Vest from Ferris Bueller's Day Off via Max Goldberg
There's something so ambiguous about collectibles.
For the person who is buying them - the person who has seen the movie hundreds of times, memorized the lines and basically wished they could live in the movie - a collectible is a sensible purchase. For everybody else, it's a waste of money. And perhaps a turnoff.
There's this episode of Big Bang Theory where this is presented perfectly. Leonard and his friends buy the time machine used in the movie "The Time Machine" which seems awfully big for their apartment.
Leonard thinks it's the coolest thing he's ever owned. Howard calls it a chick magnet. Real chicks, though, are not impressed. Penny calls all of them pathetic for wasting their lives with toys like the time machine.
Map from Time Bandits via Boing boing
I can see where she is coming from because I never spent huge amounts of money on collectibles or kept things inside their boxes in mint condition. I was more the type of person who befriends movie theater employees so that they can give me movie posters.
Is that really less lame?
To me, objects like a "Lord of the Rings" ring or a "Clockwork orange" purse (yes, I owned both) served a different purpose. They were people filters. People who got the reference were insiders, like minded people and possible friends. The ones who didn't were outside the loop, cultural parias.
Pin from The Truman Show via Zazzle
It sounds awful, but luckily I realized it in time and stopped that attitude. (However, I feel most people do that, in one way or another.)
As time passed by, I got rid of all my movie collectibles. But lately, I've had my eye on some really cool objects. They are the ones showed in this post (whether they are cool or not is highly subjective). I think I can make them work in a non-snoby, nerdy-in-a-good-sense way. I mean, when you know the first lines of "The Illiad" by heart, it just makes sense buying this ring, right?
No Conquest ring via ModCloth
Do you like collectibles or think they are way too nerdy?
