this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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So my wife knows I’m a data hoarder and she’s unbothered. Thank god πŸ˜‚

But she asked me why do I collect comics physically when they could be digital and take less space? I didn’t have an answer so I said just cause haha. I was curious for y’all do you collect anything physical? And if so what do you collect? Also why?

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[–] FlatLecture@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Videogames and CRT’s…TV’s, PC Monitors and PVM’s.

[–] virtualadept@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] kookykrazee@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I have a nearly complete hard back Stephen King Collection!

[–] ranhalt@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

According to the added storage capacity of my bins, I have 192 gallons of movies, video games, books… not including 8 short boxes of comics.

[–] DanTheMan827@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Game consoles and physical games. I also like having physical media in general, so I have a decent collection of music and movies, even if they just end up getting ripped anyways.

[–] McGoodotnet@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Retail DVD and Blu ray discs are actually cheaper than using hard drives now. I pay .15 on DVD and .50 on Blu ray. It is essentially data hoarding by different means

[–] BrianBeats@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How do you get blu ray so cheap? eBay or?

[–] McGoodotnet@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Mostly Facebook Marketplace. People dump them in favor of netflix/hulu. Their asking price is insanely high usually. If you need a more accurate price head down to your pawn shop and try and sell them a stack. This gives you a better idea of what you can pay and where the market is at.

[–] ZGTSLLC@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Books -- I have crates upon crates of them, since I don't have a library in my house, they are stacked from floor to almost ceiling in my bedroom.

Movies -- VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, digital. I got rid of a few hundred VHS a while ago, but still have about 20 or so left, stuff that will never be made into DVD, but that I have had forever. DVD and BR, I have probably a thousand of them. Digital, I don't even want to consider how much I have spent on Prime movies and shows!

Rocks / Crystals -- growing up, my dad was a geologist by hobby (I was born in the mid 70s) and he would drag us kids rockhounding. We would find rocks, he would cut and polish them, then show us the treasures we found and give them to us to keep. My dad's collection was displayed all over the state I grew up in -- over 500 pounds of rocks! -- and it was consistently tuted as the best collection libraries and state houses had ever had, so it kind of rubbed off.

Edit, spelling

[–] GorchestopherH@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Just Lego really.

[–] jnew1213@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Postage stamps for many years starting as a kid. Steamship postcards, then trilobites and minerals for some years as an adult.

[–] TattedUpSimba@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Nice. How’d you get into collecting those?

[–] SleepyKoalas23@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Blu-rays and CDs then rip the CDs to flac and hoard and the Blu-rays to image and mkv and hoard.

[–] DurandalJoyeuse@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Video games - just shy of a 4,000 game collection. It's a large contribution to my data hording. I like having rom/iso backups of everything in my collection. Same goes for the movies I have, as well as getting digital options for my books, etc...

​

The physical items are to display and use when things go offline/break, but the digital versions of my collection are what I use most.

[–] Melodic-Look-9428@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Nice question,

I collect books, look to complete collections of certain books all in the same edition.

I collect valuable retro games.

I have scanned my magazines and keep the originals in storage.

[–] yetanotherdave2@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I collect potentially useful stuff that I never find a use for.

Uncommon beer bottles/cans, some books, and some small personal memorabilia. That's it pretty much. I much rather keep a few photos or a video of a physical object, than to keep the object itself.

[–] cthart@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Maps. I love folded maps, and can't stop grabbing them wherever I visit.

[–] rhoborg@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Games, Consoles & Donald Duck comics.

[–] fliberdygibits@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I collect old computers.... mostly the portable variety: Powerbook 3400c, some handsprings, a tandy trs-80 model 100, apple newtons, etc.....

I have coffee mugs... a Dr Pepper mug from the 70s or 80s...a Y2K bug mug from, well, y2k, a nasa mug, etc.....

Selective Lego sets.

[–] ClintE1956@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Those physical comics can be worth some bucks. Gold and silver age good to mint condition can be considered a collectible asset. Can't say the same for digital comics.

Cheers!

[–] ruo86tqa@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Retro computers, mostly x86. On the 8-bit side: I have a working hungarian Videoton TVC (the same type was the family's first computer), 3 Commodore 64s.

The x86 collection starts with two XT clones (one with a NEC V20), an IBM PS/2 Model 30 with a 8086 (this is the only PS/2 with ISA slots instead of the proprietary MCA; later I bought a NEC V30 for this beauty) and ends with a Pentium Pro 200. I also have some x86 machines in between: 286, 386 and 486.

Love these machines, they remind me of the carefree teenage years.

Ditto with retro computers, though I'm sticking to pre-PC/x86 or I'll end up buried haha

[–] K1rkl4nd@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Video game manuals. And I'm making them digital so they aren't lost to time. What's out there now is such low quality- but at the time (1995-2010) was "good enough" because "it's something".

[–] TattedUpSimba@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I miss getting video game manuals. Especially in games like metal gear solid

[–] Due_Supermarket781@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I have 9kg of stickers. Most of them are in their original packaged sheet.

When I was in primary school, we had a sticker chart which had every classmates name on it. The teacher would give us stickers whenever we did something good or achieved something. I had a bunch of my stickers stolen from a couple of bullies and the teacher didn't really intercept or come up with a solution to stop their incessant harassment. 20 years later I have a galore of different stickers and enjoy looking through them time to time, also trying to use them instead of merely buying/hoarding them, especially to friends or strangers via postcard exchange sites.

[–] animatedhockeyfan@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I’ll help you find the bullies.

[–] CTRL1_ALT2_DEL3@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

You see, leaving everything sans practicality out, digital is obviously the better choice for general redundancy and uniformity of storage.

However: comics, retro games, other physical media etc. are a whole different thing. I'd keep and display anything worth it. (with a backup scan/rip on a few drives)

[–] smstnitc@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I still buy music CDs whenever possible.

And LEGO sets. I love getting unique minifigs and animals.

I sold all my comics years ago to make rent, so aside from a few graphic novels here and there I don't buy comics any anymore.

[–] dlarge6510@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I have a large and growing DVD and Blu-ray collection.

That's the stuff I have physically that could take "less space" if I were to rip them and put them onto a massive HDD NAS.

Why don't I do that?

  • Legally speaking if I were to rip anything I'd need to retain the original disc so...
  • I archive to Optical Media as the ultimate storage format so I'd be burning the discs to Blu-ray after ripping them so... Why bother? They are already in their final format. I'm obsessed with light, I prefer optical media, I use cameras, I love binoculars and telescopes, I've worn glasses since I was 5, and I'm frequently reminded of my own colourblindness, light is something I'm obsessed with and yes I will never not archive to Optical no matter how many try to remind me if the cost of HDD lol
  • I literally have no time. I see something on dvd or Blu-ray or an audio cd and spend less than a few mins buying it. That's enough. I have 1,001 other things I need to do from fixing the car demister again to doing the hovering to finally going up into the attic to sort out the junk there, or do I sort out the junk in the spare room? Or what about the crap in the shed? I literally have more things to do and deciding not to rip digital media that is not rare (some are and should be backed up) is a welcome relief 😁

I also have many other collections that I maintain and need to add to or remove stuff from. Such as the camera collection, the watch collection, the books, the retro games, the retro computers, the Wedgewood pottery (yes I'm serious), the Lladro and Nao pottery figurines and other antiques that caught my eye.

I'm also a guy who has multiple hobbies since I turned 10 in 1990. I have skills in programming on retro systems I'm looking to re-awaken. I have been an avid photographer that shoots both film and digital to this day, and that hobby is screaming at me as my extensive 35mm and 120 film negatives I have made since the early 90's are totally unprotected as they have not been scanned and indexed yet! That is exacerbated by the fact I'm still enjoying shooting new film and so adding to the pile.

Oh and that's another example right there, of what I have physically that would take up "less space" digitally: my negatives. Well even when I finally scan them all I'm still keeping the negatives. The scanning is only to allow me to archive them digitally to Blu-ray and have another copy in Amazon Glacier in case the negatives all burn in the house. If they don't burn in the house, like the dvd/Blu-ray/CD collection, they will out last me considering that silver halide film is one of the most stable storage methods there is.

So yeah why? Well no time. Just simply no time. The film is waaaaay more important to digitise rather than an out of print audio CD. So I'll happily keep adding to the stack of CD's 🀣

[–] Montagemz@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, Pokemon Cards. Why? I have been doing it for about 20 years and I just cannot stop.

[–] thintos@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago
[–] Doom-Trooper@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

My other main hobby involves firearms and ammo. Curious is anyone else here has the same hobby overlap

[–] ParadoxSolution@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Coins, but very casually. I don't really care much for rarity so much as novelty. 'Special' coins like those produced for Olympics, centenary events etc. It's not something I go out of the way for but I guess it would count based purely on the amount on face value alone.

Otherwise, technical junk. Never throw tech away unless it's fubar.

[–] coolraul07@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Oh, almost forgot. I apparently collect laptops. My family gets new ones every 3-5 years and I still have every one dating back at least 15 years.

Oh, and cell phones and tablets. Those date back to at least 2011. There's an iPhone 6 and a couple Android v4 (and earlier) devices within arm's reach of me right now.

[–] ATOMK4RINC4@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago
[–] animatedhockeyfan@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I collect rocks, sand, and shot glasses.