Using myself as the first example, I have a sort of stupid number of books. I have not read them all. I will eventually read what I have, but those books will either be filtered out to other people who want to read them or archived behind the new unread books that will inevitably find their way to my shelves. I have met one other person with a similar, absurd number of books, read and unread. I think I feel cozy being surrounded by them... all these lives and worlds that will speak to me whenever I'm ready or need to run away...
I have a modest collection of teapots. This is mostly due to my Alice obsession... though I don't have as much Alice paraphernalia as some people have NASCAR tokens or comic books trinkets. I have several different editions of Alice, a few figurines (all of them gifts), playing cards, greeting cards, stationary, mugs, tea cups, a tea set, and some T-shirts... all covered in Alice.
I knew someone who had quite the figurine collection... characters from fantasy films or novels, comic book statues, etc... guess he had his share of movie clips, movie articles, movie trivia, etc. I know someone else with quite a liquer collection... and yet another person with two rooms full of hotel souvenirs, winery glasses, free Avon gifts, lent books, memoribilia, and many other things, I'm sure, but I'm too scared to take a really close look.
Some people have tremendous DVD collections (which confuses me... most things we could want to see we can rent, find online, or view on Netflix). I knew a person whose DVD collection rivals my many book shelves. I like the idea of really weird collections... not stamps or coins, but funky things like old cereal boxes or old cartoon character merchandise. I really like the show on Food Network, Unwrapped (you can watch their episodes online, I just now discovered, like this one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/unwrapped6/video/index.html) for these sorts of crazy cooks who have original soda cans/bottles and other such things. There's a museum (Creat-A-bili-Toys) dedicated to food icons such as Tony the Tiger, Captain Crunch, Tucan Sam, Snap (The Original before Crackle and Pop came along), The Jolly Green Giant, and The Trix Rabbit!
There are those who collect animals. I don't get this, even though I have a modest lion collection. Mine is mostly a contiuation of my paternal grandmother's collection... just a way to stay close to her. I had a teacher in middle school who collected cows... and wanted you to know it. She had one hanging from the ceiling, they were all over her desk, dangling from the book shelf behind her desk, etc. I know someone else who had a room completely filled with teddy bears. All kinds of teddy bears. Stuffed, porcelain, little plaster statues, etc. And we all know about cat people...
I wonder from where this compulsion derives? Why do we need or want or crave many, many pieces of the same thing? I can see the hoarding goblin from Jim Henson's Labyrinth in my mind with her pile of stuff clinking and clanging on her back. Did this start at some particular point in history? Is it an American thing? An Egyptian thing? What makes us collect things?
Surely for some people it's a statement. My sixth grade English teacher and her cows for instance; I love cows and that's a part of who I am so like it or get used to it sort of thing. For others, maybe it's just something that makes them impressive. The guy with all the old soda bottles, a collection worth a pretty penny (and maybe even a few ugly ones), can say he has every old soda bottle originally made and that his collection is worth some amazing number of dollars. The Smithsonian calls him daily to see if he's still alive (I'm kidding... would be funny though).
For others, maybe it's a comfort thing. Like my books... I always have a place into which I can disappear. I also am likely to have something to offer someone else making myself useful. Maybe for people who had very little at one point or another, a collection is a way to not have to feel lacking anymore. If you're surrounded by a lot, you don't have to feel the way you did when you had nothing at all.
I know fewer people who have the art of non-collecting than I do those who like to collect something... even if it's not conscious or physical (like collecting useless information or interesting websites)... though I could be cheeky and call that a sort of collection, too. All the same, what is it that they know that we don't? How have the monks of Tibet set themselves free from hoards of stuff?
I guess Thich Naht Hanh (one of my new favorite people) saw more value in things we cannot see (though he has quite a collection of writings, he does not have a collection of frogs or what have you). But, maybe we see a deeper value in our collections, too. Like a museum collection trying to tell us who we are or at least where we came from, maybe we're cataloguing our lives... postcards from trips, little soaps from amazing hotels, pictures that put our minds at peace, things that we liked that are numerous to be dispersed to everyone we ever knew to remind them of us, etc.
One of the most beautiful collections I've ever seen can be found here: Found.com
It's a collection of things people find... literally. One the street, on the floor at work, on the subway, etc... Love notes. Grocery lists. Abandoned drawings. Etc. It's a "feel good" collection of the idiosyncracies, idiocies, and marvels of humanity.
While we don't want to be the junk lady, hauling around a bunch of useless garbage, I see how we want to remember where we've been...
(from http://images2.fanpop.com) 
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