New Skylines!

allyourblood said:
I agree with everything you've said. I don't object to anyone wanting to collect every variation of a knife; if that rubs your rhubarb, so to speak, go for it. It just stings a bit for me that someone would be willing to pay a premium for something that's so similar to another item (and in one way, arguably inferior) all in the name of bearing a different blade stamp. That I can't understand. The "fool and his money" remark obviously reflects my own opinion to some extent, but it's meant purely in jest. That's why I winked and apologized for any hard feelings.

Collect away, but please permit me to feel like those of you paying out the nose for variants are just a little unstable. :p
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Part of collecting is the sport. I can only speak personally about Skylines, although I have read and seen much of the similar notions with Blurs and Leeks. One gets a real desire for one of these, and it'll happen independent of the time frame of production. Someone who would normally stay on the up and up and pick up the pieces as they release (at regular price) doesn't have the chance to, or someone just misses out. That's when the hunt starts to quench the desire for the collection, and as the collection grows, the hunt gets more intense.

One could see a desired piece pop up somewhere, then miss out on a good price. After a number of those misses, the frustration grows to the point where once they actually find one, they'll throw whatever money they can at it to snag it and feel a sense of victory.

I know you guys don't need me to tell you what collecting feels like, but it's worth understanding that it only makes actual sense to the people involved. I get a very joyous feeling when I take my collection out and observe the different variations and colorations. Each one is a piece of history to me, and has a nice little story attached to it.

I remember how and when I got both my red Skyline and Snap-On Skyline. It was a generous offer by another member, and other folks were pulling for me to be able to snag them. I made it work, shuffled some funds around, and won the game that time. My boredom at work snagged me two each of those BladeHQ pieces, and something just told me to grab them. Now they're selling for over two bills on the Bay, and that alone is worth something to me when I take them out and flip them open.

Yes, I'm unstable, but for other reasons. :D

I love you all anyway. Cheers!
 
sticktodrum, I'm feelin' the love!

I understand the collecting mania. I am unfortunately a collector of several interests including certain vintage toy lines and (most unfortunately), vintage video games.

Most of the really obscure, fun to play titles don't come cheap if you don't already own them. I love the box art as much as the games themselves so I often insist on having the actual games on my shelves (vs just playing them through an emulator or repackaged collection). The thrill for me is to scour Craigslist, yard sales, swap meets, thrift stores, etc., in order to obtain the rarer titles. It's a slow and gradual process and I'm still chasing many of my childhood favorites, but when I do finally get a game I'm after, the real excitement for me comes from paying mere pennies to add these treasures to my collection.

So I am right there with you in terms of finding enjoyment from completing a series or snagging that one really hard-to-find item. My method just differs in that I flatly refuse to pay over retail (or typically, anywhere near it) to get my hands on it. I suppose for the most part, that simply doesn't work with knives (though I've found many knives and multitools on the second hand market for a song!). That said, as long as it makes you happy, that's all that matters in the end. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. :D
 
sticktodrum said:
Part of collecting is the sport. I can only speak personally about Skylines, although I have read and seen much of the similar notions with Blurs and Leeks. One gets a real desire for one of these, and it'll happen independent of the time frame of production. Someone who would normally stay on the up and up and pick up the pieces as they release (at regular price) doesn't have the chance to, or someone just misses out. That's when the hunt starts to quench the desire for the collection, and as the collection grows, the hunt gets more intense.

One could see a desired piece pop up somewhere, then miss out on a good price. After a number of those misses, the frustration grows to the point where once they actually find one, they'll throw whatever money they can at it to snag it and feel a sense of victory.

I know you guys don't need me to tell you what collecting feels like, but it's worth understanding that it only makes actual sense to the people involved. I get a very joyous feeling when I take my collection out and observe the different variations and colorations. Each one is a piece of history to me, and has a nice little story attached to it.

I remember how and when I got both my red Skyline and Snap-On Skyline. It was a generous offer by another member, and other folks were pulling for me to be able to snag them. I made it work, shuffled some funds around, and won the game that time. My boredom at work snagged me two each of those BladeHQ pieces, and something just told me to grab them. Now they're selling for over two bills on the Bay, and that alone is worth something to me when I take them out and flip them open.

Yes, I'm unstable, but for other reasons. :D

I love you all anyway. Cheers!
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Desire seems more mysterious than it actually is, possibly because we live in a sea of it. The key is that it's mimetic. The rest is all interference patterning.

Without publicising it, Sancho Panza succeeded, over the years, in diverting his demon (whom he later called Don Quixote) away from himself. This he did through reading many novels of chivalry and crime in the evening and night hours, so that this demon set out unstoppably to do the craziest things. However, because of the lack of a preordained object (which should have been Sancho Panza himself), these harmed no one. A free man, Sancho Panza serenely followed Don Quixote on his ways, perhaps out of a certain sense of responsibility, and had of them a great and edifying entertainment until the end of his days. (Franz Kafka, The Truth about Sancho Panza)
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freewheeling said:
Desire seems more mysterious than it actually is, possibly because we live in a sea of it. The key is that it's mimetic. The rest is all interference patterning.
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"Man, I don't know what the **** you just said little kid, but you special man. You reached out, and you touched a brother heart." - Pumpkin Escobar, Los Angeles Local 305
 
We want stuff because someone else wants it. The ad industry has known this for a long time, but Cervantes knew it before they did.
 
sticktodrum said:
Part of collecting is the sport. I can only speak personally about Skylines, although I have read and seen much of the similar notions with Blurs and Leeks. One gets a real desire for one of these, and it'll happen independent of the time frame of production. Someone who would normally stay on the up and up and pick up the pieces as they release (at regular price) doesn't have the chance to, or someone just misses out. That's when the hunt starts to quench the desire for the collection, and as the collection grows, the hunt gets more intense.

One could see a desired piece pop up somewhere, then miss out on a good price. After a number of those misses, the frustration grows to the point where once they actually find one, they'll throw whatever money they can at it to snag it and feel a sense of victory.

I know you guys don't need me to tell you what collecting feels like, but it's worth understanding that it only makes actual sense to the people involved. I get a very joyous feeling when I take my collection out and observe the different variations and colorations. Each one is a piece of history to me, and has a nice little story attached to it.

I remember how and when I got both my red Skyline and Snap-On Skyline. It was a generous offer by another member, and other folks were pulling for me to be able to snag them. I made it work, shuffled some funds around, and won the game that time. My boredom at work snagged me two each of those BladeHQ pieces, and something just told me to grab them. Now they're selling for over two bills on the Bay, and that alone is worth something to me when I take them out and flip them open.

Yes, I'm unstable, but for other reasons. :D

I love you all anyway. Cheers!
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You said it so very well, Stick! The only thing that slows me down in my pursuits is the shortage of funds required!
 
freewheeling said:
We want stuff because someone else wants it. The ad industry has known this for a long time, but Cervantes knew it before they did.
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Nah, I wanted the Skylines because I wanted them. I don't really care what other people want. The limited numbers are what make it more difficult to obtain.

If you're positing this in philosophical terms, then I'll respond with someone having had to want it first before others saw they wanted it. So yeah. :p
 
sticktodrum said:
Nah, I wanted the Skylines because I wanted them. I don't really care what other people want. The limited numbers are what make it more difficult to obtain.

If you're positing this in philosophical terms, then I'll respond with someone having had to want it first before others saw they wanted it. So yeah. :p
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Well, I think there are independent standards of beauty but desire is *always* traceable to what someone else wanted or at least appeared to want. It may not have been for that specific object, but something like it with some of the key admired characteristics, and you may choose to put the pieces together differently. So far I find very few people willing to accept the notion that their desires are *not authentic* even though we live in a virtual sea of various methods of manipulating desire. And I'm not sure how much good it does to know that you get deceived in this way all the time, since it seems almost impossible to avoid being deceived. Some interesting results in the cognitive sciences recently, though, involving something called "mirror neurons." Take one part empathy, one part deceit... mix, add myth, ritual, and prohibition and bingo: culture!

I know, I know. Can't possibly be... Surely we'd have sussed this by now?
 
Did you actually just use "suss"? Alrighty, I'm out. Enjoy.

LeavingSeinfeld.gif
 
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