Collecting

The hobby of collecting is a wide-ranging sphere of activity which essentially involves the acquisition of specific items based on a particular interest of the collector. Collections are often highly organised, carefully catalogued and attractively displayed.

Since collecting depends on the interests of the individual collector, its scope can vary from one to several subjects and, equally, the depth and breadth of a given collection may also vary. Some collectors choose to focus on a specific sub-topic within an area of general interest: for example, a philatelist may specialise in postage stamps of the 19th century postage stamps. Others prefer to build a more generic collection, such as acquiring stamps from all the countries of the world.

Some collections are capable of being completed, at least to the extent of owning one sample of each possible item in the collection (e.g. a copy of every book by Agatha Christie). Collectors who specifically try to assemble complete collections in this way are sometimes called 'completists'. Upon completing a particular collection, they may stop collecting, expand the collection to include related items, or begin an entirely new collection.

The most popular fields in collecting have specialized commercial dealers that trade in the items being collected, as well as related accessories. Many of these dealers started as collectors themselves, then turned their hobby into a profession.

There are some limitations on collecting, such as financial constraints. One alternative to collecting physical objects is collecting experiences of a particular kind. Examples include collecting through observation or photography (especially popular for transportation, e.g. train spotting, aircraft spotting, metrophiles, and bus spotting), bird-watching, and systematically visiting continents, countries, states, national parks, counties etc.