be it cards, banners, etc, which you do not plan to sell, which would be hardest to find again?

That is, of those items which the undertaker will wrench from your frozen claw like fingers, that you even refused to leave in your will to ... say .. your seventh wife/drool nurse Anna Nichol ... which item would be hardest to obtain again?

Photobucket not working?

for whom to obtain? Me what already has it and somehow didn't or doesn't or wants another - or someone who wants one and I'm not putting mine into the market? I'm not sure I totally understand the question. If it's what is the one item in your collection that you would never part with and suggest that anyone else should seek to own then I don't have a single item. There are many things that are REALLY one of one and other things that just priced way out of the market for the regular person to own. That suggests things that couldn't be duplicated in today's or tomorrow's marketplace would be on the list. If it allows for categories or types of items there is definately an assumed hierarchy as to what I would not be able to get away from; and that which I could part with. In fact, I face that battle almost daily. I am a prolific eBay searcher and anal retentive and don't do too badly on searching the rest of the auction circuit. As such I encounter things I need or desire to add to my collection quite often. Fortunately I am getting better at defining need and desire and filtering out things where an archive picture or a "look and see" is good enough. I am well heeled but I do not have unlimited resources. Over time I have decided to fund most of my collecting with things I already own. Some of what is/was sacrosanct must be sold. It is only a temporary ownership a voice tells me. But it's my stuff the other voice says. Oooops. Now the reality is that every once in a while I have to make it someone else's stuff. Once it's gone I'm divorced from it mentally. Whatever it was was nice but it's gone. Not mine. Theirs. I'm really just a big talker and shouldn't have tackled this. I never answered the question. The truth is unless I gotts to raise cash NOTHING goes out and everything I own should have been on everyone else's want lists. I am bored with a few (not all) of the small collections I own but don't know how to get the best value for them. So I keep them. I have some crap I can't even get the energy up to look at. So I keep it. I have a couple of advertising cabinet photos, a pair of banners (World's Smokers and Goodwin), my Little Rhody chromo baseball card near set, Duke Sporting Girls and Goodwin Champions albums, and anything in my "Henry's Frame" frames would all be on the list. Oh yeah - my 20$ or so tintype of a guy standing next to a Duke chair and the chair and........ BTW, I hate this board. It has made me think about my stuff - the how and the why of it all. It has also invigorated my acquisition mode. Look out. Fire in the hole.

You know Henry, I read your postings and it is like looking into the mirror. Your crap is every bit as incomprehensible as mine is. Nice words tho. And good sentence structure. You've got your particples in line with your gerunds and everything is pluperfect!

But seriously, I maintain a core collection of untouchables. In this group there are some cards which are both pleasing to me and of such insignificant value that no occurance could result in me parting with them due to external influences. And since I've already identified them as being among my preferred cards, they are out of the hobby forever.

This is what I was asking about. In my personal example, one or more of the preferred cards may be comparitively difficult to replace due to a uniqueness (preference, rarity, provenance, signature, grade, etc.).

But you have answered the question, I believe. And that answer is: for you, that item does not exist. Or have I interpreted your response incorrectly?

if anyone ever really understood me they would stop talking to me Slight variation on the Heisenberg (sp?) principle I believe - simply the act of observing me changes you. Seriously I can't think of a single thing - so that would make your assessment correct. I continue to synthesize and channel my thoughts subsequently altering the "mass" and content of my collection..... Or my head starts to hurt - and I sit down to have milk and cookies and to hell with it all.

Really, it's the people that get taken out of the hobby, not the cards...that's the lesson I've learned from collecting the old stuff. We're all deteriorating faster than the cardboard we own, so everything I can't take with me into the next World (the next Hobby) is for sale, for the right price.

Has anyone ever really followed through on the threat to take his cards with him to the grave? If so, would that guy be the truest and purest of true pure collectors, or a knucklehead who never learned a thing in his life?

my "crap" is willed to 2 board members it then becomes their "crap". Problem solved

Well, I suspect that my collection will be on the auction block when I go since neither my wife nor kids have any interest in the stuff itself. As for stuff that might not be seen again if I insisted they go with me, I'd throw out the Tarzan and War News Pictures window displays I recently posted in another thread and the Comic Gum box below:

Has anyone ever really followed through on the threat to take his cards with him to the grave? If so, would that guy be the truest and purest of true pure collectors, or a knucklehead who never learned a thing in his life?
...^^^^

I've often ' joked ' to the wife that she can glue all my cards together and make my coffin out of my card collection , she thinks it's a great idea .
Hope i lose some weight by then as i can't afford to buy that many cards .

----
Mark

Welcome back to the Forum! You were missed(at least by me)....

His post was originally from 2007.........he's still M.I.A.

Technically everything that is not for sale at the moment has been taken out of the hobby