The Gift of Collecting

What's in your basement, closet, attic, garage, or still stored at your parents house? Have you thought about how much enjoyment you had in your youth collecting one thing or another? Collecting is a wonderful way to enjoy art, history, and most importantly a way to share your experience and joy with others.

Collecting is not only a social circle in which to meet fellow collectors at club meetings, museums, or conventions, but is also a wonderful way to improve the quality of family time. You can spend hours with your sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, and step children teaching them about the things you enjoy(ed) collecting and learning from them about what interests them. Make a weekend of it and take them to your favorite places to find collectibles.

Whether it's scavenging beaches for sea shells, rivers for rocks, bays for sea glass, the desert for fossils, or mountains for minerals an adventure awaits you. The memories and fun you can have at estate sales, garage sales, auctions, hobby shops, thrift stores, book stores, and more can never be replaced. Have no children in your family? Volunteer to help as a big brother, a scout leader, after school programs, and other outreach programs and offer to share collecting with the children.

Reach out and give the next generation something other than tv, computers, and video games to occupy their time and interest. You will find a renewed enjoyment in that old hobby, and might find a bit of hidden treasure along the way. In either case you will definitely enrich the life of a child, yourself, and treasure the memories for a lifetime.