Quote Originally Posted by Vasilis View Post
Another aspect of HAD or RAD or any X-ADs and collections is the size of your income. If you can buy them and live your life-your family's life with no ill effects/shortages of vital... stuff or decrease the quality of your life because of it, by all means, do so.

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My point is, like all psychiatric diseases, if your HAD interferes with the quality of your life, you are doing it wrong, and might even need help.
If not, keep doing it. Besides, the prices of naturals only rise, you can also see it as an investment with guaranteed profit. But if you are doing it for the profit, I'll find you!!!
You do realise that excessive buying of certain things, mainly merely for the sake of buying and having those things, can be a manifestation of mania, right? And you're saying that, as long as you can afford that, it's not a problem. At least in the case of actual manic episodes, you're right. Excessive, erratic buying of unnecessary goods isn't a problem - it's a symptom.

Now I'm not saying that people who buy lots of hones all have some form of bipolar disorder, or have some sort of addiction. But when I see people buying another Escher (when I know they already have more than one), or razor upon razor upon razor, amassing hundreds, sometimes even thousands of them, I am fascinated by the motives behind it.

Because I have felt the need to stop myself at some point as I felt I was spending money on razors erratically. I couldn't justify purchases any more ('Well, what can I say, I just really like Swedish razors and it was only €35, even though I already have two of those'). Luckily a wise man once told me 'It's ridiculous to spend more than €100 on any used razor; hardly any of them are worth even that much' so I didn't spend thousands of euros on fili's, cotis, W&Bs, Pumis, Jnats, thuris, Heljes and whatnot. I wasn't facing financial ruin. Still, instead of enjoying collecting and having a cool little hobby, I was just throwing money at it because. It felt stupid and pointless. There was no fun, just the amassing of stuff. Which gave me cold shivers, like pea soup to a five year old (and me; it's just gross).

Luckily I never really had that with hones - although I did end up with five coticules at one point; of which I have two full-sized ones left.

After checking myself, questioning every potential purchase, I am back to enjoying cut-throat razors and things surrounding it. I still have a bit of culling to do and a restore pile (it still really is very much a pile, in the most unflattering sense) that needs to be dealt with, but I will probably enjoy those parts too. Because I sat myself down and told myself that I needed to 'downsize and upgrade' my collection, "collection" being the central term.

Representative samples of razors from the main razor producing countries, being Germany, Sweden, Japan, and England; other countries also welcome is where I'm at. I still have to narrow it down a bit.

A bit of advice: sit yourself down and ask yourself why you buy what you buy and get what you get. Answer honestly, no false justifications ('I'm going to try to accurately map the differences between all Solingen razors of all grinds of all manufacturers and every type of Japanese natural hone, so I will need at least two of each to rule out flukes'). Do you get things because you have to, want to, must, feel like spending money on something nice, etc. and do your reasons justify your purchases to you? Be overly critical, as it's really easy to fall into blind self-justification along the lines of 'It feels good so it must be good'. Just because things don't feel like a problem doesn't mean they aren't.

In all sincerity, I'm not judging anyone here. I just think critical self-reflection is a useful exercise in sanity preservation.