31.10.2024

A gentleman’s pleasure: Collecting pieces of history

Explore how collecting historical artifacts, rare books, and unique heirlooms can bring a sense of legacy, knowledge, and value to a gentleman’s life.

Words: André du Pôle

Photo credit: Jonathan Bi.

In a normal world, every generation inherits something from its fathers and forefathers. The inheritance may consist of traditions, cultural identities, abilities associated to a particular work, and actually so many things it would be near impossible to make an exhaustive list of what we take from the past. As the elder brother amongst his siblings, my uncle received a gold signet ring with his initials written on it when he finished high school with honours.

Today, it seems hard to spot any potential inheritance from our parents’ generation. Many baby boomers rent their flat, work in a cubicle—which means they usually have no trade to teach and no example of fatherhood to give—own 60s rock n’ roll vinyl records or other cultural products that have neither moral nor financial value. Behind their flower power and party culture looms a striking lack.

Americans may think they do not really need to inherit anything. After all, the American dream is about making oneself, working one’s ass off and becoming rich. Yet, now, a growing number of red-pilled youths know that the market is already full, too competitive, and even if they managed to get ahead of the competition, they would be punished through taxes and media shaming. The Constitution is less of a true inheritance than a holy scrap, and entrepreneurship, though meritorious, does barely count as inheritance at all.

If we want to live in a healthy world, we have to create it again. Likewise, if we want inheritance for both us and our future children, we will have to make it too—not out of the blue but at least by reclaiming and owning again what is rightfully ours. One way to do it is through collecting pieces of history. In a deregulated world, where everything tends to go away or get merchandized, owning solid remnants of our ancestors’ deeds feels good, and not merely for the financial value of these pieces.

As for myself, I enjoy bibliophilia, i.e. collecting venerable old or rare books, but you are obviously free to adapt the present piece to whatever gentlemanly purpose such as collecting spades, militaria, or homely furniture. Just make sure you do not ruin yourself in uninteresting DVDs, Pokemon cards or other material that will fall apart and turn worthless over the next years.

Rewarding yourself (without complacency)

By definition, what is well-made, well-conserved and comes from a more or less distant past is estimated, which means it is also more or less rare and expensive. Buying something like that is not as easy as it sounds. Someone may sell rare books in an excellent state, yet you can’t understand the language these books are written in, or their topic is not relevant to your interests. Someone may sell a rare book relevant to your interests and endowed with a beautiful leather cover, yet when you receive it you notice the poor state of the pages. Someone sells a rare book with every part in a fair state, a book you can read and could proudly display in our interior, but the seller is clever, wants to squeak every penny he can from the book, and his product is damn too expensive.

Finding something you can buy or negotiate and that is actually interesting can be a challenge. When you succeed at this and receive the interesting object at home, you can think of it as a fair reward for your curiosity and research, let alone the money spent.

Becoming knowledgeable about whatever you own

The objects we are talking about come with a history. I have seen a book from the 1890s, widely sold in paperback, bought by a wealthy man who paid a craftsman to make him a fully leathered cover with gilt letterings and dentells inside. This now unique book was later bought by an academic who eventually died and then back on a now world wide market.

Whatever you set your sights on, if you stick to it long enough, you will by necessity become knowledgeable about it. A genuine bibliophile knows about the ex-libris, half-leather or signature. More importantly, you are able to touch and maneuver the objects, which gives you a direct knowledge of them. You know a book is old enough when the ‘s’ are written as ‘ſ.’ Is that snobbery? Perhaps a bit, but I would better see it as picking up the torch of a high part of culture and making it alive through ourselves.

A direct and independent access to history

Photo: Jonathan Bi.

Usually, if you want to know about the history of something, you need to go through official specialists, take courses or visit museums. While this is all a normal part of life, having some of the thing between your hands changes completely the relation you have to it. Suddenly, this is not a mummified artifact that had something to do with your ancestors and has been bought by the State or some banker to be arrogantly displayed, but something you can relate with at a much higher degree.

Cutting some never-folded pages with a sharp knife, cautiously enough to let the page borders straight. Cracking open an eighteenth-century book directly without having to go through Google books or some library. Reading a book that would hardly be printed in a Western editor today, or perhaps into some political ghetto, and that was printed at a major editor to be openly sold and read… These are some of the pleasures afforded by bibliophily.

They entail relating to a past that may be more or less distant in time, but somehow still close and perhaps not finished at all. In a museum, these things are dead artifacts that make money for a bunch of soldouts. In my hands, they become lively again and are more where they actually belong.

A supplement of soul

Collecting artifacts that are valuable on your eyes is cool. It says something about you. Whatever you choose to collect, this says something about what you care about, enjoy using and learn to be good at. In game, these artifacts may bring you a “supplement of soul” and personality by their sheer historical value and help to relate with girls who might have at least some consideration for said objects. Be careful though, because the line between being passionate about something and being a braggart is sometimes all too easy to cross.

Market knowledge and intuition

Like anything that can be exchanged, bought and sold, valuable objects of any type have their own market. And market prices and stocks change constantly due to a variety of factors. When you check constantly the prices of various interesting objects, and how some get bought off or appear on the market, you grow an intuitive sense of what’s of value or not. And you learn to spot the true opportunities there too. This market sensitivity is analogous to the new sense one acquires through game practice: after getting used to spot the beautiful and/or available girls around, these girls “appear” to one’s look without effort. Experience is about going from a sheer desire or fantasy to a realistic assessment of various situations—and it shows that different domains tend to follow the same dynamics. (Actually, everything has been turning into more and more of a giant market, and this is something we ought to master if we want to take some of these things away from a ruthless, globalized capitalism.)

Sometimes the good stuff is cheap and just requires someone able to sense it before seizing it. Sometimes average stuff is incredibly expensive and overrated, as if all sellers had been tacitly agreeing to maintain high prices. Which, as in any market, can actually happen, especially around very rare books that require a great deal of erudition to be acknowledged.

Recently, a bookseller going bankrupt has been selling his stock at half price. I had sworn to myself not to buy more books for a while but the occasion was too good to miss. Finally, I managed to get 13 books for 100 euros including rare, old, out-of-print and interesting books that would have been 200-300 euros had I bought them to other sellers.

Of course, things are not always that easy: remember the special one with a unique cover? I would have been glad to buy it… except that it was expensive (even considering the pedigree) and disappeared after a few weeks. Definitely, your humble servant was not the only one interested.

Speculation

Definitely, this aspect is neither the most elegant nor appealing of the trade, but being gentlemanly does not prevent one from needing money at times. If you really need to, being able to sell high what you bought cheaply is always good—as long as what you are trading is more important than making money and exploiting the others. I once found an original letter from the great intellectual Lothrop Stoddard, to my knowledge neither reprinted nor copied anywhere, sold 30 euros. Rather cheap, isn’t it? That letter I would not sell for less than 150 euros, a price in line with the prices of many letters from celebrities and “great men,” yet selling it would be but a last resort option. A relic from a genuinely outstanding intellectual has a moral value that can’t be boiled down to a 120 euros margin.

Something to pass on your children

Neomasculine children will know quite early how resilient and autonomous they will have to be for merely surviving in the world of tomorrow. They will start doing what we do earlier on. This does not mean they have to be overly individualistic, thinking of themselves as mere atoms inside a big market where everyone tries to take money away from others: instead, they should be awoken from the so-called American dream and keep gaining back what is rightfully theirs, without squandering it on the altar of perpetual growth.

The point here is not to make big bucks, though you may acquire a tremendous knowledge of the market, but to gain something you can pass on your children or other culture-sharers instead of abstract customers.

Those of us who have been conservative or have classical “conservative” leanings tend to break from their blue-pilled, leftist families, in spite of their own family values. Inheritance is still there, but it has to be remade or reconquered first. A Catholic friend of mine once sold a whole stock of vinyl records from the Beatles, the Doors and others 60s-70s leftist references from his father in order to buy a Vulgata—the Latin Bible—printed in 1870, and he plans to use it to teach his son about Jesus Christ and the sacred language once used by a once genuine church. And now, this once dead pile of papers jammed between two leathered backs will come to life again and shine before the eyes of a young child.

This article originally appeared on https://www.returnofkings.com/94643/a-gentlemans-pleasure-collecting-pieces-of-history

About the Contributor

André du Pôle

André is a young European who left his decaying country in 2012 for greener pastures. He enjoys exploring subterranean places, reading about a host of interconnected topics, and yearns for Tradition.

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A gentleman’s pleasure: Collecting pieces of history

Explore how collecting historical artifacts, rare books, and unique heirlooms can bring a sense of legacy, knowledge, and value to a gentleman’s life.

Words: André du Pôle

Photo credit: Jonathan Bi.

Rewarding yourself (without complacency)

Finding something you can buy or negotiate and that is actually interesting can be a challenge. When you succeed at this and receive the interesting object at home, you can think of it as a fair reward for your curiosity and research, let alone the money spent.

Becoming knowledgeable about whatever you own

A direct and independent access to history

Photo: Jonathan Bi.

They entail relating to a past that may be more or less distant in time, but somehow still close and perhaps not finished at all. In a museum, these things are dead artifacts that make money for a bunch of soldouts. In my hands, they become lively again and are more where they actually belong.

A supplement of soul

Market knowledge and intuition

Of course, things are not always that easy: remember the special one with a unique cover? I would have been glad to buy it… except that it was expensive (even considering the pedigree) and disappeared after a few weeks. Definitely, your humble servant was not the only one interested.

Speculation

Something to pass on your children

The point here is not to make big bucks, though you may acquire a tremendous knowledge of the market, but to gain something you can pass on your children or other culture-sharers instead of abstract customers.

This article originally appeared on https://www.returnofkings.com/94643/a-gentlemans-pleasure-collecting-pieces-of-history

About the Contributor

André du Pôle

André is a young European who left his decaying country in 2012 for greener pastures. He enjoys exploring subterranean places, reading about a host of interconnected topics, and yearns for Tradition.

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