My wife said collecting antique padlocks was dumb, so I brought home 47 of them
Started hitting flea markets in Akron back in March and now I can pick a 1920s Yale in under a minute without looking. Anybody else here get hooked on something their family thinks is trash?
Funny thing about collections, they almost never start as collections. You just see one cool old thing that somebody else threw away, then suddenly you're the guy who knows where every dusty booth in three counties keeps their weird stuff. My uncle went through the same thing with old hand planes, and now his garage looks like a museum nobody asked for. People act like keeping stuff is a waste until they need a specific thing fixed and guess who has it. I figure if the hunt makes you happy and it is not costing you your rent money, your wife will come around once she sees how fast you can open one of those Yales. Worse case, you got 47 little metal puzzles that will outlive us all.