5 ms·
What will be lost are the manuals, boxes, cloth maps. little post card inserts for some random warranty or club, and most importantly, the physical feel of all
by lapetitejort 4y ago
What will be lost are the manuals, boxes, cloth maps. little post card inserts for some random warranty or club, and most importantly, the physical feel of all these things. That is the primary thing collectors want to preserve.
- anigbrowl 4y agoThe thing is, these are so arbitrary. I like buying used (not collectible) books, and once in a while I find artifacts used as bookmarks - a store receipt, an airline boarding pass, a newspaper clipping. These objects are fascinating to me; I'm briefly transported into the world of the person who originally bought the book and how different it seems from that of today. The details of the 'bonus item' are like clues to the identity of the mysterious reader that preceded me, whose identity and trajectory are as entertaining to speculate about as as the fictional or theoretical subject matter of the book itself. Over time, everything becomes an antique; competitive collecting (for well-defined subsets of items in a niche market) is arguably a way for people of similar temperaments and taste to locate each other socially, but the more effort they invest in this (by developing catalogues or price histories of their favored artifacts) the more likely they are to be crowded out speculators who recognize the hallmarks of an asset class without especially caring what they are attached to.
- bombcar 4y agoThere’s something to the novelty of the old - I found a one cent coupon for Lysol or something like that inside the wall of the kitchen. No expiration date - I should try to use it!