I think for me it's retro games, specifically. I used to have been in the used video games market for 5 years from 2008 to 2012. My goal was to construct a personal video game collection, physical copies of games I personally enjoyed growing up.
I was registered on a game trading site which served as the base of my business, I've made rounds of thrift store hopping and any used games market I could find locally. I've struck amazingly good deals and I might've had luck on my side a few times (for example, a guy on that game trading site gave me a free copy of Super Metroid that I got to choose for a minor mistake he felt he needed to honor.)
And I felt like I was incredibly close to completing my personal collection until 2012, I ran into some dumb drama with my sister and ex girlfriend back then. They racked up the cable bill in my name that I was trying to cancel and they wouldn't let me cancel it until I turned in all equipment. And I was jobless at the time too, having lost my job. So I needed to sell some things and sure enough, had to sacrifice my entire collection at the time that I spent 5 long years building.
I never recovered since and this was during the golden period where it was still fairly fun to collect and everybody wasn't pretending to be a pawn shop.
I would try continuing what collection of games I've tried to build, through Steam but it wasn't the same. Nowadays, the used video games market has turned into just a platform full of resellers, pawn brokers and stingy greedy collectors.
I find it very cheapening that people treat games like they're just tools of trade. They mean nothing and they're treated like nothing except to make a quick buck, however possible.
It's only worsened thanks to Goodwill and similar thrift stores, getting in on it where everyone pays too much attention as to what the prices go for on EBay and VGPC.
And we have WATA involved that hasn't made things better. Thanks for shitting on an honest hobby, assholes.
Every kind of hobby ultimately rests on some different kinds of reward mechanisms. Whether it’s the thrill of winning at a competition, the excitement of discovery, or the satisfaction of accomplishment, these sorts of positive emotions are what keep a hobby interesting and engaging for us. Collecting is no different, and this is where I believe the problems start.
Collecting as a hobby gets its main motivator from acquiring rare stuff. While there is a learning component to it (learning about all the stuff that’s out there, the history, why some things are rare and others are not, and what fair market prices are for everything) and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment (from gazing at a completed collection), the main drive that keeps people engaged is the excitement of unboxing and taking possession of new and rare item.
Unfortunately, this is an extremely fleeting and hollow emotion. It can last as little as a few minutes and rarely lasts more than a few days. In the long run, I believe this is what leads people to lose interest in collecting: they simply run out of rare stuff to obtain and thus lose the excitement they once had. Some even get so frustrated and disillusioned by collecting that they go out of their way to destroy or sell off their collections, often experiencing an enormous sense of relief afterwards (but potentially also a sense of loss and regret).
Contrast this with hobbies based around making or fixing stuff: making wine, brewing beer, gardening, cooking and baking, repairing old clocks or TVs or computers, restoring old cars, woodworking or blacksmithy or hobby machining, making jewellery or clothing, programming video games. These hobbies all differ from collecting because they’re focused on learning and personal growth. For example, there is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment to pick a few jalapeño peppers off the plants you raised from seeds, but the ultimate driver is the thrill of learning how to better take care of plants so that next time they grow even bigger and healthier than before!
Likewise with a repair hobby such as fixing old clocks: each one you come across (and there is some overlap with collecting here) has a unique history with a unique set of challenges to overcome if you are to get the thing repaired and running again good as new. But it differs from collecting in that the biggest satisfaction arrives at the end, when you complete the repair, rather than the beginning when you unbox the clock.
Some of the other making/crafting/food hobbies also provide additional satisfaction when you’re able to give away or sell your creations to friends and family (or strangers at a farmer’s market or Etsy shop). Having another person be happy as a result of something you learned how to do is incredibly rewarding in ways that an obscure collection may not be. It can be quite a downer to have others fail to understand what’s so interesting about your collection and even painful if they tell you they think it’s a waste of time and money. Of course, ultimately this reward/consequence of a hobby depends greatly on your relationships to other people and how much you care (or not) what they think.
So well said. It reminds of story about Actor Jackie Chan, in one of his interview he shows his collection of tea cup, he had accumulated so many tea cups of all variety that filled his entire room. And now he had grown out of that hobby he didn't know what to do with those tea cups.