This post is not mean to be offensive to any of us, as I am one of you.  Rather, this post was inspired by another recent post here -- and all the others like them.  And it's really meant to be a discussion starter, just a riff on my thoughts.  Nothing comprehensive, just some thoughts.

To the average person, knife collectors often appear to be hard to understand, & that's fair enough.  But I think that difficulty in understanding comes from applying the incorrect perspective or framework.  We're usually viewed as typical consumers, but in reality what we are is collectors, not consumers.  As a result, we appear unusual, hard to understand, weird.

And yeah, maybe we are weird -- but maybe all collectors are.  And while there are many different types of collection, & many types of collector, with different means, styles, and motivations, we all have something in common:  there's always a method.

Contrast this with typical consumerism, making purchases based on need, or perceived need, or whim, impulse, even accident.  And with most other kinds of purchases we make, we're typical consumers.  Just not when it comes to those things that we collect.

Granted, not everyone is a collector.  It took getting into knives as an adult, purposefully pursuing a hobby when our first son was born, to realize that I am, in fact, a collector.  In retrospect, I had plenty of collections as a kid:  Star Wars figures, Star Wars cards, GI Joe guys, Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, Atari 2600 video games, super balls, bubble gum -- & hey, even some knives!  In my teens & 20's, I started collecting experiences more than things -- along with a collection of books, and a collections of albums, tapes, & cd's -- so I never really stopped collecting, even if it wasn't always obvious I was doing so.

But it seems that people don't always recognize their own impulses to collecting sometimes.  Collections need not be exhaustive -- unlike Pokemon, you don't have to "collect 'em all" to have a collection.  Jewelry, shoes, bags -- all things that many people have several of, and they own each item because of the way the item can help them feel, because it says something positive about them, or simply fills a role that another one of the pieces does not.  They may or may not put much thought into accumulating these things, but accumulate them they do.  And that's okay.  It can even be great.

And it can still be weird -- but there are good kinds of weird.  More of us are weird than we thought.  And that's cool by me.