fame as their Man of the Year a few years ago (he is the treasurer of the Hall). At the awards ceremony, one of the inductees for that year, artist LeRoy Nieman, drew a sketch of my father--unprompted--and gave it to him. It means the world to my father (he since had it matted and framed), because this well-known artist made this sketch for him, and no one else. That drawing will be in my family forever, because it has meaning.
I am a baseball fan, and last weekend took a trip to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. The artifacts and exhibits they had were fascinating to me (one of my favorites among which was looking at one of the first baseball gloves ever used...most gardners have more padding on their glove!). I enjoyed looking at them, but would not own them. That requires space and money I don't have, and a commitment to upkeep I'm not willing to make. Plus, it prevents others from being able to see these items. Truly historic items, I think, belong in a museum where they can be properly maintained and displayed to the public.
-Tim Murphy, noting that ultimately what he thinks does not matter, and people are free to spend their money on whatever they like.
My father was honored by the NJ Boxing Hall of Fame as their Man of the Year a few years ago (he is the treasurer of the Hall). At the awards ceremony, one of the inductees for that year, artist LeRoy Nieman, drew a sketch of my father--unprompted--and gave it to him. It means the world to my father (he since had it matted and framed), because this well-known artist made this sketch for him, and no one else. That drawing will be in my family forever, because it has meaning.
I am a baseball fan, and last weekend took a trip to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. The artifacts and exhibits they had were fascinating to me (one of my favorites among which was looking at one of the first baseball gloves ever used...most gardners have more padding on their glove!). I enjoyed looking at them, but would not own them. That requires space and money I don't have, and a commitment to upkeep I'm not willing to make. Plus, it prevents others from being able to see these items. Truly historic items, I think, belong in a museum where they can be properly maintained and displayed to the public.
-Tim Murphy, noting that ultimately what he thinks does not matter, and people are free to spend their money on whatever they like.