By The Way...

Monday, February 27, 2006
11:41:00 AM EST
Hearing Finding Out True Love is Blind -- Louis XIV


If you collect much of anything, you'll want to catch this plaintive article in the Wall Street Journal, in which collectors of such things as pencils and lottery tickets worry that when they die, their kids will just take all the crap they've lovingly collected over the years and drop it in the trash -- partly because most of the kids have said that, yes, well, that is the plan:

George Beilke, 61, of Tulsa, Okla., has amassed 35,000 used instant-lottery tickets. His daughter, Sarah, 23, says that when she tells friends about the collection, "they look at me like I'm crazy. It's guilt by association." During her childhood, her dad tried to get her involved. He gave her tickets and assumed she was diligently putting them between the sheet protectors he provided. But she just hid them in her room.

Ms. Beilke is set to inherit the collection and says she'll donate it to the 200-member Global Lottery Collector's Society. She may hold on to a handful of tickets as keepsakes. "It would keep the bond between us," says her dad. "I just hope she puts them in the sheet protectors."

If you'll recall, Krissy inherited a collection of creamers from her grandmother (see the picture above), and she has been a dutiful ganddaughter and displayed the creamers in a nice little curio closet, but it's not something any of us are particularly working overtime to add to. I do think that Krissy's own personal collection has more of a chance of being added to by whomever inherits it, because she collects shot glasses.

If you collect something, do you worry that your kids are just itchin' to dump it in the dust bin?




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This entry has 7 comments: (Add your own)

• #7 Comment from elleme2 
  2/28/06 2:33 PM | Permalink

  I think an equally interesting question is "Why do we collect (whatever)?"  Why did this man collect used instant lottery tickets--something that most of us would not dream of doing--with such care?  What meaning did they have for him?  It's a shame his family seemingly never tried to understand that.  How much of a person do we trash when we throw away something that was important to them without appreciating why it was important?  I am concerned that my son will trash many of the things I have saved--mostly books and poetry and personal musings--without understanding that these things tell him a lot about who and what I was.
• #6 Comment from ryanagi 
  2/28/06 2:23 PM | Permalink

  Hmm. This is an issue I hadn't given much thought to. We didn't add any specific instructions to our will for the collections. I'll probably sell the comic book collection shortly. No idea what to do with the huge VHS video collection. DVD collection will probably be obsolete one day soon too. The book collection will probably be worth a pretty penny one day. I guess I'll have to wait and see when my son gets older. It's hard to tell at age 4 if he'll have the same appreciation for books that I have. So far, so good. My keychain collection will probably go at the estate yard sale. LOL Same for my collector tins that decorate my kitchen. Native American crafts collection? Hmm. I guess I'll have to cultivate a love of south-west style in my kids too. Jeeze I have too much crap. I'm tempted to just Freecycle the lot.
• #5 Comment from lurkynat 
  2/27/06 9:31 PM | Permalink

  Dear John,
  (hmmmm..whistling... looking over Monponsett's dirt collection! woweee!
  We do like that European glass
  nat
  
• #4 Comment from mavarin 
  2/27/06 5:22 PM | Permalink

  The good news:  we have no kids to trash our many collections, literally or figuratively.
  The bad news: we have no kids to preserve or appreciate them, either.
  I'm going to make discreet inquiries next mother whether my godson is likely to care about our Star Trek stuff (etc.) when he's older and we're dead.  I shouldn't expect a definitive answer, though, from a kid about to make his first communion.
  
  Karen
• #3 Comment from monponsett 
  2/27/06 12:59 PM | Permalink

  I collect famous dirt, but I think I already wrote about that here.

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