Rant #3,905: Hunters and Collectors

I don't mind serious talk here at the Blog, but I think it is time to lighten up as we end the work week.

Yes, I await the outcome of my medical tests, and yes, I have plenty more to come next week, but I don't want to harp on that any more than I already have.

I need to relax, too.

So today, as the work week ends, I just want to talk about something pretty innocuous, something that is a bit lighter than what I have been talking about lately.

I was born to collect things.

When I was a very little kid, I started to collect comic books, as I was an early reader--probably at three years old--and I needed something to read.

Comic books gave me exactly what I wanted, and for years, that was my main collecting source,

I loved mainly the DC universe of super heroes, such as Superman, Batman, and all the others, but I also liked the Marvel group too, in particular Daredevil, a blind super hero that I found quite intriguing, even at a young age.

I continued to collect comic books as I got older, but another collecting passion I had was sports cards, and primarily baseball cards.

I started to get into sports when we moved to Rochdale Village in Queens, New York, and while I was never a good athlete, I just loved to collect, trade, and yes, flip baseball cards.

I collected all different types of sports cards--basketball, football, you name it--and I also collected non-sports cards--TV shows, Beatles, all of them--but my main focus was baseball cards.

In high school, needing money for one thing or another, I very stupidly sold my sports card collection. I regret to this day doing it, because some of those cards would be worth plenty of money today, including a Babe Ruth card that I had.

So going into college, I was still collecting comic books.

From my very young years through high school, my mother, my sister and I had a pretty sizable record collection.

We all listened to the records on our old HiFi, but I really didn't think it was MY collection and MY collection alone.

It really was the family's collection, with my mother buying my sister and my first records, going back to the Chipmunks and moving through the Beatles, the Monkees and Broadway cast albums, the latter of which my mother loved.

My sister kind of took over the collection in the late 1960s and early 1970s, what with David Cassidy and the Partridge Family being her focus, and while I still listened to our records, I kind of moved off record collecting for several years.

When I got to college, I was still collecting comic books, but the people I knew there were diehard music fans, and I kind of eased my way back into collecting records on my own.

I remember that sometime during freshmen year, I decided between the two collections, because I was spending so much money and time on both that it was stretching my time and my finances.

I went with record collecting, and I have never turned back.

When my sister got married, she pretty much left all her records to me, and couple that with my mother's collection, and what I already had, it was a pretty sizable stash, and I have built upon it for the past 50 years or so.

My comic books, although still near and dear to me, kind of collected dust in a closet, a reminder of my childhood, until I sold them off in three batches, the last batch when we moved out of our house to an apartment just three or so years ago.

The first two batches I sold to investors, to be honest with you, but I sold the last portion to a real collector, someone who I felt would enjoy the comic books for what they are, and not investments as the others had.

So that left me with my records as my main hobby.

I still have a few comic books and some non-sports cards here with me, but generally, record collecting is my one and only collecting direction now.

My mother used to say I was a hoarder, but an organized hoarder, and I had to disagree--the first time I ever talked back to my mother, I must have been about four or five years old.

I found my comics in the garbage pail, and I told my mother to never, ever, throw out my comic books again.

And I had those comics that were slated for the garbage to the day I sold the entire collection.

Collecting is not hoarding.

It is putting together things that you enjoy into a sustainable, growing collection of things, whether it is bubble gum cards or matchbooks or thimbles.

My interest is in 45s and LPs, and to a lesser extent, cassettes and CDs.

Streaming is not collecting, because it is nothing tangible; an electronic file is just that, not something that you can hold in your hand and have as a work of art, both audio and visually.

I love vinyl records, and especially those 45 RPM singles, which is a work of art in its own right apart from 33 1/3 RPM LPs.

I haven't dismissed the entire sound file generation we are in now; I digitize my records so I can listen to my collection in my car.

But the satisfaction I get from my collection is beyond belief, and even in times of turmoil, they are my go-to relaxation generator.

So as the weekdays for this week end today--on Friday the 13th--I just wanted to end it on a very light note.

If you are a collector of anything, I am sure you will fully get what I am saying, even if you aren't a collector of anything that I mentioned here.

It is a fun hobby, something that makes me happy even during my darkest periods, of which I have had many lately related to my health.

So whatever you collect, whatever is your hobby, keep going!

It doesn't hurt anyone, and it makes you happy even in times of gloom.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday--

Happy, doom, or gloom.