COLLECTING AS A HOBBY
Few human pursuits are as diverse as collecting, and few so fascinate those of us who study the mind. A surprising number have acquired their own technical label: the numismatist gathers coins, the phillumenist saves matchbox labels, and the tegestologist accumulates beer mats. Building up hundreds, even thousands, of such objects — old keys, bus tickets, whatever they are — consumes time, energy and money that could, on the face of it, be far better spent. Yet collectors number in the millions worldwide. What lies behind the habit?
For some, the point of collecting is profit, a motivation we might call instrumental — the collection is a means towards an end rather than an end in itself. Such collectors hunt out, say, pieces of furniture that can be picked up cheaply and later resold at a healthy margin. Yet a psychological factor is often present too, since paying little and selling for much can give the collector a genuine feeling of pride. Because online marketplaces have made selling so straightforward, the ranks of these collectors keep swelling.
Others take up collecting largely for the sociable side of it, going along to gatherings of fellow enthusiasts where they swap knowledge about particular items. In much the same way that signing up for a choir or a sports club does, this puts them in regular companionship with people who share their enthusiasm.
A further driving force is the wish to find something out of the ordinary — a specific treasure such as a first edition of a particular novel. For some, the whole of a lifetime may be devoted to a single quest of this kind. In psychological terms, chasing it can lend purpose to an existence that would otherwise strike the person as meaningless. The risk, though, is that should they finally find the very thing chased for so long, the moment brings not elation but a strange hollowness, the driving goal having suddenly vanished.
Take the collecting of coins: a further motive for it — or possibly a consequence — lies in how instructive it can be. A coin cabinet is a doorway onto foreign lands, and onto the rulers, emblems and creatures depicted on the currency of each. In a comparable way, nineteenth-century naturalists gathered shells, insects and minerals from every corner of the world, and the collections they assembled yielded an enormous store of understanding about the natural world. Strip those away and our understanding today would be far poorer.
One pastime hugely popular in earlier decades, and still practised today if less widely, is planespotting, which has always drawn men and boys in particular. The planespotter sets out to observe every aircraft of a given type, working from published registers that list each one and marking it off the moment it is spotted. Sightings are traded among enthusiasts, nowadays usually through a phone app, so they can plan where to catch a particular machine. One side effect is that many end up remarkably well informed about airline operations and the technical details separating one model of aircraft from another.
In much the same fashion, those who collect model soldiers often move past the mere expansion of their collection to become intrigued by how such figures are manufactured, and from what. The materials have shifted over time: the carved wood of early modern Europe gave way to the tin and lead of subsequent centuries, and these in turn to the moulded plastics from which today's figures are made. Some collectors are drawn, too, into examining what these miniatures reveal about the things children were thought to enjoy, or were supposed to enjoy.
Learning from the hobby is not, though, every collector's aim, which points to what we might term a psychological driver: the craving for a sense of control, quite possibly a means of managing one's own insecurity. Coin collectors, for instance, lay out their pieces in trays with great care, ordering them by familiar conventions — by country of issue, say, or by what each design portrays, whether monarchs, birds or landmarks.
A further reason, whether the collector is aware of it or not, has to do with asserting one's individuality. A person who settles on something as improbable as barbed wire may in effect be signalling a conviction that they themselves are out of the ordinary. However unlikely it sounds, at least one museum devoted entirely to barbed wire exists, and it began as a single enthusiast's private hoard.
Every hobby, naturally, brings enjoyment, but what sets collecting apart is usually passion — to call it mere pleasure would understate it considerably. Collecting can absorb a person more completely than almost any other pastime, and it can deliver a powerful sense of personal fulfilment. Those who do not collect may regard it as odd, though quite harmless; seen in the right light, however, it has much to recommend it.
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Question 1 - 8
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
1.
According to the writer, is one type of item that people collect in order to sell on at a profit.
2.
Someone who buys low and sells high may feel a degree of as a result.
3.
Clubs give members the chance to pass on concerning the items they collect.
4.
A club can supply the collector with , linking them to others of like mind.
5.
For some people, hunting for a single special object turns into the of an entire life.
6.
Pursuing a specific object can stop a person's life from seeming utterly to them.
7.
Because it teaches people about various nations, collecting coins can be .
8.
is a pursuit followed mainly by males.