Hobby: collecting seashells I n Tristram Shandy, the term "hobby-horse" was used to refer to whimsical obsessions, which led to the current use of the word "hobby"

Types of hobbies[edit]

For a more comprehensive list, see List of hobbies.
Hobbies are a diverse set of activities and it is difficult to categorize them in a logical manner. The following categorization of hobbies was developed by Stebbins.^[1]

Collecting

Collectable Antique Antiquities

Terms

Ephemera Premium Prize Souvenir Special edition

Topics

List of collectables List of hobbies

v t e

Collecting[edit]

Main article: Collecting

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying and storing.^[15] Collecting is appealing to many people due to their interest in a particular subject and a desire to categorize and make order out of complexity. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating items from countries of the world. Others focus on a subtopic within their area of interest, perhaps 19th century postage stamps, milk bottle labels from Sussex, or Mongolian harnesses and tack, Firearms (both modern and vintage).

A stamp album used in stamp collecting.
Collecting is an ancient hobby, with the list of coin collectors showing Caesar Augustus as one. Sometimes collectors have turned their hobby into a business, becoming commercial dealers that trade in the items being collected.
An alternative to collecting physical objects is collecting records of events of a particular kind. Examples include train spotting, bird-watching, aircraft spotting, railfans, and any other form of systematic recording a particular phenomenon. The recording form can be written, photographic, online, etc.