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Old 01-08-2017, 09:02 PM
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YeshuaIsa53 YeshuaIsa53 is offline
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Guess I first started collecting bubble gum machine prizes. Had a slim cigar box mostly full of them. I didn't put a penny in for the gum. Greatest prize I remember was a small knife. It worked, too. I was so excited. That was like the ultimate of the prizes, so I relaxed my spending pennies in the gum machines. Don't have a clue what happened to the collection.

Then I moved up to nickel prizes in the form of baseball cards. For a nickel, we received several baseball cards and one sheet of bubble gum. I remember how we placed a team of cards on the hall floor, "pitched" a marble by rolling it to the other guy who flipped a number 2 pencil at it. We found something to do to actually play with the cards. I had quite the collection. We would cut grass or pick up empty coke bottles for the money.
Wish I knew what happened to them. Never dreamed they would be so valuable to another collector, though their worth is driven mainly by them.

They say good and bad things about collecting. Psychologists the world over say it can lead to hoarding, for whatever reasons they wish to aspire to. Can't say I believe that or don't, but I do like being prepared. I don't store bunches of food or water, mainly because I could not turn a dying neighbor away. I might, after all, be of more assistance if I were looking, too.

I enjoy the hunt. It's like walking on a beach looking for things that have drifted up or have been washed ashore. However much I hunt, I'm mostly frugal and look for a good deal. If something begins to take shape and there is only one of it missing, I may pay a little more for it. Completion makes me feel absolved, as I no longer need to look. If I stop looking for everything, I almost feel incomplete. It does give me something to do that brings me happiness and great joy, and I learn so much along the way.

Psychologists say some that collect have had prefrontal cortex damage in their brain. Maybe they need an emotional attachment. Maybe this and maybe that, but it is not about money in the end. Maybe I had a baseball bat slam me full force across my head above my eyes as a child. The guy that did it felt really bad, so I gave him one of my Blue Angel models I had collected. I liked model airplanes.

I don't like someone peering into my life to see what my small collections are worth. More, I don't like people thinking they know what makes me tick. We are all different, are we not? There may be some constants out there, but we all need something that makes us happy in this world.

If I can't afford a Pre Model 29 four screw 4" blued beauty with nice Goncalo Alves and a blue background to sit in, let me personally thank you guys for letting me see one every now and then. Your collections are helping us to enjoy life.

Last edited by YeshuaIsa53; 01-09-2017 at 09:44 AM.
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Old 01-08-2017, 09:24 PM
Lt JL Lt JL is offline
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Think of it as harvesting, or stashing food for the winter. It's probably an inbred trait.
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Old 01-09-2017, 10:12 AM
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YeshuaIsa53 YeshuaIsa53 is offline
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I never started collecting duck stamps until I became an avid duck hunter. Enjoyed buying duck stamp prints with the stamps we placed on the wall for daily enjoyment. Bought an entire collection for almost $250 on an auction site that were pasted on pages. I didn't care about the pasting: just the stamps and pictures they so eloquently displayed. Lots of great artists out there, some of which I have met and talked to at shows in Charleston. When I received the collection, the only thing pasted were these little stamp holders in the book with descriptions of the artist and stamp on each page. The stamps could be removed. All I have had to do is buy a stamp each year, but the pages to place them on are more difficult to find. I got lucky.

My love for ducks, or waterfowl, is my reason for collecting them. It gives me another way to enjoy them when I take them out of storage to look at them. One state's stamps are all hand-carved decoys, which I have all of. Can't afford all of them and have no desire for them all, but it has nothing to do with hoarding. Now, they give the permit with no stamp in many states. What a waste.

Wikipedia says, "It has been speculated that the widespread appeal of collecting is connected to the hunting and gathering that was once necessary for human survival. Collecting is also associated with memory by association and the need for the human brain to catalogue and organise information and give meaning to ones actions."

I can deal with that. Sure have learned a lot about certain Smith & Wessons. Among those to thank for this is this forum and those that visit here, and the Smith & Wesson Standard Catalogs. Thanks to the guys helped me learn, and thanks to Lee for inviting me here and the S&WCA.
Wish I could collect more, but I have learned to be satisfied with what comes my way.

Anyone like to share your collecting experiences, please feel free to do so. Thanks for listening.
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Old 01-09-2017, 12:22 PM
Big Cholla Big Cholla is offline
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I have a reverence for the skill and effort to achieve really good artwork. Given that, I enjoy looking at engraved firearms. On the other hand, I will not own one because of my deep feeling that they represent a form of artwork that is on the decline. I feel as a representative of the Engraver's Art any such firearm should be presented as a work of art and not as a firearm waiting to be shot. So, I am in agreement with 'Be still' in that I appreciate each and every picture of an engraved firearm that is posted. I am very glad that I can view that form of art work and not have to purchase any myself. ...
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Old 01-09-2017, 09:37 PM
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I don't consider myself a Smith & Wesson collector, but I have a few revolvers. Many would argue that any accumulation of similar "objects" is a collection. Okay, fair enough.

I do, however, possess three vast collections. Was there any psychology involved in me gathering these things? I guess that's for somebody with a couch in their office to determine. I won't be the one on the couch.

Airplane photos. The big, Air Force images gained through 28 years of visits to the local Public Affairs offices on the bases where I was assigned. Corporate images from every U.S. fighter plane manufacturer. And Air Show posters, primarily of the Thunderbirds since I was stationed at their home base, Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, Nev., three times (about a third of my career).

Good airplane photographers have a knack for getting a dramatic background in the scene, which always enhances the image. One in my collection is the official AF photo of a C-141 (before the stretch models came out) with tail number 50122. Mount Ranier is the background. That bird took me to Korea in 1978 for my first assignment there (we departed from McChord AFB near Tacoma, Wash.). The crew let me ride in the cockpit the entire way -- 16 hours. My seat wasn't web, and I was toasty warm! One of the benefits of being an air traffic controller back then, I guess.

Scores of German beer glasses (not stolen, but purchased for about DM5 each) and the associated cardboard coasters. In two tours I spent seven years in Deutschland, I love beer, and it seemed every tiny town had its own brewery. Some of those brewery logos are steeped in hundreds of years of tradition, history, and creative artistic ability. The glasses are divided somewhat equally among three styles of beer: Weizen, Pils, and Export, with a few other styles, like Alt and Kölsch, sparsely represented, too.

One of these years I'll figure out how to display, and more fully enjoy, more of the airplane photos, beer glasses, and coasters. For now they're tucked safely in their 20 to 40-year-old sleeves and boxes in the basement.

Psychology? Balderdash!

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Old 01-09-2017, 10:36 PM
30-30remchester 30-30remchester is offline
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It is not collecting or hoarding. It is a primal need for abundance.
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Old 01-12-2017, 04:25 AM
Big Cholla Big Cholla is offline
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Originally Posted by 30-30remchester View Post
It is not collecting or hoarding. It is a primal need for abundance.
That is a very deep thought. I can't decide if your background is in Sociology or Nutritional Science. .... :-) The deep thinking I have done is the past always tries to relate all human behavior back to the over riding need to survive we humans lived with everyday in the past.

I wonder if the human race isn't losing something very important in far more ways than we could ever imagine in that we no longer have much if any fear of not surviving. I would think that if survival were just a little more uncertain the bottom feeders of society would be working a lot harder at 'working'. Sorry to give your quality post a strange swerve. .... :-)
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Old 01-12-2017, 06:58 AM
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Man, you just caused me for the umpteenth time to rethink why I accumulate so many guns. I know I can't stop because I have tried......but I sometimes think I should. Now I am conflicted as to whether I stop and divest and start all over again doing something else or simply paring down to a more modest amount.....I have been doing the same thing over and over again with the same results while expecting different outcomes, so I guess I meet the definition of insanity. Time to go take my medication. Oh and here is a picture of my latest drive by acquisition......saw an ad for it yesterday morning on the way to work, called the guy and met him in the parking lot of a local gun shop, plunked down my cash and away we went. Took no more than 5 minutes. Maybe if it weren't so darn easy.

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Old 01-13-2017, 01:59 PM
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Handguns, holsters, knives, VHS Western movies, and Gun magazine
articles by subject in 20 of the big 3 ring binders. But I don't think of
myself as a collector. I think of myself as kind of a serious student.
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Old 01-13-2017, 09:40 PM
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I don't want to talk about it. I don't have a problem.
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Old 01-13-2017, 09:46 PM
gman51 gman51 is offline
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Okay now I can blame my buying more guns on my brother. When we were kids he said look out....about the same time a big rock hit me on the forehead. He also slammed the back of my head against the brick corner of the house.
So now I understand my gun addiction. My brother needs shot!
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