Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1616

When Is It Affordable to Buy Back Your Childhood?

While nostalgic memory is critical to collecting, it is time focused. In its narrowest sense, it covers the time period between ages six and fourteen—childhood memory. In its broadest sense, it includes the teenage and early adult years. These are the “me, myself, and I” memory years. It is these memories more than any other that trigger collecting urges.

Although adults have nostalgic memories about events that occur later in their life, these memories focused on other individuals, primarily partners or spouses, children, grandchildren, and friends. The memories are shared memories. They are communal rather than individual. Objects associated with these events produce less intense nostalgic memories – a smile but not a desire to recapture or repossess.

Although not all collectors collect their childhood and/or early adult memories, the vast majority do. If those who collect outside their own lifetime frame look closely, they are likely to discover that some event or comment experienced during their childhood or early adult years caused them to take this tangential collecting path. The event may not have seemed important at the time. A family member sharing a story about a particular object, a collector sharing his/her sense of excitement about a collection, a visit to a museum, or a fascination with an earlier period of time discovered in a history class or book are examples of such an event.

[Author’s Aside: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”—“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference”—impacted my approach to collecting.]

A collection reveals intricate details about a collector’s early life. It can reveal the environment and even the decorative style of the home in which he/she was raised, the collector’s likes and dislikes, his/her interdependence or independence, and economic social status and asperations. Collecting is more thought driven than collectors realize.

Youthful and young adult nostalgia is more than just games, puzzles, and toys. It is a composite of everything experienced, heard, smelled, seen, owned, and more. It is why long-term memory is often the last memory to go when memory fades. Long-term memories, distorted though they may be, are a person’s golden memories. Life was never better or sweeter.

When writing about toy collecting in previous columns, I made the point that toy collectors actually buy back the childhood memories that their parents were too cheap to buy them in the first place. They learned the harsh reality that Santa was not the miscreant. It was their parents that denied them the one toy they wanted more than anything else. That missing toy haunts a person until it is finally possessed.

I now realize this concept applies to more than just toys. It applies to the full childhood / early adulthood experience. The older one gets, the more desire these is to have a physical connection with the past – to possess and hold an object or objects associated with that past.

This column is not about how old one must be to develop a desire to buy back one’s childhood and/or early adulthood. The age differs from individual to individual. Some experience it in their thirties. Some wait until their fifties. The urge disappears in most individuals by their late sixties. I am an exception to this rule. I will be buying back my childhood and that of my parents and grandparents until the day I die.

Provided a person has sufficient funds, he/she can buy back their childhood at any time. Most collectors are thrifty, a polite word for cheap. Affordability is paramount; and, there are times when buying back one’s childhood and early adulthood is very expensive.

The balance of this column explores the question of when is a person’s memories affordable should a person desire to acquire the objects associated with them. The column assumes the period childhood is lost, discarded by the parents or owner based on the premise that “there is no longer any use for this stuff.”

The first affordable reacquiring opportunity is when parents get tired of storing their children’s stuff. This usually occurs when a child gets married or becomes the proud owner of an apartment or home with sufficient storage space to “be responsible for your own stuff.” Alas, the standard response from the child is “I do not want it. Just get rid of it.” Parents accept this as a “your wish is my command” statement.

The second opportunity arises when 40- or 50-year old parents redecorate. The furniture and other household goods with which a person grew up head for a charitable organization or the dump. Things are free for the taking. Again, the problem is that the nostalgia urge still is dormant among most individuals.

Buying back one’s childhood memories in the secondary antiques and collectibles in not affordable for collectors between the ages of 35 and 55. The competition is too strong. Decade collectibles are at their peak. It is the time to sell, not to buy.

The next opportunity, especially if parents did not redecorate, is when they decided to downsize. Once they decide what they will retain for their retirement, anything else is fair game. Most things come with a “free” sign attached. If a child is lucky, some of their childhood treasures (remember, think in broad terms) remain. The tragedy is that parents often fail to check with their children before disposing of things. They assume if their children wanted something, they would have spoken up earlier. When assisting clients to downsize, my first piece of advice is to encourage them to ask their heirs if they have any interest in the objects identified for disposal. “They do not want it” is the standard response. “Did you ask them?” is my retort. More often than not, the answer is no.

Antiques and collectibles are affordable during a recession. Antiques and collectibles prices declined during the 2008-2009 Great Recession. Even “hot decade” collectibles slipped in value. In 2018, many antiques and collectibles are selling for mid-1980s prices.

The most affordable time to buy back one’s childhood and early adulthood memories is when a collector is 70 or older. Younger collectors have little or no interest in the earlier stuff. The secondary markets are flooded. The value of common and above average objects continues to fall the greater the distance is between the present and initial period of production.

I sold my Hopalong Cassidy collection four years ago. I waited too long. If I had wanted to maximize my return, I should have sold it 25 to 30 years earlier. Today, I can buy the bulk of it back for 20 to 25 cents on the dollar that was realized when I sold it. I lost count of the times I have been tempted to do so.

Let me guess what you are thinking. Why would anyone who is older than 70 and in their right mind want to buy back their childhood and early adult memories? The answer is simple. As each year passes, early memories grow stronger rather than weaker. Surrounding one’s self in the things that are most loved makes sense. A person cannot take their money to the grave. They can take their love. There is nothing wrong with a person spending money on the things that provide him/her with the greatest pleasure, as opposed to passing it on to the next generation.

After a brief hiatus in my early 70s, I have once again heeded the call to collect, or in my case, to accumulate. My 2018 New Year’s resolutions is not “I will catalog the material I own and get it ready for sale.” Instead, I resolved to make a list of the things I want to own before I die and start acquiring them. Many will be objects from my childhood and early adult memories. Others will rekindle memories of my collecting past, especially objects I did not buy because I could not afford them. The newly acquired cylinder and disk music boxes are fantastic.

There is one caveat. My wife Linda is not a regular reader of my columns. If she was, my 2018 New Year’s resolution would be jeopardized. Please do not tell her.

Harry L. Rinker welcomes questions from readers about collectibles, those mass-produced items from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Selected letters will be answered in this column. Harry cannot provide personal answers. Photos and other material submitted cannot be returned. Send your questions to: Rinker on Collectibles, 5955 Mill Point Court SE, Kentwood, MI 49512. You also can e-mail your questions to harrylrinker@aol.com. Only e-mails containing a full name and mailing address will be considered.

You can listen and participate in WHATCHA GOT?, Harry’s antiques and collectibles radio call-in show, on Sunday mornings between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM Eastern Time. If you cannot find it on a station in your area, WHATCHA GOT? streams live on the Internet at www.gcnlive.com.

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