Remember sitting at the kitchen table while eating your morning cereal, reading the back of the cereal box and discovering there is a prize inside? Even better, learning that there are several prizes as a set and your job was to “Collect them all!”
Did you find yourself every morning pouring a little more cereal than normal to get to the prize faster? Or did you just go for it and plunge your entire arm into the box and root around until you found it? Of course, we knew it was wrong, but if you grew up with siblings, there was no other option. Get the prize first or watch your brother or sister bask in their good fortune when the prize tumbles out into their bowl.
I’m sure we all collected something at some point in our lives, even if for only a short time, while some of us have kept collecting our entire lives. Personally, I started with bottle caps. I kept them all in plastic containers from my mother’s kitchen. Sure they were all dented and not sorted in any particular way, but they were fun to find. It wasn’t until I amassed an impressive collection, that I learned that hundreds of beer bottle caps, confined in a container stored in a hot attic, develops an odor unlike anything else.
Over the years my collections have come and gone. Once one was complete I’d start another, and another, and yes, another. Sometimes having several going at once. Until eventually in my 30’s I made the revelation, that I just wanted to collect anything old. Well as you can imagine, that creates some serious storage issues.
Now I feel like I have the best of both worlds. My wife and I can “collect” anything we want, then put it in the store and wait for someone to say, “oh my gosh! I collect these and I don’t have this one!” Not only is that a great feeling but ask any collector, they can almost always tell you where they picked up every piece in their collection. The collection as a whole is your pride and joy, but each item holds a special memory. That is why I think collections are such prized possessions.
No matter what you collect, we here at the Olde Brick House Shoppes would love to hear about it. Tell us what you hunt for, and you never know, the last piece to complete your collection could be sitting right here waiting for you.
