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The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining items that are of interest to an individual collector. Collections differ in a wide variety of respects, most obviously in the nature and scope of the objects contained, but also in purpose, presentation, and so forth. The range of possible subjects for a collection is practically unlimited, and collectors have realised a vast number of these possibilities in practice, although some are much more popular than others.
In collections of manufactured items, the objects may be antique or simply collectable. Antiques are collectable items at least 100 years old, while other collectables are arbitrarily recent. The word vintage describes relatively old collectables that are not yet antiques.
Collecting is a childhood hobby for some people, but for others, it is a lifelong pursuit or something started in adulthood. Collectors who begin early in life often modify their goals when they get older. Some novice collectors start by purchasing items that appeal to them and then slowly work at learning how to build a collection, while others prefer to develop some background in the field before starting to buy items. The emergence of the internet as a global forum for different collectors has resulted in many isolated enthusiasts finding each other.
Some collectors are generalists with very broad criteria for inclusion, while others focus on a subtopic within their area of interest. Some collectors accumulate arbitrarily many objects that meet the thematic and quality requirements of their collection, others—called completists or completionists—aim to acquire all items in a well-defined set that can in principle be completed, and others seek a limited number of items per category (e.g. one representative item per year of manufacture or place of purchase).For example, book collector Rush Hawkins (1831–1920) sought the first and second books from every European printer before 1501, while illuminated manuscript collector Henry Yates Thompson (1838–1928) maintained a collection of exactly 100 items, selling his least preferable items to make room for new ones. Collecting items by country (e.g. one collectible per country) is very common. The monetary value of objects is important to some collectors but irrelevant to others. Some collectors maintain objects in pristine condition, while others use the items they collect.
Products often become more valuable with age. The term antique generally refers to manufactured items made over 100 years ago,For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection requires that an antique "must be over 100 years of age at the time of importation". although in some fields, such as , the time frame is less stringent. For antique furniture, the limit has traditionally been set in the 1830s. Collectors and dealers may use the word vintage to describe older collectables that are too young to be called antiques,For example, the arts and crafts sales website Etsy requires "vintage" items sold on their platform to be "at least 20 years old". including Art Deco and Art Nouveau items, carnival glass and depression glass glass, etc. Items which were once everyday objects but may now be collectable, as almost all examples produced have been destroyed or discarded, are called ephemera.
The hobby of collecting often goes hand-in-hand with an interest in the objects collected and what they represent, for example collecting deltiology may reflect an interest in different places and cultures. For this reason, collecting can have educational benefits, and some collectors even become experts in their field.
Maintaining a collection can be a relaxing activity that counteracts the stress of life, while providing a purposeful pursuit which prevents boredom. The hobby can lead to social connections between people with similar interests and the development of new friendships. It has also been shown to be particularly common among academics.
Collecting for most people is a choice, but for some it can be a compulsion, sharing characteristics with obsessive hoarding. When collecting is passed between generations, it might sometimes be that children have inherited symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Collecting can sometimes reflect a fear of scarcity, or of discarding something and then later regretting it.
Carl Jung speculated that the widespread appeal of collecting is connected to the hunting and gathering that was once necessary for human survival. Collecting is also associated with memory by association and the need for the human brain to catalogue and organise information and give meaning to ones actions.
The collecting hobby is a modern descendant of the "cabinet of curiosities" which was common among scholars with the means and opportunities to acquire unusual items from the 16th century onwards. Planned collecting of ephemeral publications goes back at least to George Thomason in the reign of Charles I and Samuel Pepys in that of Charles II. Collecting engravings and other prints by those whose means did not allow them to buy original works of art also goes back many centuries. The progress in 18th-century Paris of collecting both works of art and of curiosité, dimly echoed in the English curios, and the origins in Paris, Amsterdam and London of the modern art market have been increasingly well documented and studied since the mid-19th century.Chronologically some essential works are C. Blanc, Le trésor de la curiosité (1857–58), E. Bonnaffé, Les collectionneurs de l'ancienne France (1873), l. Courajod, La livre-journal de Lazare Duvaux (1873), L. Clément de Ris, Les amateurs d'autrefois (1877), A. Maze-Sencier, Le livre des collectionneurs (1893), G. Reitlinger The Economics of Taste (1961), G. Glorieux's monograph, À l'Enseigne de Gersaint (2002).
The involvement of larger numbers of people in collecting activities came with the prosperity and increased leisure for some in the later 19th century in industrial countries. That was when collecting such items as antique china, furniture and decorative items from oriental countries became established. The first price guide was the Stanley Gibbons catalogue issued in November 1865.
The history of collecting is chronicled in the book Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The story of collecting. This well-researched book on collecting, written by Elizabeth and Douglas Rigby, was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., a major publisher in Philadelphia. "An important book as well as a delightful one. I recommend it urgently as the best all around volume in its field," wrote Vincent Starrett of the Chicago Tribune in a review of the book. In addition to being reviewed by newspapers, magazines, and journals -- such as The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Saturday Review, New York History, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History, and The American Scholar -- the book also has been cited in academic studies on collecting.
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