The Wifey and I have written a bit about collecting record albums lately, but it’s not because we had any plan to focus on a particular collection. See, around a month ago, we got a huge box-lot of 78rpm records from the 1930s-1950s. Of course, we couldn’t get them go without being listened to first, so we poured the wine, hooked up the sacrificial turntable (in case a record was cracked and caused any damage), and stayed up until the early hours of morning voting thumbs-up and thumbs-down on the various recordings. “Thumbs up” generally meant we’re keeping it, “thumbs down” put it into a pile to be thrown out, sold on eBay, or as raw materials for an art project as-yet-to-be-undetermined.

For years, I’ve liked to buy albums at garage sales and thrift shops, purely for the purpose of listening to them. Mint albums, shrink wrap intact? I open them, and have a listen to what an unscratched, unworn record sounds like. Spending more than $1 a record? Insanity! Boxes of boring ones were liquidated at rummage sales for 25¢ an album; others went to the thrift shop. I didn’t think much of them, other than to throw a stack of records on the changer as an alternative to radio, and rarity or value really wasn’t a key in my record album shopping habits. I wouldn’t have even called it a collection. I owned records, much as someone owns a drawer of silverware.

Now, my books — those have long been a collection. Early editions of “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “Tour of the World in Eighty Days,” mid-19th century books on parlimentary procedure and books written in latin (with a convenient hebrew translation on the facing page). Long-obsolete encyclopedias with colorfully inaccurate maps. Religious treatises condemning new morality threats like boxing and flappers. I’ve atually been excited to find a rare or interesting book, knowing it had some value, while trying to hide my excitement and pay the little old lady at the rummage sale who had recklessly priced it far too low. My interest in collecting books is obvious to anyone standing in our front entry. My books are a collection — maybe not the best — but it definitely holds a value to me.

The question becomes: why don’t I think the records are a collection, while my books are?

If I were to do a pseudo scientific study, donning a white lab coat and carrying an authentic clipboard around, by observing various groups of items and deciding whether or not they were a collection, I’d have to be rather arbitrary: groups of items without context do not make a collection.

I could drive down the street, and observe a yard full of lawn ornaments: flamingos, whirligigs depicting a man sawing a log whenever the wind blows, wooden cutouts of hirsute grandma hips bending over, flowerpots in the shapes of a veritable menagerie of creatures. Could it be a collection? Possibly. At a friend’s house, noting their shelves full of Harlequin paperbacks, arranged by color and title. It is likely to be a collection, but possibly the product of a lovelorn obsessed woman. A car parked at the mall, dashboard covered with California Raisin figurines double-stick-taped into stability. I’d think it an unlikely collection, but I might consider it one.

In each case, I couldn’t decide just on the collection’s contents. I’d have to seek out the collector.

A library has a collection, handled by a librarian. A museum has a collection, overseen by a curator. A collector handles their collection, deciding what must be included, what is irrelevant, what must be cared for and how to care for it, how to display it and how to repair it (if it should be repaired at all). Without a collector, groups of things have little meaning beyond their casual relationship. Shelves of Dragonlance books could be the penultimate and complete collection of the series, or it could be that the reader has found that even the used book stores won’t buy them when they’re done reading. A jar of buttons could be sewing supplies, or it could be a rare set kept together to protect their value as a whole. The person who decides this is the person who assembled the items in the first place: the collector.

While value, rarity, and relevance are important in defining a collection, it’s not always the key. There’s people who collect bears, people who collect anything with their town’s name on it, and people who collect animals with wheels. None of those will have a network of price guides and appraisers ready to assign rarity or value to the components of their collection, but none would deny that it is a collection. There’s something inherently defining by simply deciding to collect something.

So, in my lab coat, with my clipboard, I’d have to look at myself inquisitively and ask: do I have a record collection? While I’ve mostly bought them to listen with little regard for value, I have taken steps to filter and evaluate which records are good and bad. I’ve bought shelves specifically for the records. I can identify myself at least an expert on what I own. And, above all, I most definitely enjoy both buying and experiencing each individual part of my collection. The labcoated me would have to nod approvingly, and add a checkmark in the “collection” column on the clipboard.

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Article Tags: 78's, albums, books, collection, records, vinyl

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 6:40 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.