Ever since I was a little kid I have been collecting one thing or another. World Cup albums, cartoon albums, empty cigarette boxes, car toys etc. These days my collections only got more expensive but one thing has remained the same and has plagued me and everybody else that I know that collects things. The inability to finish a collection. Whether it was a few pictures to go in the World Cup albums or certain types of cigarette boxes or certain models, or not finding the car toy you want, not finishing a collection brings some type of sadness to the collector.
Back then money was a big part of the problem. I couldn’t keep buying the World Cup photos until I got the ones I needed. It wasn’t my money. Sometimes the money was there but the product wasn’t available or it was hard to find. These days money is seldom the problem but the plague is still there. Manufactures don’t make all the models needed, the collection is old and it’s sold out everywhere and nobody wants to get rid of their collection. Some items remain hard to find and some you never even see them. All this is frustrating and brings sadness to a collector.
The internet made things a lot easier to collect things. Now you can be sitting in your living room and buy something from the other side of the world and it will be delivered to your door. Transactions are made in many different currencies, it is much easier to find the things you want and to buy them. Without all of this I would not be able to have ninety percent of what I have today. But the plague is still there. The biggest problem are the manufacturers and the second biggest problem are the hard to find items. Some you find everywhere and in large quantities but some you just can’t find because they were never made or made in extremely small quantities. And this goes back to being a problem of the manufacturers. Right now I have quite a few collections that fall in these two categories.
One of the biggest achievements for a collector is to finish a collection and when that happens it brings a sense of pride and accomplishment. Unfortunately most collections go incomplete due to factors that are outside of the collector’s control. Hopefully one day these problems will be solved but for now the plague continues.
