When we are boys and girls, we delight in new toys, love new gizmos, and it seems like Heaven to receive an especially beloved present. For a few minutes, we revel in it.
When we get something we truly like, we show it to friends at the first opportunity. And, when our friends get something they truly like, they show it to us. No matter who is showing what to whom, we know what to do, so we “Oooh!” and “Aaah!” appropriately. It is a sign of being civilized.
Should we want more “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” than are within the bounds of propriety, we have gone astray. Many collectors do this as they amass lots and lots of whatever it is that provided them with a few initial “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!”. Soon, those to whom their newest possessions are shown begin to find themselves increasingly out of touch with the details that make the latest acquisition so very, very interesting. “This is kind of boring.”, they say to themselves when shown something that, in a tiny segment of the world they have no desire to enter, may generate real interest.
Soon, the “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” the collector values only come from other collectors, and the “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” change into “Hmmms.”, indicating that there is a silent appraisal rather than a real enjoyment. Soon the enjoyable “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” only well up within their own minds, a process that accelerates as they replace a number of friends with a larger number of things and they enjoy talking to themselves more than to others.
This process of an increasing concentration on some specialty is a prelude to miserliness against which many collectors become unable to guard. Those with an inordinate desire to hear an excessive number of “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” run the real risk of losing their souls for having replaced God with the idol of self.
At the end of each collector’s day, every collection in the world is broken up. Every piece in it ends up being destroyed or sold to a new generation of collectors. Each new generation has a surfeit of those who are equally driven by the desire to hear some “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” because they’ve obtained something worthy of praise.
Many students of collecting collect information about collecting. Whether or not that, and similar collections of information, are a higher form of collecting is a subject for future analysis. Collectors of facts and theories about collectors have come to the same conclusion: the desire to collect things causes stealing. Most of us know from personal experience how frequently that happens on a household level every time an estate is in the process of being settled. “I know Auntie wanted me to have that.”, say a great many nieces and nephews as they put things in pockets and purses while they”stop by say good-bye to Auntie’s house and so many, many happy memories.” At the higher end of the economic scale, we see collectors paying huge sums for improperly acquired (stolen) artifacts, some from graves and shipwrecks thousands of years old.
On a much larger scale, when enough collectors have collected enough things, they unwittingly cause large-scale, big-time collectors to mobilize and participate in the large-scale collecting known as “looting”. Typically, armies like Napoleon’s were accompanied by those who helped ascertain values so that the otherwise bankrupt governments, in his case, the Paris Commune, could be supported by looting other states in the most efficient ways.
When the Moslem armies, soon to go looting through Europe, begin this process, their commanders will also be accompanied by appraisers.
After such lootings, huge cargo ships full of important collectibles will appear in the market places of conquering and neutral countries. They will be made available at what will be said to be very good prices. Their appearance prompts whole new rounds of “great collections” to be gathered together, and on it goes. Collectors will shrug their collective shoulders and say, “Well, these may be stolen goods that I’m buying, but if I don’t buy them, some other collector will.”
