Collecting and Hoarding

Spears has an interesting article looking at the difference between collecting and hoarding.  The article describes collectors as being organized where hoarders are indiscriminate, collectors enjoy collecting while hoarding can become stressful and destructive. Overall a rather interesting article and shows the fine line between collecting and hoarding, and with that, helps to understand the collecting process.

Spears reports

Ashley Keller, a PhD candidate researching hoarding at King’s College London, believes there are certain characteristics that distinguish hoarding from collecting. The biggest difference is levels of organisation: collectors engage in ‘ritualistic behaviour around organising their items’, she explains, ‘whereas with our hoarders we see a much more indiscriminate acquisition process, and this emphasis on organisation just isn’t there’.

The second distinguishing feature is distress: ‘Most of the collectors we see are enjoying their behaviour even when they’re acquiring quite a bit… Whereas for hoarders, while they may enjoy getting the items and they may enjoy talking about an individual item, the overall behaviour is very destructive and it’s very unpleasant for them.’

One of the most intriguing findings from the research on hoarders and collectors at King’s, however, was that collectors tend to have larger property sizes than hoarders. Keller says that there are two conflicting interpretations for this.

Either hoarders tend to have smaller properties because they are functioning less well — unlike collectors, they are suffering from a prolonged psychiatric condition so their career suffers or they stop working at all. Or, because one of the criteria for being a hoarder is that your living space is impeded, it takes longer for someone with a big home to reach that stage.

 Compulsive collecting

I doubt David Gainsborough Roberts would mind being considered eccentric, although he’d certainly draw the line at being labelled a hoarder. He has amassed one of the world’s greatest collections of memorabilia in his Jersey home. The scope of his collection is broad — paintings by Cézanne, Churchill and Hitler adorn his walls, while he has the largest collection of Marilyn Monroe’s dresses as well as countless other pieces of film memorabilia.

He tells me his collecting is driven by his love for history, and that for him, collecting is a compulsion. ‘Some people are compulsive eaters or compulsive alcoholics or compulsive clothes buyers or whatever they do. I’ve always been a compulsive buyer of history,’ he says.

Roberts clearly relishes the thrill of a new purchase, and like many collectors he says he’ll never, ever sell: ‘I might go and live in a one-bedroom flat somewhere, but I’d never sell the collection. I’ve been too much a part of it, there’s been too much research, it’s been too many years.’ His nephew Nick, however, points out that Roberts’ collecting habit has serious downsides too. ‘I’ve seen the other side of it, and it’s great when the cameras are there, and when people are walking around, but afterwards cleaning up is a nightmare,’ he says.

Nick has tentatively followed his uncle and started collecting memorabilia. He started off by buying the see-through dress Kate Middleton allegedly seduced Prince William in at a student fashion show, for £78,000. ‘My mentality at the moment is very much to look at it as an investment and not solely as a collection, but who knows, I might change my mind,’ he tells me. ‘It’s when people start saying, “Oh, I love that, it’s a bit over the budget but I had to have it,” that you go wrong.’

Even his uncle sticks to set criteria when making acquisitions. First there has to be an interesting story behind the object, and secondly it has to be affordable: ‘He’ll never buy beyond what he’s brought with him to the auction. He might, say, have £1,000 in his pocket and he won’t spend beyond that.’ 

Source: Spears