I think it usually comes down to trying to get clout e.g. exagurating the value of a card or collection to get the attention of normies or recognised by other collectors.
I don’t think it makes someone a bad person and can understand why some people get frustrated having seen a lot of high value vintage collections get a few likes on instagram or tiktok, yet someone with a modern alt art gets thousands.
Not everyone cares about the attention but some people like it. Others have the opposite problem and want to go more incognito
I think in any hobby where someone puts out their collection publicly, there’s at least a tiny desire for a type of validation that comes with showing off. Our monkey brains are trained to respond positively to the dopamine rush when you get notifications that people like what you post.
I reject the idea that it is simply “humble vs narcissist” collectors. There’s usually a complex range of reasons why people do things which results in a large spectrum of people between this simple dichotomy. On the other side of this, I would also like to point out that there are people who easily made jealous vs people with more self-confidence and that interacts with how they would perceive whether someone is humble vs a narcissist. I’ve seen people who get upset simply by seeing a card they couldn’t own posted without context. For me, I think a healthy level of flexing and confidence in your own collection/situation is ideal.
Unfortunately, places like Instagram amply the most toxic sides of these dichotomies. Fortunately, we live in the age were you can mostly curate what you see online. You can choose to unfollow people on Instagram or ignore collection threads here that turn you off. For me, I recently disabled my Instagram account and haven’t looked back.
I only know the people I meet in person, and luckily for me, they’ve all been awesome! Honestly, I DM fellow collector’s I’ve never met in real life purely from shooting the shit over Pokemon, or we did a sale together before and just got along over that.
I personally believe many make the “pop 1” style posts to get rep as it may help get followers or something like that. I’m a big fan of just unfollowing something I don’t like. I may be a little bitch, but I would say 99% of the people here now are super rad. 2020 was just an odd, but fun time
As others have suggested, I don’t think this is necessarily narcissism. For one, we just cannot know what’s the hearts of most others when they make these sorts of posts. You are only seeing the front they put on for social media. You don’t have much idea what the real person is like without a personal relationship. For two, as pretty much everyone else has said, some excitement could be just that. And someone who posts rare cards with no explanation or context could also be very narcissistic.
If you don’t get the right vibes from someone, by all means don’t pay attention to them. But watch out with the judgement calls on people you do not know.
