My wife and I are both a bit inclined in this direction; but mine tends to be focused on keeping little pieces of wire that are 20+ years old instead of cutting a piece off of a spool that's sitting right beside the 'pieces box'.... In her case, she tends to pick up and keep all kinds of stuff - we (and our children and grandchildren) should never have to buy a pen or a posty note EVER!!!!!! I think she sees it as 'multi generational purchasing' but its hoarding in my book!!!!
I appreciate the problem Bob is having; I ran for several years 10 years or so ago buying and selling old parts on Ebay; I was lucky enough to 'buy out' old stock (parts primarily) from several hobby shops in the area and used that as the basis for my collection; selling off what I didn't plan to use to fund the purchase of what I did plan to use/rebuild/restor. In theory that's a pretty good plan and is probably very similar to how the many on here have funded and do restorations and such. BOB on the other hand has a built in source that probably goes similar to this: Sales Manager: " this isnt selling any more, old stock, send it over to Bob, he'll know what to do with it...." and twa la, a collection of 'more stuff' is born!
I have a small, meaningful collection which is generally stuff that either I raced or which I always wanted to race; the exctption to this being my 2 834Bs that I just HAD to have.... Most is in boxes - some yet to be assembled, which I will do when I get 'old and retired' &/or too old to race (I'll be 64 in a month or so but still have a 'real job' 'career' I love most of the time). All is sorted by model so it's all pretty easy to find except Losi and Associated stuff, which is way bigger than any single box or tub will hold!
One of the plans that I have for the next year or so is to dig into the 'tub' which has a copy of pretty much every article that I ever wrote for a magazine - dating to RC News, Competition Plus and lastly Radio Control Model Cars. Its a BIG tub, they're all laid in flat and have all been boxed and stored since they were received and read. There's lotsa' old stuff in there in addition to most issues of RC Driver, who still (for whatever reason) seems to like my stuff. I'm sure that there are a lot of things in the 'old' end of the tub that will be interesting to many here.
I'm NOT a world class organizer (again, sounds like Bob and I have a LOT in common) but when appropriatly 'motivated' by the wifey, will eventually work on it some; we now have the various models placed neatly on shelves, with the information on WHAT is in the box visible. BUT, I seem to keep adding; I can't pass up a Dual Sport in the $50.00 range and anything reasonably priced for a early gas truck will join the collection but my purchasing power is severely restricted by my racing 'habit' which takes waaaaayyyy too much money to end up in the B main!
Hopefully at some point I'll be approved for the buy/sell area and this should motivate me to participate in both ends of this food chain!
