... and the way you say it.

I'm fortunate to be able to get the funds to do a lot of travelling (I'm at my second home in Thailand right now) but I think you're absolutely right and that collecting can be a a form of travel also.

Sometimes I've tended to think that the internet has destroyed real collecting in the old sense. It's all too instantaneous, too easy - one types in a search term and makes sure one's bid is the highest. End of story; or rather, there is no story. People can build up good collections in a year or two now that used to take a lifetime of real searching to assemble. But your description actually is about the old, the true collecting that has a different kind of reward at the end of it. The pursuit becomes part of the object.

It made me think of one of my favourite essays by the great German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin. It's called Unpacking my Library (published originally in 1931). Benjamin was a Marxist but he was also a passionately addicted rare book collector. The excitement for him was in the search, the waiting, the thrill in the final contact with the rarity of the object. He talks about how we come to life inside the things we collect. That's true of unique books, I think, but it's equally true of beads, when our search for them gives them a new meaning. And that's what you're talking about, isn't it?

So - good travelling!

Will