Guilt is defined as a feeling of having done wrong or failed in an obligation.
Collecting as a hobby consumes a great deal of money and time, two things that can cause feelings of guilt (e.g., spending too much money on a card, spending too much time on your hobby vs. family or friends).
Guilt may also show up in other ways due to the community aspect of collectibles, such as feeling guilty for purchasing a card that you knew your friend also desperately wanted or sharing something that highlights economic class in a community setting.
When have you felt guilt as a collector?
This is the fifth of several threads on navigating collector emotions. Please see below for those previous threads.
I know it’s really unhealthy, but I’ve been feeling guilty about my engagement with this hobby for awhile- and especially lately with everything going on. I have been adding to the collection a lot lately, and every time I do I just think about how truly lucky I am to be able to spend untrivial amounts of money on shiny cardboard, which if I am being honest, puts me in a very privileged category on a global scale.
I’m not sure how to shake these feelings and I’m not sure I will ever stop feeling this way to some extent. On the bright side, I try to remind myself that me feeling this way is not a character flaw, and there are other ways to assuage this kind of guilt by generously giving back to my family, community, and friends who have played important parts in making it possible for me to enjoy this hobby.
While I’ve been collecting Pokemon merchandise for years, I only got back into the TCG specifically a little over 2 years ago. I started out very slow, but when 2025 rolled around and everything started blowing up I turned expanding my collection on to what felt to me “maximum overdrive.” There were cards that even before the boom were on upward trajectory, and I was like well, do I buy them now or just watch them keep going up? And luckily I’m at a point in my life where I can afford spend a bit of money. And another sad thing at this point is, yeah, basically all those cards have continued to just go up since then.
I love my collection, but there’s parts of it I almost feel bad about sharing just in case it makes someone feel bad about their situation. I want to share my collection but I don’t want it to be all about “how much did it cost you” even though money is inherently a key part of this hobby and of course who doesn’t love a good deal if it hits you in the face. I honestly accumulated a lot of the more expensive parts of my TCG collection in a short period of time relatively due to everything going on the past year and part of me feels bad that I may have cheapened the experience a little? If that makes sense.
All this to say, my favorite collections are almost always the one’s that have been built with time. But also this current climate makes long term goals harder to maintain, cause in a moments notice something changes and your goal is no longer achievable in the way you had planned.