TMS…..Too Much Sh…er…huh….Stuff. Yeah, that’s it. Too Much Stuff. I am guilty. Almost a hoarder. Except I don’t keep trash, 3 month old mail and newspapers…and usually, for the most part, you CAN walk through the house without risk of being crushed in an avalanche of said items.
In spite of this, there are too many things. I am a collector of rare and/or unusual and historic technology. …that and some other stuff too. Many of the items I have featured in prior posts are items either from my personal collection or recent finds to add to that collection.
One thing that was learned in the packing away prior to the last 4 months of living in the RV trailer is that some things can stay and some must go. Upon returning home, the need to unpack, rearrange, and actually cull the collection a bit (gasp!) has become apparent. There are things I want to be able to do that require some space…and money….there is always a lack of that. I’ve always said I could live in an efficiency apartment if it had a 40×60 shop attached to it. …and the famous comedian Henny Youngman once said that he had all the money he’d ever need, so long as he was dead by 3 pm. Both are generally applicable. I do not have that 40×60 space….and it is now after 3 pm. So, some things must go. But how? It can be very hard to make such a call. In this regard I suppose I do share some things in common with a hoarder.
So what I have decided to do is to realign my collection a bit. Obviously doing away with duplicated items is easy. I have inadvertently wound up with some extras of things–maybe someone gave or sold me two of something…or maybe the extra was picked up for a project or set of spare parts, etc. It happens. So most of these duplicate items will be going. That was a fairly easy decision. Now for the harder choices–whittling down the rest of it to make room (and, hopefully, a few bucks) to enable other projects. How to choose? ….well… Other than manned spaceflight, some specific camera gear, and a few other newer things the main area of technological collection interest for me has always been the 1850 through 1950 period. OK. I’ll ditch the stuff that is newer or doesn’t quite fit in. Yeah. Let’s try that.
Generally I will not get rid of books or tools, however. Knowledge and the means to put it into practice are almost always going to get a pass around here. (and I have the bowed bookshelves and stuffed toolboxes to prove it) Granted, there are some tools I could part with only because I have another means to accomplish the task or function and if it is not something I must do every day then I suppose I could lower myself to do it the “hard way” if it is only an occasional need. For example, sometimes I must set up the breaker points in a prewar Ford flathead V-8. The distributor placement makes this a bit of a pain to do with it in the car…..so I have a specialized vintage KR Wilson tool for it. It functions similarly to the magneto buzz box that A&P mechanics use to set and time the mags on aircraft engines. And, although not specifically made for the flathead distributors, my mag buzz box will do that job too. So the awesome little KR Wilson tool that is made for the Ford flatheads can go. I can rationalize it that way, and certainly the money to be gained from selling this will be nice (it is a rare and expensive tool these days and serious car collectors love them) but it is still painful to make it go away.
Still, it is a small dent. One item. Something that will fit in a flat rate box. What good does that do, right? Yeah. True. But there are a lot of items like that here. I can likely clear out the equivalent of an entire room packed floor to ceiling. I just have to keep at it.
So that is the plan for now. The TV-7 tube tester, the distributor tool, vacuum tube voltmeters, old radio gear, Variacs, parts and manuals, and numerous other items that are excess to my main needs will be gradually making their way to my eBay auctions (seller name “airspy”) and out the door during the next couple of months. Score a bargain while you can!