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The multifaceted value structure of collectibles opens for clashes, tensions and
contradictions between different values. This is for instance reflected in the view,
common among record collectors, that people whose primary motives are economic
or social (status, prestige, companionship, etc.) do not count as true collectors. Such
motives are scorned as ‘selling out’ and regarded as a concession to ‘commercializa-
tion’ in the rhetoric of record collectors. As explained by Victor, a devoted record
collector in his forties, who regularly participates as a seller in the quarterly arranged
record-swapping fair in Solna, ‘the day you estimate what you can get paid for a
record, then you’re sold … then collecting is finished, then you become a hawker.’
The determination of who is and who is not a genuine collector primarily belongs to
a discourse on motives, and among collectors themselves. Such discourse does not
result in a clear demarcation between collectors and non-collectors, since collectors
are rarely conscious of their own motives.
Benjamin notes that collecting is strongly related to memory: ‘Collecting is a form
of practical memory, and of all the profane manifestations of “nearness” it is the most
binding.’ 15 Collecting things preserves memories as well as history in materialized
form. And nearly everyone could be characterized as a collector in this sense, since
most people save things that remind them of something, such as photos, souvenirs or
letters. These objects have strong affective value for their owners. Yet different kinds
of objects carry different kinds of affection. Susan Stewart draws a distinction
between the souvenir and the collection, and argues that personal photographs,
albums and scrapbooks should not be seen as collections but as souvenirs. 16 The
souvenir is a metonym of personal experience and thus retains its tie to the past; it
always ‘speaks to a context of origin’. 17 Because it has the capacity of tracing the
owner’s authentic experience, the souvenir carries value both as an individual item of
personal history and for its place alongside other items/souvenirs. The souvenir can
always serve as a point of departure for a narrative of one’s life. According to Stewart,
each item in the collection, on the other hand, is valued in relation to other objects
in the collection; classification replaces origin as its raison d’être. The value of a single
item can never be as great as when it is inserted into the complete entity of the collec-
tion. It is the collection as a whole, rather than its individual parts, that distinguish
its value. Another difference is that the souvenir maintains a trace of its original use
value in its instrumentality. Old letters can still be reread, photographs can be looked
at again and again, and in these acts the souvenirs retain aspects of their original
meanings, even as these meanings change. For the item in the collection, however,
use value has faded, to be replaced by aesthetic value. As Stewart states: ‘The collec-
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tion represents the total aestheticization of use value.’ This interpretation points at
an important tendency of collections to be a culturalizing factor, but there is actually
no strict dualism between souvenir and collection. Most collections do not at all erase
the souvenir character of the items they include, but manage to combine the two
sides. It may be true that some souvenirs never get organized into structured collec-
tions, while the items of some institutionalized or neglected collections may seriously
weaken their links to past lived experience. But most cases lie between these extremes,