An Unexpected Peril Of Collecting

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Since we started living in rented accommodation I haven't been discussing my collections all that much. Given that my main ones, football shirts and Penguin paperbacks are currently in storage. One day we will discover a house that we both like and doesn't reveal itself to be a money pit of faults thankfully before we put pen to paper. But until that comes collecting is on the back burner for the foreseeable future.

However yesterday, in of all places Penarth Tesco, the world of collecting came back along with an unexpected peril.

A word of background first. Companies sell small cheap plastic figure in a particular series, such as footballers for example, in a packet, This small packet will tell you everything you need to know about the figure concerned...expect what the figure within actually is. So there is a good chance you will buy one you have already.

Back then to the action. There was I walking along the aisles of Penarth Tesco when on walking past their small toy section when I noticed a middle aged woman picking up such a packet and starting to feel it.

She saw me and clearly embarrassed explained that this particular set was of Harry Potter characters. Her sons collected it and so the lady admitted she was hooked herself. She had figured that to stop continually buying duplicates she would feel the packet thus would lessening the risk.

From a collecting standpoint it was actually genius. After all unlike say footballers Harry Potter characters presumably had very different shapes to them so it seemed a sensible thing to do.

From all other standpoints however watching a middle aged woman feeling toy packets makes you question her sanity.

And one other thought occurred to me. If her intention was to collect these things for monetary value as well as personal pleasure then presumably she would need two packets per figure. As presumably their value would reduce once they were open.

Until the next time.