THE LANGUAGE OF COLLECTING

I had a brilliant idea the other day. It involved selling the house and investing everything into one huge collecting emporium with all the stock in one place and a flat over the shop. Naturally I had to run the idea past Mrs Pete before taking it further, so I asked her what she thought and she said "It’s up to you".

There was a naïve earlier time when I would have taken that literally and blithely carried on with my plan, only to find out when it went pear-shaped that "It’s up to you" is a code. It doesn’t mean "I trust your judgement implicitly and you should follow your heart regardless of my thoughts and feelings, or the best interests of the family." What it really means is "It’s up to you to realise the stupidity of your proposal and take the decision to abandon it of your own accord".

These are the kinds of misunderstandings that can wreck a happy partnership in no time. Another typical ambiguity is when you ask if she wants to do something and she says, "I don’t know". Of course she knows. Have you ever met a woman who doesn’t know her own mind? It’s not an invitation for you to persuade her of the merits of your idea. What she actually said is; "I don’t. No." The full stop is silent, which is exactly what you’ll get at the end of this misunderstanding; silence and a full stop.

It doesn’t just happen on the domestic front. The government has turned ambiguity into an art form and beams it back to us regularly. Descriptions of houses and cars similarly attract a lot of hyperbole. (I’ve never liked the shortened version of ‘hype’. If we have to put up with hype it should at least be sweetened with a sprinkling of bole.) The other main offenders are hotels and restaurants, and that ‘family-style’ B&B we stayed in recently turned out to be a disorganised mess which we had to tidy up.

Effective communication is equally important in the pursuit of collectables. You have to remember that toy dealers are operating in a rarefied bubble. Ordinary collectors at least have constraints from the real world. Imagine if you were completely unfettered by work and were able to follow your every collecting whim. You’d be incapable of seeing anything in terms other than toy collecting, like me. It can be quite destabilising, believe me. We toy dealers are like monks, except without a monastery. It’s no coincidence we refer to each other as ‘Brother’.

As in any closed community there’s a lot of jargon. We talk in code amongst ourselves and we talk in code to our clients. Whether they choose to understand is up to them. Breakdowns in communication can undermine our collecting endeavours, so here are some common collecting phrases with their correct translations:

"It needs a little bit of work" means it’s been in pieces in the workshop for so long we’ve forgotten how it went together. "It’s had a bit of work" means that we started a complete restoration, ran out of steam and put it back out as it was.

"It’s a good little fair" means there are only fifteen tables, six of which are taken by one dealer. "It’s a busy show" means that the activity is concentrated into a frantic half hour after the doors open. The dealers start packing up at 1.00pm and the place is empty by 2.00.

"I can do you a good price if you’re taking several" means I’ve got hundreds of them and I want to get my investment back as fast as possible.

When you’re looking at the remnants of a collection on a table and the seller says "There’s been a lot of interest in those", what he means is everyone and their dog has had a good sniff around and the best bits are long gone. Another one is "You don’t see so many around these days", which means I’ve been carrying it for so long I don’t believe I’ll ever sell the damn thing. From the other side of the table, "How much is that?" doesn’t mean "I want to buy it", but "I’ve already got one at home and I’d like to know how much mine’s worth".

Ray’s favourite is: "Are you looking for anything in particular?" What he means is he arrived late with so many boxes of junk, what you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. Given half a chance you’ll be sucked behind the table while he rifles through more boxes of stock trying to find something to sell you. Like Auntie Wainwright in ‘The Last of the Summer Wine’, he’d hate to see you escaping empty handed.

Auctions have been responsible their fair share of tradespeak. For example, ‘mint’ doesn’t actually exist. If it’s been opened it can’t be mint, and if it’s unopened, how do you know it hasn’t crumbled into its constituent powders? Qualifications of the term like ‘near mint’ are therefore rendered meaningless, and minty means it’s perfect except for one glaring flaw. "Good condition for its age" means tatty, and "believed complete" means there’s something missing but we can’t pinpoint what it is.

So, collecting is as fraught with potential for misunderstanding as the rest of our lives. Regarding that idea about selling your house and investing the money in collectables, all I can say is, it’s up to you.