The Collector

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I’m not a hoarder… I swear. I’ve seen that show and those folks are not well. I might be a hoarder if I didn’t have a wife who constantly keeps me from going down the rabbit hole.

Iam, inf anything… a collector. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Not of anything of any inherent value but of things that I think are cool or have sentimental value.

When I was a kid I primarily collected two things: Star Wars merchandise and comic books. Every birthday, Christmas, straight-A report card or other accomplishment or event worthy of reward or gift would net me a stack of comics or a new toy featuring one of my favorites. I went through a few other toy lines or interests, like G.I. Joe or Transformers or baseball cards, but Star Wars and comic books were my go-to collection standards.

Nowadays, I can get on the Internet and see that the $3 Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker action figures I pitted against each other (using toothpicks as lightsabers after their original weapons had long since disappeared under the bed or in the couch cushions) are now worth about $300 each. I have seen comic books that I distinctly remember holding in my young

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hands listed online with values in the five-figure range.

Oh, well. I put a bunch of future Hall of Fame players’ baseball cards in the spokes of my bicycle just to get that cool quasi-motorcycle clickclick- click sound as I patrolled the neighborhood.

The value of collecting is not the price tag on that rare holofoil first-issue cover. It’s the joy you get from the act of collecting itself.

In my later years, I now have several shelves full of aciton figures and bobble-heads and stuff like that, but my actual “collecting” days are behind me. I don’t actively seek out anything. Instead, I wait for the things to come to me via birthdays or Christmas or Father’s Day. And that’s how they get you… and my lovely wife is an accomplice. You see, way back in the 1990s, someone decided to release an “It’s a Wonderful Life” ceramic Christmas miniature village.

At the time, I thought, “Oh, that’s neat.” Fast-forward to a month or so ago and I saw a piece of the massive set for sale online — with a ridiculous price tag. This little miniature George Bailey on a miniature snowy bridge that cost about seven bucks in 1994 was going for (get this) $175. Pretty ridiculous. I explained this to my wife… who then went out and bought me several of the pieces for Christmas! She says she got “a great deal” on them, but we share the same PayPal account, so she’s not fooling anyone.

And so, a new obsession is born, and I shall not rest until I own all of Bedford Falls…