Why collect minerals?

Telling yourself you do it because "it is fun" keeps you from taking the hobby (and yourself) too seriously. You aren't saving lives, or making the world a better place, or even enlarging mankinds knowledge. As you get more serious about any hobby it can start becoming "work". Some of this is good and even deeply satisfying -- but if a hobby becomes a drudge and a chore something needs to change.

Tucson has a place called an "estate sale store". I once paid a visit and found a table covered with several hundred rolling pins. Someone had made collecting rolling pins their hobby and here they all were! Several aspects of this are worth contemplating. One is that this activity, which likely seems absurd and silly to most people, must have been deeply satisfying to this person. The other is that "in the end" the collection ended up on a table being sold to whosoever wanted to pay $5.00 each for as many rolling pins as they wanted. I declined to purchase even one, already possessing a rolling pin.

For several years of my life, I was an avid rock climber. On occasion when I was feeling philosophical, I contemplated the absurdity of it all. We would spend several hours working our way up a rock face, then in most cases make a fairly rapid descent down the backside of the rock and return to exactly the spot where we had began the effort. We would sometimes then repeat the process via a different route nearby. Most games and sports are equally absurd if viewed in the same way.

Lest this become too philosophical and abstract, here are some thoughts about mineral collecting in particular:

Collecting for the joy of acquisition. Most mineral shows and mineral vendors rely on this. It is possible for the joy of acquisition to become the major motivator in collecting. It is exciting to search for new things on one and and to acquire them on the other. Then they are taken home, placed into boxes or drawers, and the search for the next series of "new things" is launched. It is good to recognize the human weakness in this direction. A good cure is to spend time learning about those new things. Even better is to periodically visit ones own collection and revisit the things that have been collected. I am sometimes amazed at the things in my own collection that I have forgotten about.

Collecting for completeness. Be the first on your block to get them all! The species collector epitomizes this attitude and the book "Glossary of Mineral Species" even provides checkboxes to aid and abet such an effort. For whatever reason I do my best to diligently avoid anything resembling this in my collecting. If you are drawn toward this, I really cannot say anything bad about it and more power to you. You will find it very difficult if not impossible to "get them all", even if you do something like trying to get all the copper minerals or all the zeolites. I suppose if I was a birder and it was my goal to "see them all", I would fall into the same trap. My mindset it to get what the winds of fate blow my way and enjoy whatever that may be.

The money game. This brushes close with the human desire to compete (and to win!) Clearly many activities have no meaning for some people without competition, and mineral shows have traditionally supported competitive displays. Does this promote higher standards? Possibly. It is not how I want to play the game -- and in todays world of minerals it really does get down to a financial war. Quality specimens are scarce, in demand, and expensive. So the person with the most money can afford the best specimens and win the competitions. The money aspect of collecting will get attention in a page of its own. I largely sidestep this by being a micromount collector. It is possible for the money game to be played here also, but it tends to be far less dominant if you collect micromounts.