There are as many "bits and pieces" of stuff as there are people. I am a "hoarder" as much as any other hoarder. Any item that serves no apparent purpose to the world at large
does serve a purpose to the person that is hanging on to it. At one time, I had several coins that all told were worth about a half dollar. But those coins were "mementos' of my time in South America and the South Pacific. An aluminium coin that was received in change for a beer in Tahiti. . . Its' value was about a half cent at the time, but it held memories of somewhere I had been. I have many such mementos, having traveled widely in my younger years.
I build model trains. Over the years, I have developed a propensity
against plastic models. Although they are often more correctly detailed, to me they are little more than toys. My models are more often metal and/or wood, with plastics used only for electrical insulation. This is a point that is
important to me, but is meaningless to the world at large and only marginally interesting to another model train nut as "antiques".
My shop includes metal and woodworking equipment. Both are directly related to my model trains, although the machines do get used for other hobbies. I recently acquired a collet chuck that I may well never use. But it is an unusual device that cannot be acquired these days. If I do need it, I'll have it on hand rather than scouring the world for weeks on end until I've forgotten why I wanted it.
It seems like... and I don't really know this for a fact. But it seems like I'm not so much a hoarder, as a person who forgets he bought something, and so, buys it again...and again...ad infinitum.
I don't "forget" much of anything. But I have multiple 6" scales, each one different in some way. One calibrated in 64ths, another in 50ths. One with "archaic" machine screw sizes, another with scales particular to model trains. One that resides on the lathe tool shelf where I don't need to find one when I need one. Then there are the items that I catch on the way to a scrap bin. I don't collect such items, but if it is something I don't have, and may someday use, I "stash" one and maybe a second for spare parts.
All of this is me personally and has no relationship to the rest of the world. And is so for most everyone else, whether they collect machine tooling, or coins, or stamps, or old newspapers. And "purging" that collection of stuff is as individual as why it was saved in the first place. The world at large is opposed to "hoarders", but that is as much the powers that be wanting to make everyone dependant on someone else as anything. Hoarding isn't hoarding, it's prepping. For what isn't for me to judge. Only the person doing the prepping can answer that. If one has 17 rulers, one might wonder what they all do. I know what all mine do, the rest of the world doesn't matter.
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