Saturday, July 08, 2017

Collecting Dust

I believe that in this day and age of Amazon Prime and streaming video and Amazon streaming food that having a collection of anything is a little pointless. Let me start by saying that I have what I believe is a pretty boffo collection of movie posters. I have wall space to display approximately half a dozen of these, which means most of them spend a lot of time filed away. Having dozens of movie posters that cannot be displayed may not seem like a problem to you, unless you have moved objects of that size and shape across the country and to a number of different apartments in the Bay Area. Like all those albums that I toted here and there for all those years. That eventually found its way to a used record store. It was replaced with a compact disc collection which was eventually massaged into minimal package for storage near the stereo which now gets used more often than not to play CDs but to funnel our Pandora account into our living room. We have bookcases that are full and overflowing, so much so that we have boxes and bags of books stored in the basement.
This does have the effect of providing us surprises every so often. "Hey, I forgot we even had that!" This is what happened with my comic book collection. I have winnowed this pile down to a single pile, rather than the multiple piles. The value they have is not unlike that of the movie posters. Lots of people and websites will tell you that I am sitting on a gold mine, and that would be great if there was some way that I could actively turn these bits of memorabilia into cash as I needed it. And eventually there would be fewer crates and boxes of stuff to stumble over in the dark.
And I wouldn't have that issue of Spider Man that I remember reading in the loft of our cabin when I was twelve. Or the B sheet for Adventures of Baron Munchhausen that reminds me of the other movie posters that have amusing anecdotes connected to them. And every so often, I drag visitors into our spare room and pull them out to show them off.
"That's quite the collection you've got there."
Yeah. Like the bookcase full, not of books, but of DVDs. Wow. When was the last time we gave that copy of Vincent Price in Last Man on Earth a spin? Holding on to stuff is becoming more of a chore than moving it. Sending along a great big box of Legos with my son the last time he visited helped. I probably shouldn't mention that he could get next day delivery on Legos from Amazon Prime.

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