Collecting is a common hobby among people. There is a wide assortment of items that one can choose to collect, from typically collected cards and coins to more specific items such as Coca-Cola products or vintage tea cups from Japan. Many students and teachers at George County participate in this hobby, with some owning thousands of items.
Senior Nikolas Phillips is one of these people, having a particular interest in Pokemon cards. He has been collecting them for about 12 years, and it shows, with him boasting a collection of over 1,000 cards. Phillips says that he first started collecting cards in elementary school and has not stopped since.
“I think it was a school fad,” Phillips said. “The whole school was like, ‘Oh, pokemon cards,’ and then I started collecting some, and then I got really into it.”
The star of Phillips’ Pokemon card collection, though, is a binder filled with cards from 1998, the first year that they were available to buy in the United States. He says that they will be worth a lot of money one day.
Another avid collector in school is teacher Lyle Kennedy, who has a massive collection of baseball cards, music CDs, movies and much more. He has over 500,000 baseball cards, 50,000 albums and 24,300 DVDs, most of which are out of print and not available online. Kennedy started really getting into collecting when he got older, seeing it as a way to freely express his interests.
“I know that when I was younger, with dad being a preacher, we weren’t allowed to watch movies or listen to certain music,” Kennedy said. “You get to a certain age, and you’re able to start buying things yourself, and I guess that’s where I got attached to it.”
While people like Phillips and Kennedy have been collecting for most of their lives, senior Blane Green only started collecting vintage coins about two years ago by complete accident. Green was walking in Walmart one day when he saw a coin on the floor. That coin turned out to be a penny dating back to the 1940s. He soon realized that he found old items like this very interesting since they are so different from what we have today.
“I just like the way they look, and one day they’ll be worth a lot of money,” Green said.
While there are a plethora of reasons as to why a person might collect specific things, a large amount of interest comes from a genuine enjoyment of collecting and sharing it with others. People are able to bond over their enthusiasm for their collection, leading to unlikely friendships forming. Kennedy has made friends with people from Baton Rouge all the way to New Zealand just because they have a shared interest in collecting.
“There have been so many people that I’ve met over the years going to shops, antique stores, music stores and movie stores throughout the years. You meet so many people,” Kennedy said.
