COLLECTORS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

COLLECTORS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Posting from San Diego Comic Con, I can tell you one thing that really sticks out to me more and more these days is how the collectors market and the collectors mentality has completely changed over the last decade.

It used to be that you would save your movie ticket stubs for whatever film you went to or concert you happen to be sharing a moment about. Now a days, that's not the case. You seldom even have a paper receipt to remember your time. It's all done digitally. Nothing more to frame up or put in that memorabilia book  - Hell, all that is kept online in the cloud anyway. We have a digital shadow these days. No longer do we have things that are tangible to hold on to.

So walking through the floor of the convention, It struck me that there's still a lot of things hold on to hold for that consumer purchase in the world collectors market. But the point for them has long since past. Posters and even variant covers to comics just seem pointless. You can do a simple right click and save as to keep that special art in your hard drive forever without even paying to frame it.

Folks have digital music now a days. I still like to collect LP's and play them in a more hands on approach than just clicking on an icon in a tablet. But I do see the ease of all that. But it's true and ironic that CD's did not kill the record. And while I bought a lot of art books at Comic Con, a lot of artist sketch books and what not, it's more to show support for them and their work. I know a lot of which I could just find online and enjoy. But there is a huge aspect to supporting the creative arts behind it all. 

Recently while trying to organize all the stuff I have around in boxes that I haven't seen in years, I have been thinking about this. The mentality of the collectors view has completely changed. Sure, there's still limited bullshit trinkets that you see folks chasing, but there's a lot of questions as to why even do that chase. I don't see the point of buying a lot of things here at comic con because I don't want to carry it the mile or so down to my hotel room. I'll just pay the little extra on ebay or wherever after the show and it'll get shipped to me. But I still question on if I even need that shit. It's a tough one to answer when I really think about it.

Because the reality is... I don't.

You can't take it with you when you're dead. And I am certainly getting up there in age. Sure, not to the point of my demise, but I'm starting to really reevaluate how much I buy of whatever and what use I actually have of it.

Just like I look at my stacks of hard drives and wonder when the hell am I ever going to tackle that series of 1's and 0's. The amount of music, movies, shows, programs and books in those hard drives basically puts the Library of Alexandria to shame. We have come to the point were we could fit the mass of world knowledge in a suitcase. It's really crazy when you think about it and now a days we don't even value all that knowledge like we really should.

I'm going off the rails here. My point is that collecting shit has come to a new reality and they're just trying to scrape by any stupid excuse as to what to term as collectors items to sell to you and make a buck. The whole term collectors is just a stupid excuse to make you buy shit and we should probably stop encouraging it altogether.

I know I buy my fair share of crap, but in reality, you're just leaving a mess behind for your loved ones when you die. I have tons and tons of boxes from my Uncle who basically died almost twenty years ago that I still have no idea what to do with. Yeah, some neat stuff in there, but in the end, it's all just junk that means nothing and you are better off collecting memories and experiences and growing bonds with people than just buying shit you won't use and will be someone else's problem.

So maybe I won't buy those Bob's Burgers plastic toys. I mean... I really want them but......