ABSTRACT - In contemporary America, collecting has become a pervasive phenomenon that reflects many aspects of the modem consumer culture. In this-chapter, we define collecting, review its history, and present a grounded theory of its meanings, motivations, moments, and modes before concluding with an assessment of its social desirability. Throughout, we draw on the relevant literature and on data supplied by informants both during and after the Consumer Behavior Odyssey. Thus, we move between empirical and conceptual approaches to the topic, as was true in the development of this research project over its five year history to date.

Citation:

Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry, Jr., and Morris B. Holbrook (1991) ,"Collecting in a Consumer Culture", in SV - Highways and Buyways: Naturalistic Research from the Consumer Behavior Odyssey, eds. Russell Belk, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 178-215.

Highways and Buyways: Naturalistic Research from the Consumer Behavior Odyssey , 1991 Pages 178-215 COLLECTING IN A CONSUMER CULTURE Russell W. Belk Melanie Wallendorf John F. Sherry, Jr. Morris B. Holbrook [The authors would like to thank Tom O'Guinn and Dennis Rook for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. They would also like to thank Ginny Davis, Scott Roberts, John Schouten, Sherri Stevens, and Tiana Wimmer for post-Odyssey fieldwork and the entire Odyssey team for fieldwork during the odyssey.] ABSTRACT - In contemporary America, collecting has become a pervasive phenomenon that reflects many aspects of the modem consumer culture. In this-chapter, we define collecting, review its history, and present a grounded theory of its meanings, motivations, moments, and modes before concluding with an assessment of its social desirability. Throughout, we draw on the relevant literature and on data supplied by informants both during and after the Consumer Behavior Odyssey. Thus, we move between empirical and conceptual approaches to the topic, as was true in the development of this research project over its five year history to date. INTRODUCTION Asked what things they would save in a fire. people we have interviewed commonly cite a number of "special" objects including photographs, keepsakes, heirlooms, and valuables. it is no coincidence that many of these objects constitute collections that have been purposively and systematically gathered and preserved. For, unlike ordinary objects of consumption, collections tend to take on an importance and character comparable in some respects to that of family members. Collected objects are often anthropomorphized, fetishized, and personified until they define and occupy the little world of an intimate family in which the collector reigns as an absolute sovereign. Consider the case of Sigmund Freud -certainly not a typical human being, but a reasonably representative collector whose example proves instructive. Although our knowledge of his collecting behavior is secondary -- based on written accounts and interviews with the curators of the Freud Museums on Hampstead Heath in London and at 19 Berggasse in Vienna -- we offer the following synopsis of Freud as collector. Starting two months after the death of his father in 1896, the then 40-year-old Freud began to amass a collection of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Chinese antiquities that eventually numbered approximately 2300 pieces. These objects crowded his desk and cabinets in the two rooms where he wrote and consulted with patients. When Edmund Engelman took secret photographs of this collection before Freud fled to England to escape the Nazi occupation of Vienna in 1938, he described the decor in this way: antiquities filled every available spot in the room. I was overwhelmed by the masses of figurines which overflowed every surface. To the left of the door was a large bookcase covered with tall ancient statuettes. In the comer, at the end of the wall facing these statuettes, was Freud's chair, almost hidden by the head of the couch.... To the left and right of the door were glass showcases filled with hundreds of antiquities. These were set up in several rows; every bit of cabinet space was filled.... I was amazed by the unbelievable number of art objects (Engelman 1976, pp. 137-138). Similarly, Jobst (1978) suggests that Freud's office took on a museum-like appearance, and Peter Gay notes that: The first and overpowering impression that Freud's habitat makes on the visitor is the profusion of things.... The sculptures, finally, have their assigned shelves and their glass cases, but they intrusively invade surfaces intended for other purposes: bookshelves, tops of cabinets, writing tables, even Freud's much used desk. The whole is an embarrassment of objects (1976, p. 17). The hundreds of statuettes in this collection are of animal and human figures that Freud arranged facing him at his desk (Gamwell 1989), "in close-packed ranks like soldiers on parade" (Gay 1976, p. 17). Friends and family noted that the fortunate transfer of Freud's collection from wartime Vienna made his adjustment to England far easier, as he was surrounded by familiar loved objects. In a perhaps overstated 1931 letter to his biographer, Stefan Zweig, Freud claimed that "despite my much vaunted frugality I have sacrificed a great deal for my collection of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, have actually read more archaeology than psychology' (quoted in Freud, Freud, and Grubrich-Simitis 1978, p. 234). Although he is far better known for his writings, clearly these objects played a major role in Freud's life. He personally scouted for antiquities during his travels and developed relationships with dealers who brought him objects they knew would be of interest. In Me Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud described how, due to his preoccupation with collecting, he would often misread vaguely similar shop signs in foreign cities as proclaiming "antiquities" "this displays the questing spirit of the collector," he noted (Freud 1914, pp. 119-120). Freud's student and colleague Ernest Jones (1955) describes how, after making a new acquisition, Freud would first bring the piece to the dining room table so that he could admire it during the meal. After placing the pieces in his study or consultation room, he frequently rearranged them. According to a long-time maid, before beginning work each day Sigmund Freud would bid "good morning" to a favorite Chinese figure on his desk (Spector 1975). He was also in the habit of holding, examining, and fondling the statuettes as he talked to patients (Spector 1975, p. 2 1; Sachs 1945, p. 10 1). As Gay (1989) concludes: Collecting stamps, or china--or Greek and Egyptian and Chinese statuettes, for that matter- -partakes of, and preserves, early erotic pleasures; Freud, we are told, liked to gaze at the antiquities on his desk as he worked and, at times, moving from looking to touching, would stroke his favorites. But there is more passion to it still; collecting, as anyone who has ever collected can testify, gives power. To possess a complete collection of certain stamps or of one's reviews or letters to the editor is, in some intimate fashion, a way of controlling and commanding the world (p. 18). Considering his extreme devotion to the clutter of little ancient icons with which he surrounded himself, Freud was remarkably silent on the subjects of collecting in general and his own collecting in particular. However, he did offer one brief interpretation of collecting activity: The core of paranoia is the detachment of the libido from objects. A reverse course is taken by the collector who directs his surplus libido onto an inanimate object: a love of things (Freud 1908, quoted in Gamwell 1988). We shall return to this interpretation and to Freud's own collecting later in this paper. For the present, it is sufficient to note that Freud's collecting activity and his comments on collecting both support the observation that a key feature of collecting consists of elevating possessions in the collection to an extraordinary status not bestowed upon the vast majority of objects in the collector's life. METHOD AND SAMPLE Collection of primary data materials for this project began during the summer spent traveling on the Odyssey. However, reading of the literature on collection, some of which reports empirical findings, began prior to the Odyssey and guided the questions asked in interviews. Many of our data on collecting were gathered subsequent to the summer of travel. The data are primarily from unstructured interviews with people who are currently collectors. Some of these data are based on participant observation of action in context. In general, however, the data describe in detail collectors' perspectives on their action and are less rich with regard to perspectives in action (Gould, Walker, Cr-ane, and Lidz 1974). Because of their pride in the collection, we encountered little resistance on the part of collectors to being interviewed; more difficult was shifting their focus from the objects themselves to the process of collecting. Most collectors in the sample were interviewed once, although a few were studied in sufficient depth over time to permit the construction of case study material (Yin 1990). Most people included in the sample fall into the category of avid collectors, since a substantial portion of the sample was initially contacted through collector shows. Other members of the sample were identified through self-designation. Many interviews were conducted at collectors' homes, while others were conducted in the midst of collectors' shows. Purposive sampling was used to add fine art collectors and various demographic groups to the sample, however, this was not a technique employed throughout the project. The approach used was in part the grounded theory suggested by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and in part an attempt at the thick description and thick interpretation suggested by Denzin (1989). In total, over 190 collectors are included in the sample representing differing geographic regions within the U.S.. They also represent a broad spectrum of objects collected in terms of breadth of appeal, price, and availability. Talking to collectors of anything rather than limiting the sample to collectors of particular objects (as is prevalent in studies of collectors) shifted our focus from the objects themselves (often the focus for the collector) to the process and meaning of collecting as a consumption activity. We first use these data and the literature to construct and frame a definition of collecting. DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS Collecting Collecting is a specialized form of consumer behavior (i.e., acquiring, using, and disposing of products). Collecting is inherently acquisitive because its primary focus is on gathering more of something (Brown 1988). In the most common contemporary form of collecting, the objects collected are acquired through marketplace purchase; used - through maintenance, display, and related curatorial activities; and disposed of only at death. Rather than viewing shopping as a necessary or even odious task to be minimized or avoided, collectors commit to a constant and continual shopping trip in pursuit of objects for the collection. As Herrmann (1972, p. 22) notes, "the genuine collector ... has stilled once and for all any inhibition against spending money on the-objects of his choice." Like Freud, the collector is ever vigilant for hidden treasures in the marketplace. Lehrer (1990, p. 58) offers this view of the collector's quest: Envy us [collectors) because all our car trips down country lanes and "blue" highways are treasure hunts .... Envy us because every mail delivery has the potential for having the note about or Polaroid shot of an item we have been looking for desperately .... Envy the adventures we have while on The Hunt .... But mostly envy us for the Thrill of The Find. Collectors are engaged in a competition that, for some, becomes an heroic mission in an indifferent or scornful world. There are few other consumer activities that match the passion of collecting as a mode of consumer behavior. And collecting is perhaps the purest example of a consumption activity that is also a form of production. At its best, collecting creates and produces a unique, valuable, and lasting contribution to the world. For example, had not the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer been collected and partially preserved, the world would be the poorer for their lack. We take collecting to be the selective, active, and longitudinal acquisition, possession, and disposition of an inter-related set of differentiated objects (material things, ideas, beings, or experiences) that contribute to and derive extraordinary meaning from the entity (the collection) that this set is perceived to constitute. This definition coheres with that of Belk (1982) and Belk, Wallendorf, Sherry, Holbrook, and Roberts (1988). It is also generally consistent with prior definitions such as the following: collection..[is] "an obsession organized." One of the distinctions between possessing and collecting is that the latter implies order, system, perhaps completion. The pure collector's interest is not bounded by the intrinsic worth of the objects of his desire; whatever they cost, he must have them (Aristides 1988, p. 330).

To collect is to gather objects belonging to a particular category the collector happens to fancy.... and a collection is what has been gathered (Alsop 1982, p. 70).

A collection is basically determined by the nature of the value assigned to the objects, or ideas possessed. If the predominant value of an object or idea for the person possessing it is intrinsic, i.e., if it is valued primarily for use, or purpose, or aesthetically pleasing quality, or other value inherent in the object or accruing to it by whatever circumstance of custom, training, or habit, it is not a collection. If the predominant value is representative or representational, i.e., if said object or idea is valued chiefly for the relation it bears to some other object or idea, or objects, or ideas, such as being one of a series, part of a whole, a specimen of a class, then it is the subject of a collection (Durost 1932, p. 10).

To qualify as a collection, the items collected must have some similarity and interrelationship. By being part of the collection each piece is transformed from its original function of toy, icon, bowl, picture, whatever. into an object with new meaning -- a member of an assemblage that is greater than the sum of its parts (Kron 1983. pp. 193-194).

Each of these definitions shares with ours the specification that the collector views the collection as an entity due to a perceived unity in its components. The basis for this unity is identified by labeling the set as "a collection of ___" and is further defined through the boundaries that the collector consciously or unconsciously heeds in adding to the collection.

While a collection remains a collection when additions stop, a collector ceases to be a collector under these conditions. Freud called such a collection "dead" (Freud, Freud, and Grubrich-Simitis 1976, pp. 313). Although the original collector may continue to preserve and display the dead collection, such curating activity is then separated from collecting activity. As the most recent collecting activity recedes into the past, the passive possessor becomes less and less of a collector. In specifying that the collector is an active agent in assembling the collection, we also eliminate the passive recipient of previously collected objects provided by others without personal choice or direction (Durost 1932).

Similarly, to acquire a number of potentially related objects without keeping them (in tangible or symbolic form) is to be acquisitive without collecting. The ingredient missing in this case is the possessive construction of a set. For instance, we have interviewed world travelers who do not perceive their travel destinations as a set, as well as other travelers who consciously collect an expanding set of travel destinations experienced within a specified domain (e.g., continents visited). As with travel experiences, a number of car collectors whom we have interviewed do not have all of their collection physically at hand. Rather, because of the expense of acquisition and storage, theirs are often serial collections involving ownership of only one or a few automobiles at one time. Nevertheless, because they view these sequential acquisitions as part of set, they qualify as collectors. Ownership (or at least a proprietary feeling) also appears to be essential to collecting. A number of our informants express sentiments similar to those of a stamp-collector interviewed by Danet and Katriel (1989):

It's mine (the collection). I can do with it what I want. I can arrange it in the album the way I want. I can display it in exhibits (p. 263).

Since ownership or possession is required for collecting, a museum curator who uses other people's money to make acquisitions for the museum is not a collector unless he or she has strong proprietary feelings for the objects acquired. However, the museum itself may be regarded as an institutional collector if the other requirements for collecting are fulfilled. While groups, families, or even entire societies or whole cultures may engage in collecting behavior, it is not uncommon that it is individuals within these institutions who develop the strong proprietary feelings required to be considered individual collectors. Thus, a couple or family may refer to "our house," but the collection is usually "mine."

Another similarity between our definition of collecting and many of those just quoted is that they jointly note that once a thing, idea, or experience enters a collection it becomes non-ordinary, non-utilitarian (at least in the case of formerly utilitarian items), and somehow "special." In a term we will develop more thoroughly later in this chapter, the collected item becomes sacred (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989). While fine art items and some other aesthetic objects (such as books and recordings) may enter a collection without a major change in their extraordinary sacred character, other items are sacralized when they first enter a collection. This normally means that they stop serving their former functions as, for instance, advertisements, stones on a beach, stamps for paying postage charges, or dolls for ordinary play activity. Even those collected objects that retain their original uses (e.g., antique furniture, cars, jewelry, hats, recordings) are regarded as more than functional products, are treated with extreme care, and are often only employed ritually or on special ceremonial occasions. For example, someone who owns a rare recording might tape it for everyday listening and store the original for safe-keeping. If this is not the case and the objects are instead used routinely or casually without regard for their special significance, we do not consider them as parts of a collection.

Our definition is more expansive than the others mentioned above in going beyond material objects to include experiences, beings, and ideas as collectibles. We believe that the theoretical model developed in this paper applies equally well to collections of both tangibles and intangibles as well as both inanimate and animate objects. (Here, the latter refers to plants and animals, occasionally including the collections of persons -- as in the dwarfs who were once a part of royal collections, the wives of Henry VIII, or the husbands of Zsa Zsa Gabor. For comments on the opprobrium now attached to "collecting" people, see Danet and Katriel 1989).

Our view involves several further differences from some of the prior definitions. We do not insist that collecting is necessarily an act of formal classification, as do Phillips (1962) and Humphrey (1983), for instance. Rather, as will become evident, we believe that such classification defines one of two major types of collecting; one which epitomizes a common model of science, but which is not essential for another type of c.Alecting involving connoisseurship. There must be some systematic pattern displayed (even if not consciously discerned) in adding items to any collection, but deciding selectively whether an item belongs in the collection (or how to display it) need not be a classificatory act any more than deciding whether to add an article of clothing to one's wardrobe (or deciding how to wear it) needs to be an act of classification.

We also do not view collecting as a necessarily obsessive act, as does Aristides (1988). While it may become obsessive, compulsive, or even addictive, this need not happen. Furthermore, as argued in a later evaluative section, these undesirable labels are at least as much social as clinical in nature. Love, for example, can sometimes be seen as involving an obsessive behavioral pattern as well. While collecting is often characterized less favorably than love, we did not prejudge it to be either a positive or negative phenomenon.

In summary then, we define collecting as a form of acquisition and possession that is selective, active, and longitudinal. A necessary condition is that the objects, ideas, beings, or experiences derive larger meaning by their assemblage into a set. We turn now to distinctions between collecting and other phenomena.

Accumulating. Hoarding, and Investing

Collecting must also be distinguished from several other phenomena with which it is sometimes confused. The -simple accumulation of possessions, ideas, or experiences is excluded from our definition of collecting, first, because it lacks selectivity (Kron 1983, p. 193). Because of the lack of systematic selectivity in acquiring them, items in an accumulation also lack unity and defy categorical description. To the extent that the accumulation is merely a passive refusal to dispose of items that may have entered our possession, accumulation also lacks the agency needed for collecting. Unlike collected items that may bring pleasure and pride in possession -- and even though the underlying motive for accumulation is often security-seeking (Jensen 1963; Laughlin 1956; von Holst 1967, p. 3) -- accumulated items may tend to create clutter and to cause conflict, displeasure, or even shame (Phillips 1962; Novey and Novey 1987; Warren and Ostrom 1988). Thus, an informant in his seventies who had accumulated three garages full of miscellaneous possessions was succumbing to pressures from his family to begin discarding these things so that they were not faced with the burden of having to do so after his death.

If collections are distinct from human accumulations, they are even farther from animal accumulations, despite the attempt by some to suggest a basis for collecting in animal behavior (e.g., Humphrey 1979). We assume, first of all, that animals -- such as a squirrel piling up nuts for the winter -- lack the appreciation of any interactions within a set of interrelated objects (Stewart 1984, p. 183). Secondly, as an anonymous author notes:

A used postage stamp is to a man what a bone without flesh is to a dog: but the collector of postage stamps goes further than the dog, in that he prefers an old postage stamp to a new one, while no dog, however ardent a collector of bones without flesh, would not rather have a bone with flesh on it. There is more method in the human collector, however, since he always has before him the ideal of a complete collection, whereas no dog, probably, ever dreamed of acquiring specimens of all the different kinds of bones that there are in the world Wohnston and Beddow 1986, pp. 13-15, quoting from an anonymous article in The Times [of London], August 12, 1910; also quoted in Rowed 1920, pp. 6-7).

Unlike accumulation, hoarding is selective and active. But it differs from collecting by focusing on utilitarian items in the expectation that they may be needed in the future (McKinnon, Smith, and Hunt 1985). Because the items hoarded are typically for common uses (e.g., fuel, food staples, cleaning supplies), they are unlikely to take on the sacred character of collected objects. Simmel (1907/197 1) distinguishes the miser who hoards money from the numismatist who collects money, based on both the utilitarian character of the miser's hoard and its lack of sacredness. However both of these assumptions are challenged by the extreme case of a miser who starves or freezes to death in an effort to save still more money (Belk and Wallendorf 1990b; Michaels 1985; Schwartz and Wolf 1958). But a further distinction between collecting and hoarding is that collecting involves differentiated objects and tends to follow the rule "no two alike." while hoarders want many of the same thing (Danet and Katriel 1989). By this criterion we can still classify the self-sacrificing miser as a hoarder rather than a collector.

Further, we do not regard as collectors those who acquire a set of items solely as an investment (e.g., Duggleby 1978; Avery and Colonna 1987). Certainly a collection may ultimately be sold due to financial need or a change in taste (e.g., Christ 1965). However, when profit is the sole purpose for acquisition and possession, the items acquired are likely to lack the sacredness and unity found in a true collection. A collector who is also a dealer in the same collectible can remain a collector if the items in the collection and those that are merchandise are kept separate. We find that this is common and that such dealers generally have firm rules that objects cannot freely pass between the collection and the saleable stock of merchandise. The most prominent exception is that when the dealer upgrades a collection, the superseded items may then be sold. Another exception is when a dealer becomes disenchanted with an entire collection and sells it off, often in order to undertake a new and different collecting enterprise. For dealers who also collect, price is a much more salient criterion in the case of buying merchandise than in the case of acquiring items for the dealer's personal collection.

Care is needed in assessing investment motives however, since investment is sometimes given as an emic rationalization for collecting, especially when collectors fear they will be ridiculed if their love of the collection is instead offered as a rationale (Bloom 1989; Olmsted 1988a; Paton 1988). While collectors frequently recount lore concerning the fortunes amassed by other collectors, in fact many collections do not maintain their purchase prices, much less increase in value (Beards 1987). For this reason many collecting guides, including those in financial newspapers, advise that new collectors pursue a collection for its intrinsic pleasure and not for expected monetary gain (Cox 1985). Still, for a few collectors at least, positive investment consequences can derive from passionate advocacy of an area of collecting interest. One collector has managed not only to indulge his obsession for Rodin sculptures, but also to build both the scholarly and market infrastructure reinforcing the value of the pieces (Cox 1978).

HISTORICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF COLLECTING

The history of collecting that follows is necessarily a brief sketch drawn with a broad brush. For more detailed and individualized treatments, the reader might consult such excellent sources as Alsop (1982), Cabanne (1961), Caxton Publishing (1974), Cooper (1963), Impey and MacGregor (1985), Moulin (1967/1987), Rheims (1961), Rigby and Rigby (1944), Saarinen (1958), Stillinger (1980), Taylor (1948), and von Holst (1967). However, for the most part, these treatments limit their foci to fine art collecting. The reasons for this bias in favor of the history of the rich and elite collector are not difficult to discern. As Johnson (1986) notes:

Demand for certain types of objects is linked to taste and fashion.... Ownership of art objects is a mark of personal status demonstrating wealth and discrimination. Possession of desirable objects confers prestige, gives aesthetic pleasure and is a form of investment. Collectors, dealers and institutions compete to obtain them.... Rich collectors can achieve renown merely by assembling collections of esteemed I works of art'. The philanthropic act of donating a collection to a museum confers fame in that the name of the previous owner is forever linked with the bequest and in some western countries has the added benefit of tax concessions (p. 74).

In addition, it is art objects that most often are acquired through plunder, serving as trophies of conquest and visibly enriching collections of powerful nations and individuals (Chamberlin 1983). And it is collections of art objects, rather than more humble collectibles, that museums and other repositories have been inclined to preserve. Furthermore, published biographies and television treatments are most likely to focus on the rich and famous who are the collectors of such art. As a result, the extant history of collecting is strongly biased in favor of fine art collections.

History

The presence of unusual pebbles in 80,000-year-old Cro-Magnon caves in France suggests that collecting may have begun at the same time in human history as art (Neal 1980). The more widespread emergence of collections from hoards and accumulations may well have occurred with the growth of civilizations supporting art and science. Ancient Mesopotamian royal collections in Chaldea, Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria included gems, writings on clay tablets, birds, omens, and incantations (Taylor 1948, p. 7). It is clear from the intact riches of Tutankhamen's tomb that he collected walking sticks, staves, whips, mineral specimens, and toys (Rigby and Rigby 1944, pp. 94-102). His tomb also included relics of predecessor Egyptian collectors, including Amenhotep III's blue enamels and the botanical specimens and foreign art collected by Thutmose III. While these collections reflect individual tastes, their collectors benefitted from both royal and divine rights:

Not men but gods, however, were the greatest of the early collectors. Through their servants, the priests and the priest-kings, it was they who took a toll of all the products of the land. The ancient temples, like the churches and monasteries of our own middle ages, were repositories for great accumulations of wealth. of art and literature; and the temple treasuries were the forerunners of our banks, our libraries, our museums. Even these divine collectors began, as nearly as we can judge, with the collection of food and wealth, graduating soon to the collecting of books and [written] records, of art objects and antiques, of curiosities and relics (Rigby and Rigby 1944, p. 96).

This was the case with the early religious sanctuaries of ancient Greece, which collected painted vases, furniture, weapons, gold and silver vessels, and votive statues (Taylor 1948, p. 11). On feast days, the faithful were invited to see these treasures in the underground chambers where the priests catalogued and guarded them (Caxton Publishing 1974, p. 9). Eventually, these temple collections grew to include the rare and exotic:

Piles of ivory ... barbarian costumes, Indian jewelry, snake skins, bear hides, elephant skulls, whale skeletons, gorilla skins (thought to be those of "hairy, savage women"), reeds as thick as tree trunks, coconuts, distorting mirrors, antique musical instruments, foreign weapons, curious vessels of all sorts (Rigby and Rigby 1944, p. 115).

By the time of Alexander the Great, Greek art and antiquity collections began to be used to proclaim political and military power in an effort to acquire and demonstrate a cultural heritage. At about the same time, the individual collector finally emerged in Greece.

Ancient Romans also sought to collect Greek antiquities and art, and by the second century B.C., the nage for collecting was widespread (Rheims 1961, pp. 8-9). Copies were suitable when the Greek originals were lacking and private collectors opened their collections to the public on certain days. Antique dealers were established, and connoisseurs shopped the streets of Rome where goldsmiths, cabinet-makers, and sculptors set up their businesses which occupied one-fourth of the city. Plunder was the major source of the foreign treasures that poured into Rome. Rivalries between collectors quickly developed. One unscrupulous collector, Gaius Verres, was eventually killed when he refused to relinquish his collection to Mark Antony (Caxton Publishing 1974, pp. 11-12). Petronius collected bowls that became the envy of Nero. When Nero sent poison to him, the saucy writer drank it from a prize bowl that he smashed upon completion (Rigby and Rigby 1944, p. 135). Collections sometimes proved esoteric and eccentric. In the third century A.D., Heliogabalus is reported to have had a collection of 10,000 pounds of cobwebs gathered (by his slaves) for his amusement (Tuan 1986).

At about the same time in China (the Han dynasty), manuscripts in literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and war were collected in the Imperial Library, along with silk paintings, bronze vessels, and other relics (Rigby and Rigby 1944, p. 114). When the Han dynasty fell in 221 A-D., there followed a 500-year stagnation in collecting until prosperity revived interest in art, literature, and relics (Rigby and Rigby 1944, pp, 145-153). When Rome was overrun in the fifth century A-D., the west was also plunged into the dark ages, and the center of collecting shifted to Constantinople where Byzantine art, manuscripts, jewels, and religious treasures were assembled by the court (Rheims 1961, pp. 9-10).

During the Middle Ages in Europe, wealth was concentrated among hereditary rulers and prelates of the Christian Church. Collecting was infrequent, even among the upper classes. Security was the predominant motivation for the limited collecting that did occur. Even kings were more concerned with the material value of their treasures than with their artistic or historical merit (Rigby and Rigby 1944, p. 138). Since numerous treasures were melted down for the monetary value of their gold, silver, or gems (Alsop 1982), we do not include such treasuries in our definition of a collection. The Church became the foremost repository of art, manuscripts, treasures, curiosities, and relics. Cathedrals, monasteries, and other religious centers developed a new collecting rivalry, as bones and bits of saints and sacred places became coveted (see Geary 1986; Sumption 1975). Pilgrims and crusaders returned with relics and curiosities that added to church collections as well. It was not until the twelfth century that individual collecting began to regain prominence.

With the Fourth Crusade's sacking of Constantinople in 1204, treasures and relics again began to appear in European collections. Within the thirteenth century, Marco Polo also introduced Europe to the art of the Orient, providing still more exotic objects for collecting. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, church power was declining, and newly wealthy European merchants were collecting an increasing variety of luxury Items -- tapestries, stained glass, reliefs, antiquities, coins, and heraldic signs, as well as paintings (Rigby and Rigby 1944, pp. 154-155). Italy was in the forefront of such collecting, and the Medici collections were the most extravagant. By the fifteenth century, daily life was shaped by the "triumph of individualism" (Aries 1989, p. 7) which supported efforts to amass individual collections. With such encouragement, art collecting became an important enough focus of European society that the names of great painters were well known. By the sixteenth century, names of the famous collectors themselves were equally well known (Rheims 196 1, p. 11). During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, starting in northern Germany, the Wunderkammer (cabinet of wonders) became a popular addition to the Kunstkamnier (art cabinet) and Schatzkammer (treasury) among the royalty and wealthy (see Impey and MacGregor 1985; Mullaney 1983). Eclecticism, the promise of magic, and curiosity were key elements in assembling the contents of a wunderkammer. Praz (19634, pp. 138-139) records that one such collection included: lamps and ink wells made of seashells, musical and mathematical instruments, stuffed serpents, Mexican curios, the rope with which Judas supposedly hanged himself, ostrich eggs, mosaics of hummingbirds' wings, portraits of famous jurists and beautiful women, carved cherry pits, automata, objects of ivory and coral, a peg used in King Solomon's temple, elephants' tusks, sharks' teeth, and a coconut mounted in silver. Such an assortment of objects could be found among royalty, as in the Hapsburg collections, as well in religious collections -including those of the Popes and those at the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis (Taylor 1948, p. 49, pp. 122-123). In part, the ideal was to show one's breadth by such a collection, but the exploration of the New World also stimulated curiosity for the strange and unusual. Whereas the medieval ideal was the compendia or systematization of knowledge of the world, during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries interest shifted to finding new knowledge and to "collecting the world" (Defert 1982). Along with various curios of the New World, Christopher Columbus returned to Lisbon with native Americans who were exhibited in the capitols of Europe (Hodgen 1964). That the collection of the world sometimes involved collecting written accounts and people (however objectionable to our current moral standards), as well as things brought back from various expeditions, exemplifies our definitional contention that collecting is not limited to material objects.

The scientific revolution that began in the late 17th century is characterized as Cartesian thinking after Rene Descartes. The same turning point has been described by Berman (1981), following Max Weber, as the "disenchantment of the world." The separation between art and science in this epoch was clearly manifested in collecting. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, collections began to be specialized with artistic versus scientific foci being the first fundamental split (Belk 1986, pp. 11-12; Caxton Publishing 1974, pp. 41-42). The first public museums since the destruction of the Mouseion at Alexandria also formed along these two lines during the late seventeenth through nineteenth centuries Wexander 1979). Royal and private collections were most often transformed into public institutions in order to initiate these museums, thus allowing the public to view and admire the formerly private treasures of the wealthy. The scientific zeal of the era gradually eliminated the more bizarre curiosities, although the fascination with the curious remained longer in the United States.

It appears that a several hundred year trend toward the democratization of collecting has accelerated in the twentieth century, with more and more people collecting. This has been possible only partly though rising real incomes, since the control of fine art has remained concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and museums. The stronger impetuses for more widespread collecting have been the broadened conceptualization of things that are collectible, the accelerated production of identical objects in series or sets, and the reduced age at which old things are seen as worth preserving. Museums have aided this trend by displaying increasingly diverse material and by expanding the array of offerings, with more marketing-oriented merchandising strategies (Kelly 1986). The democratization of collecting has also been aided by the increasingly branded and differentiated set of products available in the marketplace, providing additional objects to be collected.

Contemporary Institutional Dimensions of Collecting

The commoditization/singularization dialectic (Kopytoff 1986) that drives much collecting behavior in consumer culture underlies the institution of collecting. The symbolic value of a singularized item is frequently reinforced by a high monetary value, whether or not the item ever circulates in exchange relationships after its acquisition. The symbiosis of symbolic and exchange value (or sacred and profane dimensions) is apparent in the following examples:

* Movie memorabilia is especially rewarding to collectors. A pair of .. ruby slippers" worn in the Wizard of Oz fetched $165,000 from a collector. Another paid $12,000 for a uniform worn by Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues. A large poster for Casablanca goes for $17,500. A biweekly guide entitled Movie Collector's World already boasts 5.000 subscribers (Dunn 1988). * The founder of the G.I. Joe Club of America, himself an owner of over 500 of the action figures, desires to build a national monument to the character. Early model versions of the toy now sell for more than $2,000 (Pereira 1989). * A teddy bear was recently sold by Sotheby's for a record price of $85,000 (Millership 1989). The auction house also dispersed items from Andy Warhol's collection that commanded similarly astonishing prices: 152 cookie jars went for $247,830; a Black Mackintosh table for $275,000; a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for $77,000; and three Campbell's soup can banks for $7,150 (Cox 1988). * Before the collapse of the junk bond barons at Drexel Bumham, Lambert, the firm was able to reposition much of its material (coffee mugs, T-shirts, tennis balls and other office bric-a-brac) as collectibles, and dispose of it quite profitably (Herman 1990). * Among the rapidly appreciating speculative investments some experts view as a hedge against conventional market downturns are Elvis memorabilia, presidential autographs, rare books, toy figurines and both classic (1930's - 1940's) and muscle (1950's - 1960's) cars produced by American manufacturers (Gottschalk 1988; Johnson 1990; Peers 1988). * The profitability of collectibles has fueled a rise in such activity as the counterfeiting of baseball cards (Leptich 1989), the use of baseball cards as promotional premiums in such products as laundry detergents (n.a. 1988) and the manufacturing of hood or-nament replicas (Wright 1989). * Collecting behavior radiates to increasingly novel niches. With the rise of direct marketing activity, junk mail has become a collectible for some consumers (Crossen 1989). In Japan, prepaid magnetic cards intended to render service encounters more automatic and convenient have spawned a market of more than 200,000 collectors (Kilbum 1988). Socially responsible collecting has been promoted as a marketing vehicle to subsidize efforts such as documentary projects (n.a. 1990).

That collecting can be both passionate and profitable is a common observation (Crispell 1988; Klein 1990; Lynwander 1990; Read 1990; Trachtenberg 1990; Wartzman 1990). That a collecting "industry" and elaborate social network of voluntary associations of collectors supports the enterprise is less commonly acknowledged.

A number of discrete institutions comprises the collecting industry. Formal sector organizations such as auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's, or the thousands of galleries which constitute the infrastructure of the art world, are perhaps the most widely known exemplars as a result of their importance to society's aesthetic domain of experience. Similarly, museums are widely recognized principally for their contribution to the preserving of a collectively constructed and valued version of a material cultural past. The rise of so-called "unusual" or unconventional museums (Jurnovoy and Jenness 1987) celebrating less hegemonic or elitist visions of cultural production is also linked to this conservation or preservationist ethos. The cultural significance of these organizations is explored in later pages of this chapter. Retail galleries for collectibles such as rare documents have begun to spring up in shopping malls, angering purists concerned about inflationary pricing, packaging, gimmickry, and forgery (Yoshihashi 1990). Vehicles such as Rinker's Antiques and Collectibles Market Report, and the Antiques and Collectibles Information Service, instruct consumers in all phases of the collecting enterprise. Informal or alternative sector organizations (Sherry 1990a; 1990b) such as flea markets and garage sales constitute another important conduit for the collecting industry.

Of particular importance to this chapter is the existence of specific institutions whose mission is the mass-merchandising of presingularized "collectibles" to consumers desiring to own special objects with perceived investment value. Firms such as the Bradford Exchange, the Franklin Mint, the Franklin Library, the New England Collectors Society, and the Danberry Mint, among others, offer just such portfolios to their clients. These firms provide important search and validation services to consumers for whom the joy of treasure-hunting is not so exhilarating as the certainty of authentication is comforting (Beckham and Brooks 1989). For many, the thrill of acquisition consists in the anticipation of the inevitable arrival of a preselected item, rather than in the discovery in which a personal grail quest might culminate. These commercial "societies" reinforce the social and economic significance of aspects of collecting behavior by prepackaging the experience for consumers. Firms such as Hummel, Lladro and Waterford, among others similarly encourage collecting by producing items whose principal value or point-of-difference resides in their collectibility. Thus the commercialization of a social activity - the commoditization of collecting - is at once a cooptation and a reinforcement of an important consumer behavior.

Collecting is institutionalized in a number of other commercial formats. For example, the magazine Memories is targeted to consumers for whom nostalgia -- a culture-bound syndrome discussed in later pages -has become a salient experience. The magazine allows readers to collect a mass-mediated past which is promoted as an integral component of their extended selves. The Cable Value Network includes such shows as "Collectibles" and"The Doll Collector" among its programming fare. Many newspapers now run regular feature sections on "Collectibles" which read as commercial analogs to more traditional advice columns. Entire newspapers themselves are increasingly marketed as "collectibles", and sold to enshrine such "big events" as the Kennedy assassination, or such personal events as a reader's birthday; the edition for a particular date is often offered in an enshrining document case. Each of these vehicles serves to reinforce the significance of collecting -- whether it be the economic utility, the aesthetics of connoisseurship, or the fraternity/sorority of collectorhood -- for society at large.

Finally, the prevalence of voluntary societies of collectors is worthy of note. Such societies may be relatively informal and generalized. For example, many collectors are socialized into a family of orientation where collecting is a valued ethic, and in turn socialize their own families of procreation into the collecting ethic. Intergenerational transfer of collecting behavior, rather than of specific-object collecting, appears to be a common phenomenon. Participation in a shared hobby or communal ritual seems to be an important integrative mechanism in many families of collectors. Other voluntary societies are much more formally constituted, providing individuals with a reference group with which to identify and interact, based upon a particular passion. For instance, at the 10th National Sports Collectors' Convention held recently in Chicago, collectors could buy from and sell to a range of dealers and exhibitors, have items autographed by a host of attending sports heroes, attend seminars ranging from entrepreneurship through ethics to estate planning, obtain formal and informal advice on the craft of collecting (e.g. sourcing, authenticating, pricing), and engage in the kinds of after-hours socializing that pushes the mechanical solidarity of nominal affiliation forward into the organic solidarity characteristic of small group culture. There appear to be as many voluntary associations of collectors as there are categories of collectibles. These associations serve to reinforce the social and psychological significance of collecting in consumer culture. Perhaps ironically, such associations may mitigate some of the alienation that consumer culture seems to engender.

SIGNIFICANCE AND DISTRIBUTION OF COLLECTING

O'Brien (198 1) estimated that one of every three Americans currently collects something. Another study found that 62.5 percent of households surveyed reported that they have at least one collection, with an average of 2.6 collections per household (Schiffer, Downing, and McCarthy 1981). Even if these figures are exaggerated, at least according to our definition of collecting, it is evident that in recent times collecting has diffused to a large portion of the population in affluent nations. Almost ten percent of American men collect coins, and about four percent of both men and women collect stamps (Crispell 1988). Thus, one reason to study the neglected phenomenon of collecting is the large number of people it involves and the large amount of time, talent, effort, and money they spend pursuing their collecting interests. Another reason is that collecting represents a striking form of consumption. Since, by definition, the objects in a collection are beyond ordinary everyday use, the passion, rivalry, and marketplace attention that these objects engender challenges rational models of behavior. Furthermore, collected objects often require considerable time and effort to maintain (Aristides 1988; Durham 1985) and are more likely to produce a financial loss than a profit, if indeed they can be sold at all (Cox 1985). Thus, while we shall delay our considered appraisal, at this point we note Singh's (1988) assessment that collecting celebrates ownership and that collectors are driven by "the obsessional greed of ownership" (p. 86). Even without celebration and obsession, collecting appears to be a quintessential form of acquisition and possession, involving extreme concentration and care lavished upon the collection by its collector. Perhaps a principal contribution to be made in future research on collecting would be a systematic collection of biographies and life histories of collectors (e.g., Carmichael 1971; Stillinger 1980) that would capture something of the richness of motivation driving this form of consumption.

The importance of collecting may also depend upon its distribution and symbolic significance in the population. To what extent does the phenomenon of collecting transcend boundaries of age, gender, and social class? Do collections act as signs of age, gender, and social status?

Age. Our interviews with young collectors suggest that they are encouraged and often started in collecting by parents and other relatives. Mechling (1989) finds that youth organizations have done much to encourage collecting by children. In some cases, a key adult acts as a mentor and guide. Several fathers encouraged their sons' baseball-card collecting and visited shops, card collectors meetings, and card conventions with them. Collections of natural materials like minerals and seashells often depend upon adults taking children to collecting sites. Adults nurture children's collecting activity; we have encountered no incidents of intentional discouragement by adults. Collecting is a cultural model "of" and model "for" reality, in Geertz's (1973) sense. Through collecting, the individual learns that "getting" and "having"are social cultural pursuits, and that activity should be directed toward becoming what you own. Danet and Katriel (1989) found that, even among the ultra-orthodox Jews of the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem, children are encouraged to collect and trade cards with photos of various rabbis. A U. S. firm, Torah Personalities, Inc., markets trading cards of the world's most famous living and dead rabbis, complete with "statistics" on the card's obverse side (Time 1989).

During the first third of the twentieth century, there were a number of surveys of collecting activity among children. An early study reported that grade school children had an average of three to four active collections and that peak collecting years were between ages eight and eleven (Burk 1900). While a 1927 study reported a lower incidence of collecting and concluded that collecting was a fad whose time was passing (Lehman and Witty 1927), a 1929 study using different methods found an even higher incidence of collecting among children than had Burk (Whitley 1929). In follow-up studies Witty and Lehman (1930, 1931) found that, during peak collecting years, girls averaged twelve collections and boys eleven. Durost (1932) reported that boys' collecting activity peaked at age ten with an average of 12.7 collections, while girls' collecting peaked at age I I with an average of 12. 1 collections. A recent study in Israel found that, between first and seventh grade, at least 84 percent of both boys and girls collect something, although in eighth grade these figures drop to below 50 percent (Danet and Katriel 1988). From all these studies, it is clear that collecting is more common among children than among adults. Its peak coincides with the onset of adolescence and the desire to individuate through doing rather than having (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981). Prior to this age, the collection may constitute the self, and the self may be seen as part of the collection. Even though collecting may offer the illusion of a return to childhood, one inhibition to collecting as an adult appears to be the fear that others will think that the collecting is a childish indulgence (Bloom 1989; Kozden 1989; Olmsted 1988a). Another inhibition, no doubt, is the amount of time involved. A third explanation may be the wider availability of other channels for attaining a sense of mastery and identity as an adult.

Although collections are sometimes liquidated for financial reasons during old age (Christ 1965), collections begun in youth may be continued over a lifetime (e.g., Dannefer 1981; Olmsted 1987b). Indeed, increased time resources after retirement are often devoted to collections (Dannefer 1980). The community of fellow collectors can also be an important source of satisfaction. However, given the specialized nature of most collections, they are not likely to produce integration among neighborhood friends (Unruh 1983, pp. 108110).

Gender. The studies just reviewed consistently find that, among youthful collectors, girls are at least as likely as boys to collect. Among adults, however, the literature suggests that men are more likely to collect than are women (Danet and Katriel 1989; Olmsted 1988a, 1989; Belk and Wallendorf 1990a). Rigby and Rigby (1944, pp. 326-327) suggest that the economic requirements and the competitive nature of collecting have traditionally favored males. Danet and Katriel (1986, p. 48) argue that the proactive mastery involved in collecting is inconsistent with the more passive and familial social roles that have been encouraged for women. And Saisselin (1984, p. 68) contends that historically men's purchasing has been viewed as serious and purposeful collecting, while women's buying has been perceived as (and confined to) frivolous consumption. As Baekeland (1981) emphasizes:

we rarely think of accumulations of dresses, shoes, perfumes, china and the like as collections.... Men's collections, however, be they of stamps, cars, guns or art, tend to have clear-cut thematic emphases and standards, external reference points in public or private collections. Thus women's collections tend to be personal and ahistorical, men's impersonal and historical (p. 47).

One need only look to the array of shoes assembled by Madame Marcos to find one inflated example of this distinction (see Goldstein 1987). However, it might be argued that women's collecting is transmuted into domestic production. That is, women both produce and reproduce "consumption" in their creation of the domestic economy. That economy might be regarded in part as a "living" collection. Furthermore, a more complete examination of collecting activity indicates its essentially androgynous qualities. While acquisition may require aggressive competition and mastery, preservation of a collection requires care, creativity, and nurturance (Belk and Wallendorf 1990a). Thus, collecting activity requires characteristics stereotypically associated with both genders.

A second question with regard to the connection between gender and collecting is whether males and females tend to collect different types of things. While not all objects are seen to be gendered (Allison, Golden, Mullet, and Coogan 1980; Golden, Allison, and Clee 1979), many objects are. Gender can be imparted through strong design differences as with motorcycles versus motor scooters (Hebdige 1988), or through more subtle features as with the size, shape, and ornamentation of hair brushes (Forty 1986). The historical studies of child collectors, cited previously, confirm that boys tend to collect different objects (e.g., marbles, nails, insects) than girls (e.g., dolls, jewelry, photographs).

Among adults in our sample of 192 collectors, some of the strongest gender differences we have found among collectors is in the overwhelming predominance of males among firearms collectors (cf. Olmsted 1987a, 1988b, forthcoming; Stenross 1987) and automobile collectors (cf. Dannefer 1980, 1981). We also find men to be conspicuously more likely to collect antiques, books, tatoos, and sports-related objects, while women are more likely to collect animal replicas, jewelry, and housewares such as dishes and silverware (cf. Belk and Wallendorf 1990a). Other studies have found men to be more likely to collect stamps and coins than are women (Christ 1965; Crispell 1988; Olmsted 1987b). Interestingly, Sigmund Freud's collection of antiquities includes a large number of phallic amulets and phalluses from statues. Similarly, the ubiquitous statuettes in his collection can be interpreted as phallic (Spitz 1989; cf. Holbrook 1988a, 1988b). It is almost as if Freud were acting out the satirical tale of Flaubert's naive collectors, Bouvard & Pecuchet:

At one time towers, pyramids, candles, mile-posts, and even trees had the significance of phalluses -- and for Bouvard and Pecuchet everything became a phallus. They collected the swing-bars of carriages, legs of armchairs, cellar bolts, chemists' pestles. When anyone came to see them, they asked: 'What do you think that's like? " -- then confided the mystery-, and if the visitor protested, they shrugged their shoulders pityingly (1880/1954, p. 131).

Again, the models of/models for reality analogy is apt. Collecting enables males to celebrate aggressive behaviors abetting commerce or the hunt, and ultimately shaping the realm of political economy. Collecting enables females to enact behaviors creating household nurturance, which shape domestic economy.

Our case studies of a husband and wife who both collected for most of their lives provide an informative contrast between male and female collecting. The woman, whose husband posthumously enshrined her collection in a museum called the Mouse Cottage, was a collector of mice replicas. The collection began during her childhood when she acquired the nickname "Mouse" because, according to the museum brochure, she was "so clever and charming in character and petite in stature." Her lifelong collection consists of toy mice of every description, displayed in homey pseudo-antique golden oak furniture, around a perennial Christmas tree, and in a dollhouse. Both the dominant pattern of Christmas as " woman's work" (Cheal 1987, 1988; Caplow 1982, 1984) and the association of the diminutive and miniaturized with women and children (Stewart 1984) reinforce the dominant theme of domestication in the Mouse Cottage. Another major feature of the collection is its Mickey Mouse replicas. In this regard it is instructive that when Mickey was initially introduced with a thinner appearance and masculine voice, he lacked his current popularity. Only by means of an emasculating voice change, a more babyish and androgynous appearance, and a concomitant social clumsiness with female mice, did Mickey gain popularity (Mollenhoff 1939, Gould 1979). The diminutive mouse (n.b. Mickey rather than Mike or Michael) is nevertheless the hero in Disney comics. He succeeds with the magical guile of a child in overcoming more adult-like villains, thus fulfilling a common childhood fantasy.

Mouse's husband also institutionalized his major collection (fire engines) by establishing the Fire Museum. In contrast to the diminutive Mouse Cottage, this museum of fire-fighting equipment (billed as the world's largest) is spacious, has a guide, and charges admission. The guide, display, and brochure all emphasize that this is a serious historical museum, in contrast to the entertainment rationale given for the Mouse Cottage. Two other collections of this collector have also been given display space: (1) his collection of paintings and bronzes of American cowboys and Indians and (2) his collection of African hunting trophies that began with a family hunting safari in the 1920s.

The collections of these two spouses present a graphic illustration of gender differences found in other collections studied as well. These differences were detected independently by the two authors who conducted research at these sites. Using the general equation, Mouse Cottage:Fire Museum:XY, we note these relevant pairs of X and Y --

Tiny : Gigantic

Weak : Strong

Home : World

Nature : Machine

Nurturing : Extinguishing

Art : Science

Playfulness : Seriousness

Decorative : Functional

Inconspicuous : Conspicuous

Animate : Inanimate

Belk and Wallendorf (1990a) also discuss further cases of gendered identity work including two collections of Barbie dolls. As with the mice and fire engines, these collectibles can provide a circumscribed arena in which a variety of gender and other identity issues are played out. In the Barbie doll cases studied however, the key gender identity issues center on the recent radical mastectomy undergone by one of the Barbie doll collectors and the homosexuality of the other. in both cases these collectors were able to express and work through these issues using their doll collections.

Social Class. A final issue in the distribution of collecting concerns its locus in the class structure of American society. To a certain degree, the poor are precluded from many collecting realms due to their low income. Although the wealth of the mouse replica and fire engine collectors just discussed belies the common assumption that the wealthy collect only fine art, it remains true that collectors of expensive fine art are almost always at least moderately wealthy (Moulin 1967/1987). Since virtually anything is collectible (Reid 1988), the contemporary collector can always find some affordable category of objects to collect. Therefore, income is not necessarily a barrier to collecting. One survey of subscribers to a general collecting magazine found that the sample had a median income about 30 percent above the U.S. population median and was over 70% white collar (Treas and Brannen 1976). Bossard and Boll (1950) found that the upper class were more likely to collect than the middle class, although more recent studies have found that the working and middle classes are well represented in such areas of collecting as baseball cards (Bloom 1989) and stamps (Bryant 1982; Olmsted 1987b). Rochberg-Halton (1979) reported that although visual art was cited as a favorite possession more frequently by members of the upper middle class in Chicago, other collectibles were cited more frequently by lower class informants. Our own data (based on the sample of 192 informants) suggest that, with the exception of fine art collecting, most collecting areas (including automobiles) appear to be dominated by the middle class. This may imply that firms specializing in sales to collectors have successfully targeted the large middle class in the U.S. (e.g., Butsch 1984).

In sum, contemporary collecting is unevenly but broadly distributed across age, gender, and socioeconomic categories. It seems to reflect a heightened acquisitive and possessive orientation that epitomizes the modem consumer culture. The considerable inputs of time, money, skiff, and energy devoted to collecting also help to make it a consumption activity eminently worthy of study. But most importantly, collecting is a passionate sphere of consumption from which collectors seem to derive significant meaning and fulfillment in their lives. It is, in Stebbins' (1982) terms, serious leisure (cf. Bloch and Bruce 1984). Smith and Apter (1977, p. 65), thus, observe of antique collectors:

Finally, collecting antiques, like any hobby pursued with intensity and passion, helps to give life meaning and purpose. The goals of antique collecting may at first seem arbitrary and the activity may initially be taken up for excitement ... but for many people the goals eventually become serious and building the collection would seem for some people to take on almost religious proportions.

This point is well illustrated in a recent play by Terrence McNally (1989) entitled The Lisbon Traviata. McNally's work offers what must be the first full-length theatrical production that takes record collecting as its central theme (but see Eisenberg 1987). On its surface, the play depicts a love quadrangle involving four homosexual men, two of whom (Mendy and Stephen) are held together emotionally by their shared devotion to opera in general and to the performances of Maria Callas in particular. Thus, much of the action and most of the humor in Act I revolve around Mendy's desperation to hear a new bootleg recording of Maria singing La Trauiata in Lisbon. This scene contains lines guaranteed to move any compassionate record collector to the deepest commiseration. In this, it reflects the playwright's own avowed musical fanaticism and obsession with opera recordings and performances:

In the first act of McNally's play, audiences are treated to an encounter between two rabid fans of Maria Callas.... Mendy goes into a frenzy when Stephen mentions a pirated recording he owns of a performance of La Traviata sung by Callas in Lisbon in 1958.... Most of the first act dwells on the two men's Callas obsession and their disdain for other great singers.... McNally, himself, admits to having been an ardent Callas fan during the Golden Age of Opera (Botto 1989, p. 66).

In Act II, we find that Stephen's apartment features row upon row of vertical shelves that house literally thousands of Ips and CDs carefully arranged in a well-organized order that permits him to pluck examples of interest from the filing system with barely a glance. In a touching comic thrust, Stephen recounts how he had to explain to his father why anyone would want more than one recording of the same piece of music. "For the same reason," he says, "that you need to watch the Super Bowl again every year." Thus does the collector notice subtle distinctions, even those among performances of the same composition by the same artists recorded on different occasions. Though McNally's play deals primarily with classical music in general and opera in particular, the same fanatic interest in different performances appears in the desire of jazz fans to hear alternate takes of pieces played sometimes only minutes or seconds apart by improvisers of the stature of (say) Lester Young or Charlie Parker. Similarly, "Deadhead" fans of the Grateful Dead strive to make, trade, and collect tapes of every concert by the group (Pearson 1987). In the case of McNally's comic hero, the obsession with hearing and owning all available performances by a favorite artist borders on the pathological. But, in general, the extent to which such subtle differences matter is the essence of the true collecting spirit.

A THEORY OF COLLECTING

What Collections Mean

Magic. One key to understanding the intensity with which collections are pursued is the finding that collections are often magic. In a related vocabulary, the items in a collection are frequently "sacred" (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989). We have already noted that, by definition, the contents of a collection are usually set apart from the ordinary. Asked whether she ever eats using her collection of Lustreware dishes, a collector W 30) replied, "Never! I never use it. You know why? Its because they're completely non-functional." Once an item enters a collection, it does not leave, except in the case of serial collections and upgrading. A collector of nutcrackers (WF 50), after explaining that she never uses them to crack nuts, was asked if nutcrackers ever leave her collection: "Nol No way. (laughs] They're mine and they're going to stay mine." A couple (W`M 65/WF 65) who collect saltcellars was observed serving a holiday feast using salt and pepper shakers rather than objects from the sacred collection. Similarly, as previously noted, we find that collector/dealers generally keep their sacred personal collections separated from profane saleable merchandise and do not tolerate traffic between the two. It is as if the magical power of the collected objects would be diminished if they were treated as market commodities and removed from the safe haven of eternal life in the collection.

The magical quality of objects in a collection is also revealed by the reverent care given to them. Fieldnotes from an automobile show reflect some of this fetishistic attention:

One man driving his car in the "parade" awaiting space assignment, jumped out of his car when the line stopped and polished the wheels a bit. One person used a paintbrush to get the dust out of his grill. Another man was doing finishing touches to the chrome around his headlights with a toothbrush.

In a similar vein, Dannefer reports a car collector's response to a woman who asked where she could put her Coke among the clutter: "Just anywhere except on the white car -- that's God" (1980, p. 393). For some, this concern for these metal objects of affection extends beyond life itself. One informant (WM 60s) has a will leaving his Model A Fords to his 14-year-old grandson. but the will also contains a provision stipulating that if the grandson violates them or doesn't care for them properly, they will be sold to a professional restorer who can appreciate them. Another owner of four restored cars (WM 60) has willed one to each of his four children: "They promised me to take good care of them. If they don't, I'll come back and haunt them." And a recently divorced shell collector (WM late 30s) laments that he kept the house and children but his ex-wife kept the shells that she refers to as "her babies." Such personification is an important element in fetishizing objects (Ellen 1988). While Stewart (1984) distinguishes collecting from fetishism based on the order that characterizes collecting, we disagree and see collecting as often fetishistic. In our view, the compulsive desire for order in the collection only serves to reinforce such fetishism.

Reverence for the power of the collected objects is also displayed in other ways. Clark (1963, p. 15) notes that "In a Rothschild collection I always found myself whispering, as if I were in church." Collectors of contemporary art, like the billionaires who once bought Renaissance art from Joseph Duveen (Behrman 1952), find themselves wondering "Am I good enough to own this painting?" (Greenspan 1988). Danet and Katriel (1986, p. 38) refer to such reverence as "thing magic." Laughlin (1956) calls collections -- along with talismans, amulets, religious tokens, relics, and charms -- "soterial objects," after the Greek Soteria, meaning "objects that deliver one from evil."

Besides delivering them from evil, collectors also hope that the extraordinary power of collected objects will deliver them from the ordinary world of everyday life into a magical world. This belief is evident in the treasure tales that surround most collecting arenas. These tales typically involve a discerning collector using a combination of cleverness and luck to acquire a rare and valuable collectible for little or nothing (e.g., Beards 1987). In one tale, shyly told but fervently believed, a car collector " late 30s) recalled searching for years for the pickup truck that he and his deceased father had once fixed up. As the fieldnotes record:

He had looked for it for much of the 11 years since he got rid of it, but with no luck. They had lost a son and had some other difficulties, so they had despondently gone to his father's grave. He and his father had done a lot of racing together and were close. He told his father that if he was alright to give him a sign. Shortly after that, a friend told him about a Cameo, and they went to see it. When he saw the "R. & R Racing' on it, he knew it was his old truck and bought it. Ron's wife said they weren't very religious, but that made believers of them.

It often seems that the collector is assembling a miniature world that he or she can control and rule over (Berger 1972, p. 86; Danet and Katriel 1989, p. 263; Stewart 1984, p. 162). If so, it is an enchanted world of magical objects not unlike the fairy tales of childhood (Bettelheim 1975).

Other Times, Other People, and Other Places. if collections evoke magical worlds, they are aided in this evocation by their linkage with a distant, exotic otherness (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen 1989) displaced in time or space from the here and now. The collected object is imbued with the aura of the time, place, and persons once associated with it; for instance, a collection of rocks and seashells from vacation trips (Appleyard 1979). In fact, Urry (1990, p. 32) has characterized contemporary tourists as "collectors of gazes," who are less interested in revisiting the same exotic sites than in capturing the "initial gaze" of the other. Because collecting is a longitudinal activity, even a collection of contemporary art acquires historical markers over the history of the collection. A common incentive to collect involves the desire to conserve, assemble, preserve, or rescue objects. More generally, such activity is often part of a search for self-meaning.

The ability of a collection to evoke other places is seen among two informants who totally devote their houses to their collections of artifacts from particular places -- one from Bali and the other from Nigeria and nearby African countries. In each case, the collector previously lived in these countries, although the collections were acquired over a period of time and continue to grow with return visits. Each house is filled with furniture, wall decorations, masks, musical instruments, carvings, and other artwork from the foreign lands. In one collection, the material overflows numerous glass front cases and is stacked up to five items high in each room on all three floors of the house. And, in both houses, every piece recalls for the collector the story of its acquisition. The initial guided tour in one of these houses took five hours. In a less literal way, stamp collections and books provide means of tangibly acquiring other places. One of Olmsted's (1987b) collectors remarked, "Stamp collecting is also a way of traveling and getting acquainted with other countries" (p. 3). Although she no longer climbs, Janet Smith (1988) relives adventures of climbing in the Alps through her collection of Alpine climbing books and journals, and she notes, "I can't think of any keener invitation to take an ego-trip down Memory Lane" (p. 480).

Not only place, but also time is acquired and made manifest in a collection. Sigmund Freud's interest in collecting the antiquities of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt appears to have arisen in part from his fascination with the Egyptian illustrations in the Philippson Bible he read in his home as a child (Kuspit 1989). Some of his antiquities were acquired during his travels to the ruins of these ancient civilizations. When these pieces were brought home, they served as reminders, "promising him that after the long winter in Vienna he could return" (Bernfeld 1951, p. 109). In fact, Freud's travels were often shaped by his penchant for collecting, as Walter (1988) notes:

During his visit to America in 1909 he showed no interest in the country, saying that all he wanted to see there was Niagara Falls. Refusing to read travel books before the trip, he studied a book on Cyprus instead and wanted to see the principal collection of Cyprian antiquities that was on exhibit in New York. In that city, the place that attracted him was the Metropolitan Museum, where he spent his time absorbed in the antiquities of Greece (pp. 102-103).

Not incidentally, Freud also used archeological metaphors in his work -- as in his references to psychoanalysis as the archaeology of the mind and his symbolic interpretations of key myths such as that of Oedipus. It has even been suggested that his crafting of the psychoanalytic enterprise was dominated by an object-oriented passion for archaeology (Walter 1988, p. 111). In Kuspit's view, it was Freud's hope "to have some of the heroic quality associated with archaeology rub off on psychoanalysis" (1989, pp. 133134). The collector of antiquities, in Hillier's (198 1) words, is "an archaeologist without a spade" (p. 71). As Rheims (1961) reflects:

An object's date is of prime importance to a collector with an obsession for the past. He values it for its associations, that it once belonged to and was handled by a man he can visualize as himself. The object bears witness: its possession is an introduction to history. One of a collector's most entrancing day-dreams is the imaginary joy-of uncovering the past in the guise of an archaeologist (p. 211).

In this daydream the collector also magically transcends time and travels to another era.

The desire to bask in the imagined glory of the past is also evident in the strong emotional attachment that many antique collectors have to the persons, eras, and places that their collections represent (e.g., Kaplan 1982; Stillinger 1980). Collections of family photographs (Hirsch 1981), autographs, locks of hair in Victorian hair wreaths (Miller 1982, Payne 1988), and contemporary baseball cards are all, in this sense, collections of people. The attraction is all the stronger when the contagious magic of a prominent provenance is attached to objects in the collection. Thus, one collector was especially attached to an antique music box because it once belonged to Winston Churchill. As Malinowski (1922) observed:

When, after six years' absence in the South Seas and Australia, I returned to Europe and did my first bit of sightseeing at Edinburgh Castle, I was shown the Crown Jewels. The keeper told many stories of how they were wom by this and that king or queen on such and such an occasion.... I had the feeling that something similar has been told to me.... And then arose before me the vision of a native village on coral soil ... and naked men and one of them showing me thin red strings and big worn-out objects, clumsy to sight and greasy to touch. With reverence he also would name them and tell their story.... Both heirlooms and vaygu'a are cherished because of the historical sentiment which surrounds them. However ugly, useless, and -- according to current standards -- valueless an object may be, if it has figured in historical scenes and passed through the hands of historic persons, and is therefore an unfailing vehicle of important sentimental associations, it cannot but be precious to us (pp. 88-89).

Sometimes this attachment even takes on metaphysical qualities. Three different antique collectors we have interviewed have explained their unaccountable attraction to and intuitive knowledge about particular antiques- as being due to some association with their past lives. In a less mystical sense, many collectors strive after an image of their own childhood through their collections. As Frances Graham, editor of Antiques & Collecting Hobbies magazine explains:

People want things from their childhood for two reasons. Either they had something as a child and have fond memories of it, or they wanted it and couldn't have it, so they're buying it for themselves now (Crispell 1988, p. 39).

Having objects from our past can provide a sense of stability in our lives (Forty 1986). Baseball-card collectors often begin their adult collections by trying to recreate a childhood collection that their mothers once discarded (Bloom 1989). There also appears to be some striving to regain love and security in these cases. The acquisition of objects desired earlier in life is evident among many car collectors who begin in mid-life by acquiring the car they had or wished they could have had as an adolescent. Like Dannefer's (1980) interviews, some car collectors we interviewed said they can predict the market price of cars by anticipating increased popularity of the "hot cars" when men now reaching 40 were in high school. Increased financial resources at this stage of life may facilitate this tendency, but the desire to reflect on earlier life at mid-life and the more general nostalgic inclination to use collections of the past to give meaning to the present may be stronger motivating factors (Belk 1990, Davis 1979).

Because the collection takes the collector into a new realm of experience (baseball cards into the world of childhood heroes, dolls into the world of fashion models, stamps into exotic lands), it allows pleasurable expression of fantasy (Gotelli 1988, Rheims 1961, Travis 1988). Through such activity, the collector can potentially experiment with a fantasy life without suffering the consequences and disappointments of enacting it (Friday 1975).

Thus, for various reasons, collections signal other times and other places. As the preceding section emphasizes, collections also mean magic. These meanings are basic to all collectors and collections. The next section explores other meanings of collections that are relevant to the motivations for collecting.

Motivations for Collecting

Acquisitiveness Legitimized as Art or Science. While many motivations have been offered to explain collecting, two basic motivations that are useful in understanding the pervasiveness of collecting are legitimization and self-extension. Legitimization concerns the willingness of society to approve or condone behavior that might otherwise be construed as acquisitiveness, possessiveness, or greed, by applying the labels "collecting" and "collectors" to certain activities and people. The process of learning what defines legitimate collecting activity begins in childhood, as Clifford (1985) explains:

Children's collections are revealing ... a boy's accumulation of miniature cars, a girl's dolls, a summer vacation "nature museum" (with labeled stones and shells, a hummingbird in a bottle), a treasured bowl filled with the bright-colored shavings of crayons. In these small rituals we observe the channeling of obsession, an exercise in how to make the world one's own, to gather things around oneself tastefully, appropriately. The inclusions in all collections reflect wider cultural rules, of rational taxonomy, of gender, of aesthetics. An excessive, sometimes even rapacious need to have is transformed into rule-governed, meaningful desire. Thus the self which must possess, but cannot have it all, learns to select, order, classify in hierarchies -- to make "good" collections (p. 238, italics added).

Thus do we begin the process of channeling our materialistic desires into "meaningful" pursuits; to become collectors rather than hoarders or misers; to produce knowledge and beauty rather than displaying selfishness.

The general social sanction for collecting over hoarding and accumulating is sometimes aided by self-deception. A collector of all manner of elephant replicas told us he expected that history will some day stand in awe of what he has accomplished in building his collection. Specialized clubs (including one for elephant replica collectors), publications, shows, and meetings help foster this feeling that collecting is legitimate. Olmsted (1987a, p. 16) detects this legitimization process in the rhetoric of gun collectors at gun shows. Fine (1987) sees a similar process operating through the "community of [common] knowledge" and boundary-establishing stories among mushroom collectors. We observed a similar set of legitimizing activities at a meeting of a midwestern "sports [baseball card] collecting club." The meeting began with a quiz asking 20 questions such as: who has the highest batting average in baseball this year, who has the most American League strikeouts, and who is leading in stolen bases. The person with the most correct answers (after a tie breaker between the two who each had 17 correct) won tickets to-an upcoming baseball game. At the same meeting, one of the several members who had attended a national baseball-card collectors show reported on what took place there. A debate on whether to spend $13,000 and first-class airfare from Seattle to bring Al Kaline (in the baseball Hall of Fame) to the local show was followed by a show-and-tell in which members appreciatively learned of each other's recent card acquisitions. Each of these activities, in addition to the large meeting turnout, helped club members feel that their collecting is justified, legitimate, and important.

The general legitimization of collections, coupled with tenuous price guides and rationalizations that collecting is a good investment, means that even a person who is not normally materialistic or self-indulgent can safely exercise these traits in the arena of collecting. Saarinen (1958, pp. 349-355) describes John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as such a man. Even though he was fond of jewels, collecting art was as close as he would allow himself to come to what he perceived as self-indulgence. He argued that since these works would eventually be willed to a museum, he could feel guilt-free in acquiring them and possessing them for a time. Meyer (1973) notes this legitimization of collecting through feelings of grandiosity:

The great collector has a sense of destiny, a feeling that he is mankind's agent in gathering and preserving what might otherwise be heedlessly dispersed. And the collector is capable of collecting anything -- one has a complete cabinet of all varieties of Coca-Cola bottles, while another displays an array of Ford Radiators (p. 187).

Whether a collection is believed to be legitimized as contributing to art or to science depends in part upon what is collected. But it also depends upon the type of collector. For instance, Rubens kept an extensive art collection in his studio, but rather than serve as a source of aesthetic inspiration, it served a more scientific or technical purpose in providing examples for his assistants (Bellony-Rewald and Peppiatt 1982). The type A collector takes the taxonomic approach thought to characterize science, while the type B collector follows aesthetic criteria thought to predominate in the world of art (Danet and Katriel 1989). In both cases, the rigorous pursuit of these criteria gives collectors confidence in the acceptability and importance of their activity. And as others have observed, underlying the acquisitiveness sanctioned in these ways is a desire for security (Belk 1982; Beaglehole 1932; Danet and Katriel 1986; Rigby and Rigby 1944; Saarinen 1958, von Holst 1967).

Collections as Extensions of Self. Another general motive for collecting, at least in an individualistic and possessive culture, is to gain an expanded or improved sense of self through gathering and controlling meaningful objects or experiences. As John Dewey (1922) puts it:

No unprejudiced observer will lightly deny the existence of an original tendency to assimilate objects and events to the self, to make them part of the "me." We may even admit that the "me" cannot exist without the "mine." The self gets solidity and form through an appropriation of things which identifies them with whatever we call myself ... .. I own therefore I am" (p. 116).

Behind the desire to control and master the objects in a collection (Belk, et a]. 1988; Bryant 1982; Danet and Katriel 1986; Rheims 1961; Stebbins 1982), it appears that there is an intention to build, restore, or alter the extended self Wexander 1979; Beaglehole 1932: Belk 1988; Danet and Katriel 1986; Moulin 1967/1987; Stillinger 1980). For this reason, as noted earlier, collections are almost always personal possessions rather than group or family possessions, at least within the hedonistic and individualistic ethic of modem consumer culture (Campbell 1987). The tendency to connect the collection to other times, places, or people is also due to the individualistic desire to extend oneself through the collection. Moulin (1967/1987) found that such an outlook was much in evidence among French art collectors:

Ultimately they identify with what they own, with the collection they have ,.created," which gives them a sense of accomplishment.... for collectors the attitude is, "I am my paintings." Identification with the painting gives them a positive sense of themselves (p. 83).

We found this attitude expressed at a comic book show where visitors could bring their comic books to be appraised by the experts who had set up displays and sales booths. The hesitant and reluctant approach that the visitors made as they neared these experts, treasures in hand, reflected their fear of a negative judgment upon them if the comics turned out to be worthless or of minor significance. 'Me feeling of dejection when such a judgment was received may not be so much a disappointment at the collection's lack of financial importance as a feeling of loss-of-self. But perhaps the most telling signal that collections are seen as extensions of self involves the involuntary loss of collections. One man (WM 40) who lost his lifelong collections of phonograph records and books in a flood felt profound despair and the sinking feeling that now his life was a failure rather than a positive contribution to the world.

Sense of self is also involved in the goal of the collector to complete the collection, for to complete the collection is symbolically to complete the self (Belk 1988, Wicklund and Gollwitzer 1982). While this tendency may be stronger among type A collectors (Danet and Katriel 1989), even those employing purely aesthetic criteria are interested in having a balanced or aesthetically pleasing whole that represents them as possessing parallel traits (Storr 1983). At the same time that collectors strive to complete their collections, there is a great fear should this ever be close to happening; for if a collector is through with a collection, who is he or she then? A finished collection, like a finished life, connotes death. Collectors can calm this fear of completion by upgrading the standards for the collection, branching out into related collecting areas, or starting entirely new types of collections. These strategies show too that the collector's joy lies in the process of collecting rather than in the outcome, reflecting a focus on what Maslow (1968) termed being needs. Collecting in multiple categories is an especially common strategy to forestall completion. Thus, one of our informants (WM 40) collected stamps, coins, baseball cards, football cards, sports-team t-shirts, jerseys and hats, vintage cars, big band 78 rpm records, and antique furniture. A husband and wife " 65, WF 65) collected (between them): dolls, saltcellars, purses, glassware, plates, jewelry, spoons, watches, several types of figurines, and antique furniture. While these collectors are extreme examples of maintaining multiple collections, the tendency eventually to begin a collection of collections is widespread among collectors. Along with the other strategies noted, multiple collections can indefinitely preclude a shift to non-collector status due to the completion of a collection.

Temporal Aspects of Collecting

Over the life of a collector and a collection, consistent patterns tend to emerge. These patterns involve the birth, life, and death or immortality of the collection. While collections can be of diverse types, they tend to follow a similar life cycle.

Collections Seldom Begin Purposefully. Ironically. in light of the seriousness and purposefulness that the collection generally attains, its start is seldom preplanned. The collector rarely consciously ponders what to collect or whether to collect. The elephant replica collector, mentioned previously, began when he received an elephant figurine as a wedding gift. In fact, gifts often act as the seeds around which a collection eventually forms. Alternatively, a collector may purchase an interesting curio, perhaps on a vacation, and become interested in pursuing the interest it stimulates. It may take the acquisition of several items before the collector sees the pattern, becomes committed, and begins to say "I collect ____." Once this occurs, others may begin to give the collector gifts of items for the collection, helping to reinforce this self-definition. In order to be regarded as a true collector, however, the owner must also actively participate in acquiring additional objects for the collection.

Olmsted (1988a) asked the owner of a used marine supply store if he was a collector:

If you had asked that two months ago, I would have answered no, I am a dealer. When I buy for the shop I often buy knives. When I get a real nice one I throw it in a drawer in my bedroom dresser. One night my wife asked me when I would bring those knives to the store. I said there was only a few, I probably wouldn't bother. She said "I counted them last night. There are 75 pocket knives in that drawer." They still aren't in the shop, so I guess I am a collector now (p. 3).

Connell's (1974) The Connoisseur tells a similar story of a man slowly but inexorably drawn into avid collecting. He initially picks up an interesting piece of pottery at a curio shop in the American Southwest while there for a professional convention. Out of curiosity, he stops at a university anthropology department before leaving town to inquire if it might be a genuine Mayan piece. Learning that it probably is, he acquires several books about such pieces to read on the plane on the way home. Over the next several months he is slowly seduced -- first, by the remarkable collection of a former stranger who now welcomes him as a fellow collector and, later, through his efforts to authenticate a forgery he buys at an auction and through the ministrations of several dealers. He eventually becomes so immersed in his pursuit of Mayan pottery that he woefully neglects his family. Although collecting does not inevitably become destructive, it does commonly begin with such incidental purchases, finds. or gifts.

Tendency Toward Specialization. Like Vie Connoisseur, the collector almost always begins to concentrate on one or several specialties within a broader area of collecting. For instance one purse collector (WF 65) looks for French beaded purses, sterling silver mesh purses, and "miser's purses". The primary reason for such specialization is to set challenges that offer a realistic chance of success (completion and superiority over other collectors). Just as academics within any field tend to specialize in only a few topics within an already bounded field, so do collectors. In this way, they greatly enhance their chances of becoming authorities and having superior collections. This trend is a modern one that was not in fashion among the Renaissance collectors who assembled wunderkammern. Contemporary collectors we have encountered include a man who only wanted Mickey Mouse Replicas from the 1950s, a woman who only collected oyster plates from the Eastern U.S. (with indentations for 5 rather than 6 oysters), and a man who collects only Model A Ford Roadsters. Similarly, Olmsted (1987b) found that stamp collectors were most likely to switch from collecting stamps of the world to collecting only a few countries or specific issues, and Stenross (1987) found that gun collectors are likely to specialize by time period, country of production, and type of gun.

Unlike the decision to start collecting, the decision to specialize in a particular subarea is made more deliberately. An art collector we interviewed decided to specialize in netsukes and Japanese block prints, partly because he spent time in Japan when in the military and later lived there for three years as an attorney. A collector of British Army ceramic medals was pursuing the grail of a Royal Order of the Garter medal ("like the one Winston Churchill was buried with"). And a comic book collector was concentrating on issues of Swamp Thing after number 20, when a writer he admires took over the scripts. In each of these cases of specialization, there was a more elaborated cognitive rationale than had been formulated to explain the initial interest in the general area of the collection. At a more societal level of analysis, undoubtedly structural variables such as family background and education also play a role in such choices (cf., DiMaggio 1987), but we think the incidental start of collections cuts across these structural variables.

Collection as Cumulative Experience. A collected object becomes a reminder of the story of its acquisition. The object is, thus, a cue for recalling and retelling this story (e.g., Benjamin 1955). The images that a collection conjures up may therefore be a part of the collector's personal history of times and places. Stewart (1984, p. 151) calls these associations "souvenirs" (because of their metonymic authentication of the past) and distinguishes them from collections (which she contends involve only a metaphoric derivation of authenticity from the past). However, we consider personal history to be an inescapable part of collections. "it is as if," says Abbas (1988), "the experience of possession could be transformed into the possession of experience" (p. 230).

A collection, therefore, is more than just a small museum of the objects collected. It is also the major museum of the life of the collector qua collector. The term "museum" is literally appropriate for more than half a dozen of our informants who have transformed their collections into public museums during their lifetimes. Another several dozen informants have had their collections temporarily enshrined in other exhibitions open to the public or have opened their homes to interested viewers at certain times of the year. And, in several cases, the collectors have received mass media attention to their collections. In each case, we find that these collectors share a pride in showing their particular proof of a life well-spent. Since those who patronize these displays are self-selected and generally find them interesting, the collector's feelings of accomplishment tend to be reinforced by the comments of these visitors. While some people may write autobiographies or consolidate their life experiences i