This is the question I would like to answer. Why are there cavemen, astronauts, cowboys, robots, and more peering out of every corner of this tiny apartment?

After my grandfather died, I recall visiting the garage of his tiny bungalow and finding it packed with birdhouses, fashion wigs, and copies of Popular Mechanics dating back to 1905. After my father died, we found that he had collected over 200 guns so that their collective weight was causing the floor to buckle beneath the tiny second floor room where he stored them.

Now I have to face my own obsessiveness and understand why there is a box with a 15mm Assyrian army sitting on a bookshelf or why another box contains about 2 dozen Napoleonic warships or why one closet is stacked high with games. Most remarkable of all is that I have not played any of them for quite a while.

So here is my exploration of my obsession with whatever information I can provide for people who follow this path. On the plus side, it has not been like collecting stamps or coins where a single piece could cost more than I could earn in a lifetime, nor is it like collecting old cars where even the largest home will not provide adequate space. It has been a rather solitary experience. If my wife ever boasts about my painting or my musicianship, she never mentions the bags and boxes of figures all too readily visible when a cabinet or closet is opened and no one ever wants to know more about it.

So in the end, I may be my best audience.