Are collectors sexy?

Humans collect things. I'm sure that if we were able to visit our ancestors from 50,000 years ago, they would each have a little pile of stuff that that they lugged around from place to place and to which they attached particular significance. Or...they were thinking "you never know when you'll need a shell just that shape." Or maybe "someday these'll be worth something, you'll see!"

I'm in Ottawa at the moment and it's tulip festival time. That put me in mind of the great tulip bubble famous for nearly destroying the economy of Europe. And that got me wondering why tulips, or Beanie Babies, or Disney pins, or whatever the next craze is/was. Why do we bother? It can't just be something as simple as "enjoyable passtime." I mean, really, how enjoyable is it once this stuff reaches the level of an obsession?

Or, maybe more importantly, how is it that something like "collecting" can reach obsessive proportions. Are we humans wired that way? Is it the same sort of brain function that makes us susceptible to psychological addictions -- things that are not physically addicting, but none-the-less can result in addiction? The collectors' brain centers for pleasure are stimulated by hoarding meaningless objects?

Hmm...not sure, of course, but it seems to me that there must have been some VERY powerful evolutionary advantage to hoarding in our species' past. Maybe even in proto-human stages it was important to have a little collection of objects labeled "Hey, you never know when that'll be needed." Or, it could be that we, as a species, were attracted to bright-shiny objects and that has somehow translated into this current ability (need) to have stuff -- often lots and lots of similar, but not quite exactly the same, stuff.

In nature, some things that are both powerful and instinctive seem to have an important role in securing a mate. Sexual selection might be a reasonable explanation for this hoarding of kitsch objects. Maybe it shows potential mates that one is a good gatherer and thus could pull his/her weight in providing for the next generation. Something about that doesn't sound quite right, but maybe it's true. There are recent field studies showing that some monkeys do exchange small objects for sexual favors. It's been interpreted as a kind of prostitution among our ape relatives, but maybe that explanation misses the more fundamental aspect of object hoarding. Maybe having the monkey equivalent of a beanie baby collection translates into sexual desirability. Giving one to a potential mate means "plenty more where that came from, baby." Or maybe it's like "wanna come up to my cave/tree/patchofdirt and see my collection?"

Are collectors sexy?

The modern image would say no. Images of large adults with even larger collections of pins or stuffed animals are flashing through my mind. These are not runway models. They aren't even Reubenesque (not sure I spelled that correctly -- is that the sandwich or the artist?). These are folks who don't get out much -- at least that's the popular image, no?

So...I'm at a loss. What is it that makes collectors collect? And did collecting get them a mate?