People Collect The Most Unexpected Things, And These 66 Collections Are Really Cool

Archeologists have found evidence that humans collected crystals as early as 105,000 years ago in the Kalahari region of southern Africa. They realized the crystals were brought there by humans because they did not exist naturally near the area where they were discovered.

"We know our lives are inextricably entangled with things, and the earliest archeological records show that ownership of objects is a universal phenomenon that has existed across time, cultures and people,” says Kiara Timpano, professor of psychology in the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences.

From a consumer-behavior standpoint, collecting has long presented a conundrum to marketers, running counter to the idea that the value of products comes from their material ability to improve people's lives.

But it's a widespread human behavior driven by our deepest emotional needs, according to research by Ellen Evers, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and former PhD student William Ryan, who is now a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business.

"You're buying products not for their functional purpose, but to possess them," explains Ryan, who himself owns an extensive collection of vinyl, despite not owning a record player. "I like imagining what albums I would enjoy listening to. And it gives me something to do in a new city—go to a record store, browse, and then wander around."

When Evers first began researching collecting as a graduate student at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, research showed that collectors were less interested in acquiring objects for use and more interested in unique items, with strict self-imposed rules about what fit into their collections. Studies also supported a narrow view of collectors as mostly older men with neurotic personalities who were focused on mastering a subject.

Even so, those studies relied on anecdotal evidence. To get a more complete picture, Evers used the LISS Panel, a Dutch government-sponsored survey that tracks thousands of citizens. She added a section on collecting questions to a 2013 survey, receiving over 5,000 responses. Follow-ups with 1,500 of those participants and a third round in 2023 with over 800 respondents offered a rare look at how collecting behavior evolves over a decade. Ryan joined later to assist with data analysis and natural language processing.

When analyzing the data, the researchers were surprised to find that collecting was much more widespread than they had thought, with roughly a third of the population saying they had some form of collection. The items they collected were also much more varied than expected, including DVDs, comic books, Swarovski crystals, Goebel angels, cat figurines, magnets, shoes, and so on.

The most devoted collectors—those who ranked themselves a 5 on a 5-point scale of being a "true collector"—did indeed skew male by a 3-to-1 ratio. The overall pool of collectors, however, was almost evenly split between men and women. When comparing collectors and non-collectors by personality traits (including extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), the researchers found that collectors' traits largely mirrored those of the general population.

There was one exception, however. Collectors ranked higher on openness to new experiences than the general population. That tracked with collectors' responses about why they collected, which was much less about status, mastery, or materialism and much more about the desire to capture emotional memories through objects.

"In the same way that hearing a certain song takes you back to high school, collectors are building memory associations through objects," Ryan explains.