Do you collect anything? Some of us do, but that probably wasn’t the intention. Maybe we saw something we liked on vacation and made an impulse buy. The next vacation, we saw something similar and got it too. Then a relative saw those two “collectibles” when visiting and decided to get you another. Once you have three, it’s a collection, right? Collections often happen by accident and can get out of hand quickly, so if you don’t have one, you may want to take active steps to avoid it unless you really like something and want to have multiple versions of it. On the other hand, if you travel a lot, you may want to find something you like that it wouldn’t be bad to have multiple versions of and make that the thing you decide to purchase when on vacation. A good example is Christmas ornaments. You can buy them to remind you of your trips, other people can get them for you when they travel if they insist in bringing souvenirs back to their loved ones, it doesn’t hurt to have a bunch of them, and, best of all, you can pack them away for 11 months per year. Three quick collection stories: 1) When I was young, someone took a picture of my grandma, who wasn’t really overweight, at a bad angle and it looked like she had a big gut. My cousin thought it was funny, so she bought a pig frame for it. My grandma laughed about it and hung it up. Well, somehow one pig turned into two pigs and then a dozen pigs and pretty soon she had a bookcase full of pig knick knacks. As I said, it can happen quickly. 2) Similarly, when on vacation in the Bahamas, I found a very skinny and very tall carved wooden lady. I thought it was funny and bought it for my sister. And then I bought another on the next trip. And on the next. Now, she has more than a dozen and she loves them – they’re on display in her dining room. 3) My wife and I have pretty much managed to avoid the collection. We don’t really like traditional souvenirs with the names of places on them, so instead we’ve started buying a small artsy piece that we like, just one per trip, preferably without the name of the place. We’ll put a sticker on the bottom with the date and location where we bought it, and these pieces serve as nice decorations in the house and nice reminders of the places we’ve been. So, my suggestion is this: if there’s something that you like and wouldn’t mind collecting, get the same sort of thing each time you travel and find a place to display them. If you don’t want a collection, buy things you actually like, not just the obligatory junk to commemorate the trip that they sell at most gift shops. If you don’t do one of these and you do any amount of traveling, you may end up with a bunch of knick knacks that you have no idea what to do with and you feel guilty throwing away. If that happens, my suggestion is to digitize. Take a picture, write down the memory, and then get rid of the junk.
Don’t collect things to get rich. You probably won’t. You’d do better to put that money in a savings account. Yes, some things do appreciate in value, but there’s no guarantee and they take a long time. Also, by the time something does appreciate, we may not want to get rid of it because we’ve had it for so long.