We Are Only Custodians of Our Collections

Sorry for the huge gaps between blog posts here.

2023 ended up being a rough year for me. So here is the first post for 2024, which I hope will be a much better year.

I am going to talk about a concept that Chuck, owner of Mile High Comics, mentioned during one of his regular auctions. He talked about how in the end we are only custodians of our collections and that at some point, in some manner, everything we have collected will end up no longer being ours.

I know that when I am at a thrift store and I see what was clearly once someone’s collection, broken apart and separated into random groupings, I feel sad, knowing that for some reason that collection was given up. I have felt the same when I see such a thing at collector stores like Mile High Comics. I know how much effort can go into a collection and finding prized pieces that have meaning to you. I also know what it is like to make the choice to sell off part of your collection.

I started collecting Magic The Gathering Cards way back when they were a new thing. I had completed most of the original expansion sets. Then there was a time when money was tight, and I noticed that Magic cards were one collection of mine that had real value. Since taking care of my family was more important to me than my Magic cards, I decided I should sell them off. I made some good money that greatly helped out with the bills. It was not a pleasant experience. I had put a lot of time and effort into completing those sets. It was great to have pieces in my collection that were sought after. But I needed the money. I hope they went to people who took on the role of custodian of them and have appreciated and enjoyed them.

For the opposite view of that, I did recently trade off my Garbage Pail Kids collection to a local shop, The Gnarly Toybox, for trade credit after I saw they were in demand. When I was younger, I had a passion for them and found them amusing. As an adult I looked at them and had no real attachment to them, showing that I was not the best custodian for them. And my boys had shown no interest in them, so there was little reason to keep them when we could exchange them for collection pieces that were desired by us. I kept ‘Alien Ian’ (My favorite because it was the first one with my name and it was a cool looking alien similar to the Mars Attack aliens), and traded the rest of them away, giving each of my boys some of the credit for them to find new pieces for their collections. Hopefully they are now in the hands of custodians who value and enjoy them.

And in the end that is the best fate we custodians can hope for, a good home for our collections.

It is something fully out of our hands in the long run. So while those collections are in our care, we need to take as good care of them as possible.

I know there are parts of my collections that my boys value and are looking forward to becoming the custodians of. I am also aware that there will be pieces that have no meaning to them and chances are they will part with. As there is a chance I will end up with grandchildren, I very much enjoy the idea of them becoming custodians of what I hand down to them.

Knowing you are only a temporary custodian of your collection should not take away from the enjoyment of making those collection. If anything it should help one find more joy in finding those rare pieces and feeling excitement when showing off and talking about those pieces.

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