Valu­able things, orig­i­nally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

Many peo­ple col­lect valu­able things, per­sonal trea­sures that they relate to or things that may increase in mon­e­tary value. The desire to col­lect and pre­serve is an almost inher­ent human trait. We can con­nect to our past through fam­ily heir­looms, to his­toric events through old prints, pho­tos, books, art, record­ings. We can even use things from th past like antique fur­ni­ture or some­times even ancient crafty things like spoons and bowls. Archae­ol­o­gists are always busy unearthing long for­got­ten and buried pieces of all the past civ­i­liza­tions around the world. Antique deal­ers offer a vari­ety of old things, from trin­kets to some­times price­less trea­sures. Muse­ums are ded­i­cated to pre­serv­ing the cul­tural her­itage and trea­sures of every nation.

I have per­son­ally been to archae­o­log­i­cal digs, help­ing unearth ancients dwellings in Ger­many dat­ing back sev­eral thou­sands of years. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to sift through the soil and come upon lit­tle bits and pieces of people’s lives long before our time, things that they hand made and used every day. I also enjoy col­lect­ing old books. My col­lec­tion is rather mar­ginal at this point but nev­er­the­less I am fas­ci­nated read­ing through an 1857 edi­tion of Shakespeare’s com­plete works, a 1927 illus­trated Jules Verne novel, a Col­liers cyclo­pe­dia from 1882. Some of it sounds sur­pris­ingly recent when read­ing it, other things are very typ­i­cal for that par­tic­u­lar time period. It is intrigu­ing to think some­one 80, 100 or even 150 years ago was read­ing this same book. It almost becomes a time machine.

Some peo­ple enjoy col­lect­ing old let­ters, read­ing what dis­tant fam­ily mem­bers wrote a 100 years ago, or even strangers, maybe for­mer polit­i­cal or reli­gious lead­ers, artists, sci­en­tists. Oth­ers col­lect old records, some­times dat­ing all the way back to the begin­ning of the