Collecting
As a kid, I was never able to collect anything. No—I take that back. I had a small penny collection. For a few weeks, my dad brought home rolls of pennies and sometimes nickels, and we’d search for wheat-back pennies and any missing coins from my little brown, fold-up book. I had most of the pennies between 1956 and 1982, and a few steel wartime cents.
I think it was the prospect of finding the needle in the haystack that propelled me—that if I searched hard enough, I’d find something valuable nestled in a paper tube with 49 other cents.
But baseball cards? Hot Wheels? Matchbox cars? Knives? No. Sure, we had Star Wars action figures, but just enough to act out adventures, arriving at random birthdays or holidays.
Maybe my mild hoarding—random and scattershot as it is—is a way of collecting. A collection of the everyday. Tic Tac boxes. Altoids tins. Every book I’ve purchased. Am I secretly building a unified collection of ephemera? Or am I just a mild hoarder?
I thought maybe I’d found my way into collecting with watches. After getting into a watch podcast in 2019, I joined a community of enthusiasts and, over time, doubled the number of watches in my drawer. Was I becoming a collector? Once the number crossed ten, was I officially one?
Let’s take a step back. I’ve worn a watch nearly every day since I was six. Without giving away too much, I’m well past that now—well beyond the halfway point.
When I was struggling with anxiety over my parents moving again, they gave me a small 28mm Timex manual-wind watch so that, at school, I could always know how long it would be until they came back for me. If that sounds ridiculous, consider this: I went to three kindergartens before I turned six. Anxiety has always been a feature of my life. So have watches.
I still have almost every watch I’ve ever worn. Early digital. Early ani-digi. Manual. Quartz. Automatic—they’re all in a box.
But is it a collection? I don’t know. I don’t part with things. Books. Bikes. Cameras. Telescopes. Watches. I don’t cycle through them—I keep them.
The longer I’ve spent in the enthusiast world, the more I’ve realized watches are an accessory to my life—maybe more a touchstone—but I’m not enthused the way others are. I don’t debate whether something should be 1mm larger or smaller. Thinner. Lighter. Blue. Pink. Purple. I’m not fixated on Swiss or Japanese or German. And as an early retiree, Rolex or Omega is probably out of reach anyway.
Lately, I’ve started to think I might be done collecting watches.
But I do love them. I love wearing them. I love knowing that certain pieces have been with me on particular adventures, at pivotal moments. If I had to run into the house for anything—after my wife, dog, and passport—it would be that early Timex and a cheap-ish quartz Tissot chronograph that’s been with me to 30-plus countries.
And maybe that’s the answer. Maybe what I collect isn’t watches—it’s the moments attached to them.
Completeness in travel matters to me. I’ve been to all 50 U.S. states—finished just after turning 35. I’ve worked in 45 states, plus Puerto Rico. I’ve worked in nearly 20 countries, across all six “major” continents, plus the subcontinent. Antarctica is still out there, and I can feel the pull of it—the need to complete the set.
I’ve even had a Wisconsin Old Fashioned in every supper club in Door County.
So maybe I was wrong at the start. Maybe I’m not a collector of things, or even a mild hoarder. Maybe I just collect differently.
Not baseball cards. Not Matchbox cars.
Experiences. Places. Moments.
Maybe that’s enough.
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