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Comment by achenatx | Hacker News Reader

I personally try to collect nothing. I essentially "collect" two things 1) stocks 2) personal digital photos

Every material thing you own can weigh you down. I try to make sure I use everything I own vs owning things just for the pleasure of owning them.

I have pre kindle books that I wish I could convert to kindle.

I wrote amazon suggesting I give them my books for free, then they give me the digital copy at a discount (maybe 50%?) At some point I might buy the kindle versions and then sell the books to a used bookstore (at 25%).

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You're right that material things can weigh you down. However, in the case of stamps they're probably one of the smallest and lightest physical items one can collect.

However, they aren't stored in an optimal packing, because that would ruin the stamps. They're stored in binders, increasing their weight and volume more than tenfold.

Yeah 10 times a small number is still small.

If you have a one-stamp collection, you're absolutely right. But collectors often end up with many boxes of binders.

Element collecting, as practiced by Bill Gates, might be the lowest. Although collectors tend to horde 10^23 items more than needed.

> Every material thing you own can weigh you down.

Material things can also bring you...pleasure (to use your own word).

Of course, there's a balance and it's horses for courses, but I think a lot of people would feel that limiting their ownership of "things" to only those that have utilitarian value would make life far less interesting if not outright dull.

In the case of books, I enjoy the tactile sensation of a physical book, and find that physical books are easier on my eyes.

I love physical books too (and for the same reasons).

There is definitely a top-down cultural push to encourage regular people to stop owning things.

We were told we'll own nothing and we'll be happy about it.

I can't help but suspect that there is too much evolutionary programming to own resources for that to be a reality.

That's just so they can charge subscription fees.

One day I'll figure out if my Youtube Music subscription cost more than I would have spent on buying all my music.

I'm a bit torn with music streaming services. I probably subscribe more for the playlists and ability to try someone new than the music collection. I have a big collection, ripped and downloaded, but I decided it was too much trouble to systematically fill it out and curate it--at least for now.

YouTube Music, Spotify or Apple Music (whichever one you prefer) is definitely worth it to me.

I listen to so much music from so many different artists all of the time. I could never afford to buy all of that music in a long long time. And Apple Music, just like Spotify that I used to use before it, helps me discover new music all of the time.

Also, streaming music from service like these, is much more convenient than owning the music. More convenient than piracy even.

I find, just for me personally, there is not more than 1-2 new songs I want to listen to per month. Buying the songs saves a few bucks (not a noticeable amount in my monthly budget to be honest) and also more directly funds the artist compared to streaming.

I've listened to 6000 songs by 1500 different artists in the last year, and that's a drastic undercount due to offline listening and youtube viewing that isn't reported to last.fm.

Buying music can't compete with that. Just sourcing the downloads would be a huge burden.

> I personally try to collect nothing.

Have you seen the movie "Up in the Air"? Your comment reminded me of the speech George Clooney gave :)

The problem is if someone somewhere doesn't look after physical things that we can't replace... who will? Individuals can delegate it to others, but someone has to do it (if we want to keep historical things at all.)

Different US States do provide this function... One of the best (and the first 1901) is Alabama https://archives.alabama.gov/

That's a great point. For example, I recently got back into film photography and I found that if you want to get a 40-year-old camera today, you'll probably be buying it from a collector. Without them, these wonderful, obsolete tools would have gone in the landfill long ago.

There are definitely cameras that fall into the collectible category. But I would have thought that 1980-era DSLRs were still pretty available from used camera stores. (I haven't personally checked; maybe run-of-the-mill film cameras son't move quickly enough.)

Duh. Not DSLRs of course. It's too ingrained at this point.

Good point! And there are many fantastic film cameras from long ago. I just bought a Nikon F2 film camera (my second) yesterday. Many of those old film cameras and such a joy to shoot with.

I collect comic books, and I collect limited edition rock n roll photos.

I do have a vast collection of digital comics, probably 250GB worth, but I also want the joy of actually owning some of them, looking at them, and reading them.

Books are a nightmare when moving home. I see people with full bookshelves and I pity them. It's not like they read all the books either

I've slowly been trying to work down the amount of stored paper, including books, in my house. I haven't moved in a long time but, earlier in my life, I definitely put way too much effort into moving books and other heavy things from place to place.

I recently dumped nearly all of my university papers and textbooks. That's one less solid box of tree that I need to lug from place to place only to forget about for half a decade at a time.

"It's not like they read all the books either"

Not sure how you would come to this conclusion without knowing every person with a book collection. I know quite a few bookphiles that have read every single book on every shelf.

I have many shelves of books. There's a few reference books that I haven't "read" because nobody sits down to read a CRC Handbook; a few textbooks I haven't read because they were aspirational purchases that are difficult to make time for; a dozen or so novels that will definitely get read in the next two years. If I don't like a novel enough to re-read it, it goes into a box, and gets returned to the next used bookstore I visit.

> It's not like they read all the books either

The point of having a library (personal or otherwise) is not to read every one of the books cover to cover. Knowing where to find a particular book and how to look up what you need inside is incredibly valuable. (Indeed, many books become less useful to keep around after you have read them)

I agree, and I think it's somewhat generational. My dad is now on social security, but he will stop at any yard sale. Or talk for hours about trying to get some piece of furniture from an acquaintance. His house is full of cheap crap I'm going to have to haul away.

Bullion's a decent thing for grownups to collect. ROI isn't great, but it's not nothing, won't go to zero when a generation of enthusiast dies, and there are some beautiful coins out there.

You're an outlier, not the general population.

The general population tends towards hoarding, not away from it.

(or maybe, you're just digitally hoarding now)

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