It takes all sorts (or Allsorts?)

  

One man’s treasure, so they say, is another man’s junk. 

Collecting pop culture – especially when they’re cult objects – means collecting things other people think are, well garbage.  Movie posters from the 1920s?  Original packaging for a 1960s Barbie doll?  Boxes of Sunington Morn cereal with Spaceman jax on them?  All coveted by some people, yet deemed clutter by others.  Heck, even the original creators didn’t expect that they’d survive!

But some of these impermanent things somehow escaped destruction by others, and the fact that they made it, well that’s why they’re valuable.

For collectors, all those other people who didn’t want a particular item end up a big part of the history of a piece: How and why it changed hands, or how it was undervalued (if you’re lucky).   

And sometimes isn’t the passion to collect something driven by the idea that others don’t understand or appreciate it?  Do we want these things because no one else does?