1

The Act of Collecting

2

The Object’s Voice

3

Whoops, It Broke

4

The Better Mousetrap

5

Plumb Wore Out

6

Taste Changed

7

Owners Lost Faith

8

Owners Lost Interest

9

Owners Grew Up

10

nobody cared

11

Got Lost

12

Part of Something Bigger

13

Used Up

14

Better in the Afterlife

15

A Bad Idea in the First Place

16

Never Made Enough

17

Provisional Utility

18

Made for One Use Only

19

Unintended Survivors

20

Mental Collections

21

So What’s Left?

22

Just in Time

About the Author

From the Author

From the field

From You

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chapter 2

The Object’s Voice

Early Collections Dixie Lids The Purest Collecting Needing to Collect Why Are Dixie Lids Scarce? Loving the Unloved

Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz Dixie Lid, 1953. Printed waxed card stock, 2 3/4" diameter. USA

The Object’s Voice speaks to seduction by the object. Why does anyone save or seek anything out? I still have all my marbles, literally. Since childhood I have kept bottle caps, skate keys, cigar rings, license plate key chain tags, Dixie lids and bubble gum cards. Some children need to collect things, others don’t. Children are the purest collectors; they are unselfconscious about loving the unloved. Confounding issues of cultural value, pride or competition do not apply to these children. However, the reasons that children collect apply to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Malcolm Forbes, Silas Marner, Tom Sawyer and any collector that ever needed a thing. This chapter also discusses the allure of the object of no apparent value and why any of these enchanted things remain. Never mind scarce, why are there any left? The substance of this book celebrates this class of objects. (ex: bottle caps, Dixie lids, bubble gum cards, decals, childrens’ eccentric collections).