Nov 27 2008 by Joshua Platt  Autograph Magazine

Autographs on the Brain
The Psychology Behind the Compulsion to Collect

May was national mental Health Awareness month. The occasion got me thinking about the state of my own mental health as I pondered my autograph collection. I’ve got autographs on the brain, you might say.

Autograph collecting is a wonderful hobby that affords a creative outlet, a connection to history and an opportunity to bask in the beauty of the written word. It provides something of a social connection; most of the collectors I know are generous, knowledgeable, friendly people. For those of us fortunate enough to obtain autographs in person, the hobby also provides us with an intimate, tangible reminder of a notable encounter.

But, what is it, specifically, about an autograph that turns the average person into an autograph hound? “A signature just sits there, reminding its owner that he or she is not worthy of being asked to sign anything more than a VISA slip or a passport application,” writes Todd Babiak in a recent article in The Edmonton Journal titled “Autograph Hounds Missing the Signs: What’s the Appeal of a Name Scrawled on a Scrap?”

What is it about writing on paper that drives many collectors, myself included, to become slightly—or even extremely—obsessive at some point in their hobby experience? The question occurred to me a while back in the middle of the night. Sitting in the glow of my computer monitor, I was, as the headline of a recent article in Fine Books & Collections suggests, “Shuddering at Incompleteness.” At the time, I was prowling the Internet, bleary eyed from a lack of sleep, attempting to find out what far-flung, independent-league baseball town Jackson Melian and Jim Mann might be playing in. Melian was the once-highly-touted Yankees prospect, and Mann was the journeyman right-handed pitcher, perhaps best known for once being Johnny Damon’s roommate. The reason these two ball players tormented me is simple, really. They are, you see, the last two signatures I need to complete my 2004 Columbus Clippers autographed team set. As I sat and thought, I wondered if all collectors are, to some degree, slightly off-kilter?

A fixation with autograph collecting is hardly the kind of “debilitating anxiety disorder” normally associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Few autograph collectors I know have “intrusive and unwanted thoughts and repeatedly perform tasks to get rid of the thoughts,” as WebMD suggests those with OCD might. Nor do most collectors repeatedly lock doors or scrub their hands to “prevent or reduce distress or prevent a dreaded event.” Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that dedicated collectors do exhibit some symptoms of OCD. I have only to look in the mirror to see Exhibit A. I can’t help but think that surfing the Web at 2 a.m., desperately Googling a “missing” baseball player, does qualify as “significantly interfer[ing] with [a] person’s work, social life or relationships,” as the Obessive-Compulsive Foundation’s website describes OCD symptoms.

Even if they are compulsive, I know I’m in good company when it comes to my collecting habits. OCFoundation.org states that OCD sufferers face symptoms that “cause distress” and “take up time (more than an hour a day).” My friend, Jason, will skip work to hound baseball players for autographs as they come off the team buses at Cooper Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. (I know this because I often join him, plotting my day around the arrival of the team bus.) If Jason doesn’t get the autograph of the star du jour, he’ll become quite agitated and upset for the remainder of the day. On more than one occasion, Jason has told me, with more than a hint of distress in his voice, that he’d rather quit collecting than face life with an incomplete team set.

Jeff, another ‘grapher I know, only collects cards signed in blue ink. I once got a card autographed for him in black pen. He became irate and threw the card in the trash, rather than adding a dreaded black inker to his collection. I later learned that Jeff includes a blue fine point Sharpie with every through-the-mail request he sends.

These compulsions are not limited to sports autograph collectors in central Ohio. Think of a collector you might know who is relentlessly pursing a complete set of signatures—of anything: presidential signatures, moonwalkers, signers of the Declaration of Independence, Academy Award winners, Beatles album covers, first edition Steven King novels. They all expess (at least) slightly compulsive behavior. And the obsession is not even unique to autograph collectors. Steve Cyrkin, the publisher of Autograph, told me of a friend—a luminary of the numismatic world—who has boasted that he’d “go without sex or food for a good coin.”

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