Guide to Collecting: 101

This series of articles is intended to guide you through the basics of item collecting as well as the various aspects of this noble hobby.

What It Takes

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be a millionaire to be a collector. The only thing that you require is a sincere passion for a certain “thing”. That “thing” is the subject of your collection and it will be what defines your field of interest.

It can encompass many classes of collectible items. For example, “militaria” is the common denominator of any item related to war and military tradition. Some of the first things that may come to one’s mind are weapons and uniforms, right? You might not have known that the actual term “militaria” encompasses many more types of items. Everything from the first 1910 English translation of The Art of War by Sun Tzu, correspondence cards written from the trenches in WWI, a medal of the Austro-Hungarian Order of Maria to the military maps used to plan battles falls under the same category.

We will be explaining the various terminology used in the mystic world of antiques as we go on with this series about collecting, starting from the term itself.

Etymology

The word antique is derived from the Latin antiquus meaning ancient/old and represents the zeitgeist of an age past. While the term history applies to events that have occurred fifty years back from the present moment, an antique is an item that’s at least 75 years old. Further on we shall see how this definition can get fuzzy at times. For now, we will use these numbers as reference points.

An album of rolling tobacco bags. The term tobacciana applies to any item that’s related to tobacco.

Getting Acquainted

The redaction of Sigedon understands collectors and the passion individuals have for history. While being in the company of people that have a desire to “own“ pieces of history, we sometimes forget that the vast majority of folks don’t share the same interest.

Personally, I think the main reason for disinterest in starting a collector’s career is the lack of knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a critique of educational systems, all I am trying to say is that you can’t love what you don’t have any knowledge on.

Our Mission

So, how can you have an interest in history if you don’t know enough about it, right? We at Sigedon are trying to get history a step closer to you. This blog will provide you with interesting articles in the hopes of familiarizing you with history and sparking appreciation and love day by day. We only wish to ignite the spark, so we will not be covering the whole world history (we are not writing encyclopedias here) nor will we go into extreme details. The research is up to you. The more you read and explore a certain topic, the more you will come to love it. We are here to show you the various paths history has taken. However, we can only point you in the right direction.

In this series of articles, we will introduce you to the basics of this mysterious and foreign world of antiques. Enjoy!