When does "having a few pens" become a collection?

[DickBrowne]

This is possibly something which has been discussed before, in fact I would be really surprised if it hasn't, so please forgive the mildly naïve question in the title.

Anyway, I have a friend (so many threads could start this way...), this friend has a watch and insists that he doesn't collect them. He has his "good" divers watch, it cost quite a lot of money and so he won't use it when he swims - he has a cheaper divers watch for when he swims. He has a nice dress watch for wearing to special occasions, and a cheaper one for wearing to work. He has a small number of quirky watches from the 1970's, a decade which saw brave design steps in the field. He has a chronograph, he has a digital watch, an Apple watch, a HRM watch for using in the gym, one with a GPS built-in for when he goes mountain biking. He has a gardening watch and another for when he's on his motorbike, which is old, clunky and vibrates a lot. He has a couple of vintage pieces and his dad's old watch plus another from his childhood.


But he's not a collector, oh no, he doesn't have a collection...

His justification is that he uses every one of his watches on a regular basis, therefore they are all tools and none are pure vanity, ergo - it's not a collection.

Yeah, right. He's a collector, he's just in denial.

I recently counted my pens. There are way more than I realised. I appear to have pens which I bought a number of years before I was married, I've been married 27 years next year. I've been using fountain pens since before I left school (I will admit to being the weird kid who wore tweed as a teenager, wrote with a fountain pen, enjoyed maths and knew how computers worked before most people had even used one. I'm certain I was cool, but hey...). I've been buying "reasonable" and "nice" pens for over 30 years - around when I left school.

In the past, I just used the pens, occasionally I would see a pen I liked and I would buy it, usually with blue or black ink, sometimes I used brown. Over the past couple of years, my purchasing frequency has increased, as has the average cost of the pens I've bought. I have more inks in more colours than I ever thought possible and, I will also admit this - I'm accessorising! Jotters, notebooks, pen cases, tools, you name it.

Final confession. My name is Richard. I'm a collector.