Saturday, June 11, 2011

Starting a Collection

I'm not much of a collector.  First, I have four children...and the quantity of "things" they treasure and insist on keeping is always growing.  I'm forever purging their belongings, and the thought of bringing more unnecessary things into our house (especially while we're trying to sell it) is really ridiculous.

Second, I'm incredibly cheap.  I mean thrifty.  No, I mean cheap.  I love shopping, but I hate spending more than a couple dollars on anything.  In fact, that's kind of how this new collection of mine has started...

I love the look of vintage cameras.  Can't shoot 'em, but I think they look cool.  Don't have a place to keep them, but something about them just speaks to me.  Maybe it's that I can imagine all the places they've been and things they've seen. 

Nonetheless, I've toyed with collecting them before and never started.  I found one a few months back at a Goodwill, but they were asking a whopping $5 for it, still in the case, and I couldn't pull the proverbial trigger.  But, I've thought about that camera a million times; I've checked back at that shelf in the store every time I've been there since.  So, when I ran across this Kodak Instamatic 314 at another thrift store this morning, I didn't hesitate.


Of course, it helped that it was only a dollar.  It doesn't have a case and it's definitely broken, but I bought it anyway.  Broke the ice, so to speak.  I've discovered that this particular model is older than me, selling for $38 between 1968 and 1971.  Something totally nonsensical about that makes my heart go pitter-pat...

So, I still have too many things in my house, and it's still silly of me to start collecting anything (let alone broken relics of cameras).  But I'm gonna do it anyway.  Because it brings me joy.

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