Lunchbox is a collector. He loves sports cards, comic books, hats, t-shirts, books and so much more. In high school and college I would often go with him to sports card shows. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I would go to spend time with him. Not to mention we were always the youngest people set up at the show. He had cases and boxes full of sports cards that he would display proudly. Typically he would end up buying more cards then he sold and I didn't mind because they weren't coming home with me, I didn't have to store them.
Shortly before we were married we purchased our first place, three bedrooms and a smaller office/craft space that was divided. We had to remodel the craft/office space and we each got one half of the space. Lunchbox used his space to house his collections, mine ended up holding all of our remodeling materials His was a small room just big enough for a desk, chair, and his collection. After a few weeks the room was a mess. Cards covered every open space. I just ignored it.
Life got busy. We both were working full time and parenting our oldest son. Lunchbox's room just got messier and messier. Cards would make their way out into the hallway and I would pick them up and throw them into the room. Then life changed. We were moving, closer to Lunchbox's new job. All of the cards got packed up or thrown away. They were stored at my father in-laws house for years.
We moved a few more times, had two more kids, and the cards were still stored at my FIL's. We finally settled down, or so we thought, and the cards were moved back to our house. Lunchbox continued to buy more cards and would sometime sell a few online. However, they were all confined to the back of our closet in a box.
During this time my husband's Uncle, who shall remain nameless because I'm not sure if I have forgiven him, gave Lunchbox his whole comic book collection. This collection included lots of comic book cards and boxes on top of boxes of comics. This reignited the want to collect comics for Lunchbox and he started buying new comics.
Our house was quickly being overrun with toys from the kids and Lunchies collections. Two years after we thought we had settled, we moved to Wisconsin. Most of the collection came with us, but whatever didn't fit in the moving truck was stored again at my FIL's house. We thought the majority of the collection had come with us but it hadn't.
Slowly, Lunchie started selling the collections. After lots of discussion he realized that he doesn't have time to really appreciate his collections and we do not have space to store it. We live in a house with a moisture problem and he knows putting them into our storage closet would damage them. We came to the agreement that things that were really important to him would go to work with him where he could display it. He ended up selling almost all of the cards, I believe he only has one box of cards that he wants to keep because they are valuable under our bed. The comics were much harder for him and almost all of them went with him to work. I know he has given some to co-workers who are also collectors, some are framed and displayed, and the others sit in boxes behind his desk.
When we went to visit my father in-law at Christmas we were greeted by the leftover collection we had left at his house.
I feel bad about forcing him out of collecting things he enjoys but I personally do not understand having something just to have it. I knew he was a collector before I married him but I don't think I understood the magnitude of his collecting. This past year of my moving into minimalism we have had many conversations about the money and time that goes into collecting. Lunchbox works a crazy amount of hours and any free time is spent with family, so his amount of time to enjoy his collection doesn't exist.
Lunchbox still buys sports cards and comic books from time to time. Over Memorial Day weekend we even went to Cherry Capital Comic Con where he got two really awesome books drawn just for him.
Here is his Spiderman by Ryan Stegman
And His Batman by Ryan Browne
I believe Lunchbox is starting to understand my belief of quality not quantity. He has said to me many times "eh, sometimes I really want things, and sometimes I miss things, but I don't dwell on it. I don't have time for it".
We are working on finding our happy middle, we will find it one day, hopefully.
-TMW
No comments:
Post a Comment