Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1638

Collecting Tastes: When Are They Formed and How

While listening to National Public Radio, I heard an audio clip suggesting a person’s musical taste begins around the age of 14, starts to wane in the mid-20s and early 30s, and bottoms out around age 33. I have problems accepting generalizations, even when offered as part of scientific studies, without testing the assumption against my own and others’ experiences.

In my case, the generalization is true. As a youngster, I listened to the music of the post-World War II big bands and “Your Hit Parade,” first on the radio and then on television (1950 to 1959). Rock ‘n’ Roll arrived in my high school and college years. A conservative in every sense of the word, I had trouble with the music of the Beatles and their contemporaries. I disagreed with the theme of too many of the lyrics.

As a generalist, staying current with the types, groups, and stars of popular music is the hardest category for me to track. Pop, Hard Rock, Hip Hop, Grunge, Rap, and other music trends dating from post-1970 are not music to my ears. Watching the broadcasts of the annual inductions into Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is more confusing than enlightening. More than half the inductees appeared to be aliens from another planet.

Wishing to know more about this taste trend, I researched the internet. I was surprised to see how much information existed on understanding “popular” taste. The articles supporting the fixing of person’s music taste within a specific age span explained that the older one becomes the harder it is to keep up with “popular” music because people listen to less music, a result of raising a family and working. One report noted that men move away from the mainstream faster than women. Now I know why my female acquaintances always have better knowledge of the lyrics and songs from my childhood and early adulthood than me.

Another study suggested the establishment of a person’s music tastes started at age 16 and ending around age 24. It also noted that if a person listens to contemporary music, he/she listens to music that sounds like/mimics the music with which they identify.

Sociologists define taste as an individual’s personal and cultural patterns of choice and preference. Although taste is a critical element in differentiating one person from another, it is presumptuous to assume taste is a free will choice. The communities in which the person is a member often determine an individual’s taste. Few individuals have the courage to deviate from accepted norms.

The NPR audio on music taste caused me to reflect on the question: how and when is a person’s collecting taste formed? If confused, substitute “preference” for “taste.” Most collectors do not take the time to analyze why they collect “X” or “Xs” and what it was about “X” or “Xs” that makes them collect it.

Many collectors can share their “first purchase” of an “X” or “Xs” story. If asked to return to that moment and explain what prompted them to make the purchase, they often have a blank look on their face. When an explanation is offered, it is hindsight rather than fact driven.

Colligo ergo sum -- I collect therefore I am. Descartes got it wrong. Respiro idcirco colligam (Spiro. Unde colligo) – I breathe; therefore, I collect. Collecting is a natural act that is inherent in everyone, of course, more fully developed in some than others. The issue is not if one collects, it is what one collects.

Based on my observations, collecting tastes also are formed between the ages of 16 and the early 30s, especially for those collectors born prior to 1965. Even late in life collectors seem to focus on objects from this age period when creating their collecting mantra.

Multiple forces shape collecting tastes. The most obvious is the time period of one’s childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Each time period has specific print and visual media formats, popular tastes, and educational, political, and social attitudes. As an adolescent and young adult, I was an avid moviegoer. I am a TCM addict, except when it shows most 1970s movies. As I grew older, I identified less and less with movie storylines, direction, and actors. When I attend a current movie and watch the previews of coming attractions, my usual comment to Linda is “I have no desire to see that.” If there is a remote interest, I wait until I can watch the movie on one of the cable channels.

Family dynamics and lifestyle strongly impacts collecting tastes. The collector only has two choices – accept or reject. Just as many collectors, especially toy collectors, buy back the childhood they wish their parents had bought for them in the first place, other collectors buy the lifestyle they wish they had rather than the one in which they were raised. Everyone dreams of a life better than they had.

The collecting tastes of my generation and those before me were heavily influences by the heirlooms that descended down in the family. Instead of rejecting them as the modern generations do, the first wave of Baby Boomers and earlier generations took pride in preserving these pieces of personal history.

Further, for these generations, collecting antiques (collectibles still were in the closet at that time) was a means of demonstrating one’s rise in the social order and sense of aesthetic appreciation. Colleting also meant becoming a member of a select group of individuals who stood apart from the rest of the community.

Most began as eclectic collectors—collecting in broad categories. Having stated this the objects often focused on a specific time period or decorative style. Collecting was centered on established collecting categories. At the time, a complete antiques reference library would fill two to three shelves of a bookcase. New collectors quickly came into contact with established collectors and dealers. These individuals became examples of what one should collect and how. In many cases, one or more of these individuals became mentors to these new collectors, thus preserving continued interest in their favorite collecting category.

The eclectic collecting period lasted from a year or two to as many as five years. During the eclectic collecting period, the collector began to favor one collecting area more than the others. After a courtship period, the collector fell in love with a single collecting or sub-collecting category and made a lifetime commitment to collect, research, display, and share it.

The concept of a collecting lifetime commitment to a specific collecting category began to wane in the 1980s and was gone by the mid-1990s. This corresponds to the time when collectors lost their internal control over the how and whys of collecting. Outside forces ranging from decorating gurus like Mary Emnerling (if you do not know who she is, Google her) and Martha Stewart and media personalities such as Oprah to economic shifts and the internet now exercise more control than collectors over the path taken by the antiques and collectibles marketplace.

Today more than ever, popular trends shape collecting. When trends change, the collecting focus changes. Collectors want to be “with it.” Correctness pressures apply to collecting as much as they do to political and social values. As a result, those who collect willingly shift their collecting focus when fashion and society norms dictate.

“Rinker on Collectibles” #1598 asked whether collecting as a concept was an endangered species. The column called for a national symposium. It never happened. Denial is a wonderful thing. Most collectors take a NM (not me) approach. As long as I collect, why should I worry about other collectors? Collecting is an individual choice. No one puts a gun to the head of a collector and makes him/her collect.

In 2018, those forces that directed collecting tastes from the end of the 19th century through the early 1990s no longer apply. Like World War II and Korean War era veterans, the traditional collectors that shaped the market for almost a century are dying. They will be gone by 2040, if not earlier.

Where are the White Knights, the Social Gurus, the sheriffs to restore order? Now and for the foreseeable future, new collectors will develop their own collecting tastes without guidance from within the existing collecting community. “Round and round it goes; where it stops nobody knows.”

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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