Any town or village has at least one antique, bric-a-brac or junk shop. Most antique shops contain a certain amount of junk while many junk shops contain antiques. It’s probably the percentage within the shop that decides on the name.
Collectors are the most prolific browsers as they are forever hoping to add another item to their stock

There is no rhyme or reason for any specific collection whether a famous painting or thimbles unless it is thrown open for public viewing. This is because once a certain number of the said item is contained in the collection, there is just not the time to look at and enjoy each one.

This means that despite the momentary pleasure gained from acquiring it, thousands of collectors are giving storage to things that they have no further real use for. Even stranger, many of the collections are completely worthless because nobody in their right mind would be particularly bothered about owning one toilet roll cover let alone 2,647.

The worrying thing is that collectors existed way before computers did so they must have had to log each item by hand, to keep track of the number, or remember to write the last number of items so that each new one could just be added on. But what if the log book or number was mislaid or you weren’t quite sure whether you had logged every item?

They must have spent a good part of their lives counting. unless of course they collected different numbers in sequential and ascending order.