My friend John Jay Pittman did not start out a wealthy man. Slowly and with dedication, he assembled an incredible coin collection. Heaccomplished this through relentless study and the devotion of a significant portion of his limited income as a middle manager for Eastman Kodak,supplemented by his wife's income as a schoolteacher.

In 1954, he mortgaged the family house to travel to Egypt and bid on coins at the King Farouk Collection auction, and he demanded many moresacrifices of himself and his family over the decades. He passed away in 1996 with no apparent regrets, and his long-suffering family deservinglyreaped the rewards of his efforts when the collection was sold at auction for more than $30 million.

But why did he do it?

On our website, HA.com, we auction many different types of collectibles; what started in 1976 as a numismatics business is now the third-largestauction house in the world - with annual sales exceeding $850 million in 2015 in categories ranging from meteorites to Hermès handbags. Most of our950,000+ registered client/bidders collect in more than one area, which we can determine through online surveys, free catalog subscriptions, andmultiple drawings for prizes throughout the year. Our clients seek many different collecting areas, and for many different reasons.

One fervent collector of historical documents refers to his passion as "a genetic defect." The founding father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, arenowned collector in his own right, thought that collecting was really about sex: "The core of paranoia is the detachment of the libido fromobjects," he wrote in 1908. "A reverse course is taken by the collector who directs his surplus libido into an inanimate object: a love of things."But more likely it's basic human instinct: a survival advantage amplified by eons of natural selection. Those of our ancient ancestors who managed toaccumulate scarce objects may have been more likely to survive long enough to bear offspring-and people who owned shiny objects may have had aneasier time attracting mates. Even today, wealth correlates with longer life expectancy; and could any form of wealth be more primal than scarce,tangible objects?

While the thrill of the hunt and a passion for objects-whether it's Lithuanian first-day covers or Alberto Vargas paintings-is what motivates andexcites collectors, there are, alas, some housekeeping chores that must be attended to in order to assure that you derive the most benefit from yourcollection. Whether that means minimizing your tax burden, ensuring that your objects are safe from intruders, or maximizing your collection's valuefor your heirs, a little attention now can save you a massive headache later.

To read the complete book, see:
The Collector's Handbook: Tax Planning, Strategy and Estate Advice for Collectors andTheir Heirs (https://www.ha.com/c/ref/handbook.zx?src=download)