By Paul E. Skidmore III, Hillsborough County, FL
The shoebox test
Everyone has a shoebox somewhere. Mine happens to have sports cards in it, and a closet with sneakers lined up like they’re waiting for an inspection. I didn’t set out to build either collection. It just happened, one purchase at a time, over years, until one day I looked at it and realized it said something about me I hadn’t noticed while I was busy living it.
That’s the thing about collections. You don’t usually pick them on purpose. They pick you, a little bit at a time.
It’s rarely about the object
If you ask someone why they collect what they collect, they’ll usually start with the object itself. The rarity, the condition, the value. That’s the surface answer. The real answer is almost always underneath that.
For me, sports cards go back to being a kid who was outside playing something almost every day of the year. Baseball, football, whatever was in season. Sports gave me structure at a time in my life when structure wasn’t guaranteed. Collecting the cards let me hold onto that feeling even when I wasn’t on a field. Sneakers are close to the same thing. They’re tied to sports, to being active, to a version of myself that has stayed pretty consistent since I was a kid.
So when someone shows me their collection, whatever it is, I don’t really see objects. I see the thing they were trying to hold onto.
What collecting teaches you about patience
Nobody builds a real collection in a weekend. You find one piece, then you wait. Sometimes you wait a long time for the right one to show up at the right price. That waiting teaches you something that’s useful way outside of collecting.
I’ve spent years in sales, and the patience a collection demands is not that different from the patience a good client relationship demands. You don’t force it. You show up consistently, you pay attention, and eventually the right thing comes together. People who can’t sit with that discomfort usually overpay for the wrong item, or they push a deal that isn’t ready to close. Same mistake, different hobby.
Collections as conversation starters, not conversation enders
I’ve noticed a lot of people treat their collection like a finished project. Something to display and protect, not something to talk about. I think that’s backwards. The best part of having a collection is what it opens up with other people.
My kids know about the cards. They ask questions about certain ones, why I kept this one and not that one, and it turns into a conversation about my own childhood that I might not have brought up otherwise. A shelf of sneakers isn’t just a shelf of sneakers when your kid asks why a certain pair matters to you. It’s a door into a story you’d otherwise keep to yourself.
What to collect, if you’re starting from nothing
If someone asked me how to pick something worth collecting, I wouldn’t point them toward what’s trending or what might go up in value. I’d ask what they already keep coming back to without trying to. What do you find yourself reading about at 11pm when you should be asleep? What did you love as a kid that you never really outgrew, even if you stopped talking about it?
That’s usually where the real collection is hiding. Not in what’s smart to collect, but in what you were always going to end up collecting anyway.
The quiet value in it
A collection doesn’t need to be worth anything to anyone else to matter. Mine isn’t about resale value or bragging rights. It’s a record, in a way, of what I paid attention to and what I cared about long enough to hold onto. That’s worth more to me than what any of it would fetch if I sold it.
If you’ve got a drawer or a shelf or a closet full of something you never quite explain to people, I’d say don’t be too quick to call it clutter. Take a minute and ask yourself what it’s actually telling you. You might be surprised how honest the answer is.