Why do you collect? For many of us it is by complete accident. I fell into collecting hot sauces by chance. I love hot and spicy food and would buy sauces from the different areas I visited when traveling for work. In the beginning I would only buy one bottle but if I liked it I would wish I had bought more. I then began buying two bottles. Before long I had a lot of bottles all over the house so I made a display cabinet for them. Friends and relatives would see it and soon they were on the hunt to find me a bottle of something I did not have. Within a few years what started as a quest for great hot sauces to use turned into a Huge collection of bottles from all over the world.
Number One Rule of collecting. Do it for your OWN personal enjoyment! Unless you collect something of intrinsic value like silver, gold, or very high end items - the value of your collection will likely decline the more you add to it. I guess the best way to illustrate and explain this is by a friends recent inheritance. She was lucky enough to have her grandmother leave her a large collection of salt and pepper shakers. The grandmothers thoughts were she was leaving a valuable asset that the granddaughter could use to go to college, pay off her house or raise her own children. The sad fact is that when she attempted to sell the collection she could not find any buyers!
With most collections the fun and enjoyment of collecting is finding the items you do not have and adding them. If you can just buy everything at once then what's the point. So my friend was left with a collection that costs 10s of thousands of dollars to accumulate but could not sell. Fortunately for her I had just started my store and convinced her to get a booth to sell her collection piece by piece. After over three years she is finally getting near the end of selling the majority of her collection. She is keeping quite a few of the special sets that her grandmother was really proud of to pass on to her children.
How and where to find things to collect? First you should never collect anything that is going to cause you to spend money you need to live on. Only spend a little of the extra money you have. Make a budget - decide on a maximum amount you will spend on anything for your collection. There are a lot of places to look to get the best deal. Ebay, Etsy, Craigs List, Estate Sales, Auctions, Local Newspapers, Garage Sales and of course Antique Stores and Flea Markets. Learn the value of what you collect so you can make intelligent offers or bids when you find that special item you just 'have to have'. Clearly (of course I am biased here) The most fun can be found when searching in Flea Markets and Antique Style stores. Most of them have vendors who scour the country side looking for things to buy and put in their booths. They will buy storage units or boxes of things at garage sales and price everything low to sell it quick. They have done all the work and spent all the money going from garage sale to garage sale or estates sales and auctions. Vendors do not have the time or patience to look up everything they get in a sale so you are the benefit of great deals if you look hard. In many stores you can shop in heated and air conditioned comfort and even bring your pets with you! You can spend many enjoyable hours searching and finding treasures for your collection and have fun doing it.
It is important once again to note "Collect" for your own personal enjoyment. Please realize that most of what you collect only has value to you. Buying collector plates from late night TV with the hopes that they will go up in value should never be done. Be careful of buying fads and paying too much for something. A great example is the Beanie Baby Fad that swept the country a few years ago. People were paying huge amounts of money for some Beanie Baby's that you can now buy for 50 cents. Unless you are very knowledgeable or an expert do not buy anything with an expectation of leaving a valuable inheritance for your children to count on. Collect and have Fun!
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