Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1798

Wish Lists and Collecting Regrets

I am a collector – in the past, now, and until the day I die. Collecting is an integral part of who I am. There is a collecting gene in my DNA. I have no memories of a time when I did not collect.

There was a time when I collected any object that called my name – Harry, over here; Harry, come buy me, Harry, take me home with you; and Harry, I want to be loved by you.

Collectors know that every object has a siren’s call. The call is selective in its appeal. It is unheard by most individuals. Those who hear it usually cannot resist answering. Collectors never view the call as destructive, albeit one’s children, friends, partner, siblings, spouse and others often have a different point of view.

As a collector, I am passionate, committed (interpret this any way you like), and competitive. There was a point in my collecting career when I collected on a daily basis. For years, I acquired something(s) new every day. Today, I still am passionate, committed, and competitive but more reserved. There are days, but never weeks, during which the siren’s call is silent. I have come grudgingly to accept this.

During the intense period of my collecting, I continually created wish lists, a list of objects in a specific category that I wanted to buy.

[Author’s Aside #1: Wish list and want list are synonymous. The home page of my website www.harryrinker.com contains a “Harry’s Want Lists” URL link. Previously, it contained several lists. When I checked prior to writing this column, it only had one: Trading [Merchant] Stamps Redemption Catalogs. I have not received a response to this appeal in several years. The only reason this URL link exists is that I am too lazy to tell Dana, my webmaster, to remove it.]

Collecting and intensity go hand in hand, especially for passionate, committed, and competitive collectors. Thinking back to the hundreds of collections I assembled, I had trouble identifying more than a dozen that I collected for a lifetime. Over 95 percent of the objects in most collections were acquired within five to 15 years, occasionally within a year or two.

Collections have a life cycle: (1) infancy, the collection’s start, (2) adolescence, when a “he who dies with the biggest pile, wins” mentality prevails, (3) adulthood, the building period when a collection matures, obtains a definite focus, and is recognized by others as “major,” (4) old age, when thoughts of “enough is enough” haunt the collector, and (5) death, when the collector dies or sells the collection. Collectors create multiple collections so that they can avoid facing the harsh realities of being stuck within one specific life cycle phase for too long a period.

[Author’s Aside #2: Three years ago, I started collecting Southern Folk Pottery grotesque face jugs. This collection is in phase two of its collection life cycle. The pile gets bigger very month. I ran out of space in my Kentwood home months ago. Over 50 jugs are now in three lines along one wall of my basement office. I expect to start a fourth line before heading to Linda’s and my Altamonte Springs, Florida condo for the 2021-2022 winter season. My former Hopalong Cassidy, jigsaw puzzle, and several hundred other collections reached phase five when I sold the former Vera Cruz [PA] Elementary School, my home and office, in 2010.]

Wish lists are associated with the second phase of the collection life cycle. Objects are acquired rapidly, motivated by a desire to own as much as possible NOW as opposed to being patient and acquiring objects over a longer period of time.

During my collecting career, I made dozens of wish lists. I handed them out to dealers at antiques flea markets, shops, and shows. I posted them on my website. Their purpose was simple – to encourage sellers, dealers, or private individuals to contact me directly and immediately when they had something I wanted rather than waiting until they saw me at a sale venue.

[Author’s Aside #3: I decided to refresh my memory and review my past wish lists. When I searched the word files on my computer, I did not find them at first. I did a file-by-file search the second time, uncovering several of my jigsaw puzzle wish lists. My memory seems to be slipping the older I get. It was once almost photographic. There are files on my computer that are decades old. In the past, I had no trouble remembering what they contained. Now, if I do not use a file on a regular basis, I find I no longer know what it contains. The problem is simple. I cannot purge my computer of old files any more than I am able to dispose of the objects I still own. My files are my legacy, not that anyone will care after my demise.]

Although I used wish lists, I found they were ineffective. Sellers, dealers, and private individuals did not want to be bothered by a direct sale pitch. They preferred setting up at a show or listing the object on an internet sale site. It made no difference to whom they sold. They followed a threefold approach. First, first come, first served. Second, it makes no difference who buys it as long as someone buys it. Third, it is the responsibility of the collector to follow the buyer. The concept of customer service, even to a seller’s best buyer, is tentative.

In fairness to sellers, a seller can be easily frustrated if he/she calls a potential buyer, offers to sell them an item on the wish list, and are told: “I am not interested. I just recently purchased one.” Wish lists, like so many things in the antiques and collectibles trade, are momentary and not permanent. I always asked a dealer or seller hoping to sell something on my want list to call first before buying it and assuming I will buy it. Only one or two ever did. When teaching business practices at my former Institute for the Study of Antiques and Collectibles, one of the rules was “never buy an object unless you have three or more customers or methods by which it can be sold.”

In the end, I found wish lists were more collecting checklists than an effective recruiting tool. They identified the holes within a collecting category that I wished to fill. I revised them but not on a regular basis.

Every collector has a mental wish list containing the masterpiece (ultimate units) and upper echelon pieces the collector hopes to add to his/her collection when they find them “in the condition desired, at a reasonable price, and with money in their pocket.” These are my three buying criteria.

I lost count of the number of times I found an object in the condition desired and at a reasonable price but without money in my pocket. Do I regret passing on the object?

My biggest regret differs. Many of the objects I did not buy in the past, objects high on one of my wish lists, are now available in the secondary market at prices that are considerably lower than the price five, ten, fifteen, or more years ago. In addition, I usually can afford to pay the present asking price. Still, I do not buy them. Time changes many things, not the least of which is the level of desire to add something to an established collection.

The older a collector becomes, the more he/she weighs questions such as how long will I own/enjoy it, do I really need it, and is my money better used for another purpose. These questions never plague younger collectors. Lucky for them, the shadows of old age are decades away.

Serious collectors have few regrets. They learned in their collecting career that the goal of owning one of everything in a collecting category is unrealistic. Fate decrees that they will own what they own and nothing more. This concept is difficult to accept.

Kudos to those collectors who can both wish but not covet and not regret but find joy in what they have. I like to think I am now one of these individuals. I was not during much of my collecting career, something about which I have no regret.

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.

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