I’ve got a xeroxed copy of a section from The Cultures of Collecting, published by Harvard University Press and edited by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal. I wish I could remember how I got it. It’s just ten pages, stapled together — the ten pages that are Jean Baudrillard’s essay “The System of Collecting.” In it, he argues that collecting is less about the object and more about “the system” — the logic behind your collection and the structure it gives your life.
Top things to collect these days? Sports cards. Vintage toys. Action figures. Comic books. And, of course, “vinyl records.” But I digress.
The essay stuck with me. If you’re a collector, it might stick with you, too. Because I didn’t just collect comic books or beer cans or modern first editions or records or amateur snapshots. Baudrillard says we collect the moments around them. And he’s right: the crate-digging. The too-early flea market mornings. The vendors. The dealers. The bookstores, record stores, antique malls. The very specific memory of the bookseller who not only sold me Bukowski’s All The Assholes in the World And Mine — but introduced me to chapbooks and little magazines before making the sale. Or, better yet, stumbling into the movie theater on a whim to check out “Barfly” without knowing what it was and coming out and heading straight to a different bookstore to discover Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. Same kinda story for Let It Be by The Replacements. Kiss Alive! Jeff Beck’s Wired. And any rare time you get to handle a Patchen painted book! How about that ditch next to an old Amish covered bridge in Indiana where I found my first — and only — cone top beer can in the wild! Reading Daredevil and Hulk on my Baba’s beach house porch.
But systems change. Lives change. And mine is shifting — from being a buyer to being a seller. That doesn’t mean the system’s gone. Maybe it’s just a different system now. Or maybe I’m just not that excited about the chase anymore. 5am alarms were never OK in my world; now, they simply don’t exist. Maybe it’s all just a function of age?
Let’s face it: most dealers start as collectors. I know that’s the case with me. But don’t get me wrong — I’m not done with any of it. The beautiful books. The records (10 max, Jim…10 max). The super weird snapshots. I’m just more interested now in what happens next.
Letting go has its own kind of satisfaction. And if you’re here, reading this, maybe you already understand that.
