My plan for this little article had already taken shape. After having read all the materials, learned quite a few things therefrom, enjoyed the erudition, remembered some of my friends' passion for rare watches, phone cards or antiques, or my own childhood stamp, coin, and actors photo collections (as for the maturity ones, it is too early to speak of), and revisited a few museums (yes, those who complain that transplanting a collection from its original milieu to the leveling environment of a museum is almost a sacrilege are right), I was ready to put down, in "impressionist fashion," a few thoughts on the significance of amassing works of art only to donate them to the State, on the merchant vs. the artistic approach (may pragmatism sometimes incorporate esthetic craving – or the other way round?), on the possibility of treating (not in the medical sense!) collectomania as a brain "condition." As the phenomenon is rather recent, one cannot fall back on the wisdom of Aristotle, so to speak; on the other hand, today any item is eligible, so there are enough sources of inspiration to go round. Still! Then suddenly… My plan fell to pieces. The other night, watching the news, I met Mr. Graham Who?, the Trabant collector. For those who still don't know (there is no such person that could possibly ever forget it!) what a Trabant is, there you are: a small, cardboard (fiberglass, for the less malicious), two-stroke-cycle car made in the extinct German Democratic Republic for the use of proud builders of the communist bloc who could boast more than a scooter (in Romania, it generated almost as many jokes as the tyrant Ceausescu, e.g. Why doesn't a Trabant have seatbelts? Not to be taken for a backpack. – How do you double a Trabant's value? You fill it up. – "I would like two wipers for my Trabi." "OK, it seems like a fair deal."). Mind you, Trabant is German for satellite (BMW's? Mercedes's? Was it supposed to fly into space eventually?). In the 1990s, many of them were lying by, graffitized, on German streets. A friend of mine used to drive a Trabant worth one third of his mobile phone. But seemingly this has changed. The farsighted Brit has got about 50 of them, and rumor (i.e. TV broadcasters) has it that one may bring now as much as 11,000 (was it pounds or euros?). Have you put a few aside? Let me hear your jokes now!
by Adrian Solomon
