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Sherlock colored glasses . . .

A chance encounter with a Beanie Baby sparked a Sherlockian reverie on collecting this week.

One of my co-workers was doing a little desk-cleaning and plopped a few random Happy Meal items on my desk for temporary storage (the Happy Meal item, for those of you out of touch with the American mainstream, has long been quite collectable). One of these was a Beanie Baby (also quite a collectable item, for those of you who see but do not observe, or are too distant to observe) in the form of a stuffed jellyfish.

"Behold the lion’s mane," I thought, fascinated at the notion of a Sherlockian Beanie Baby. So many different kinds of stuffed animal types were produced as Beanie Babies that one could easily collect most of the animals who appear in the Canon of Sherlock Holmes: dogs, cats, cheetahs, orangutans, mongooses . . . and I have no doubt that some Sherlockian somewhere has done so. I know of at least one Sherlockian who has set out to get a stuffed version of every animal in the Canon, so specializing in the Beanie is not too much of a stretch. And when you think about it, Sherlockian collectors tend to use Sherlock as an excuse to collect a lot of things.

Peter Blau has long listed Holmes-related stamps in his Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press. Jeffory Hart of Baker Street West 1 is known for creating Canonical scenes with Playmobil toys. There are all sorts of things a person can collect using the sixty stories of Sherlock Holmes as a guidebook. Coins. Antiques. Refrigerator magnets. Rare art by old masters. (Well, maybe only if you’re Bill Gates.)

Sherlockian collections, however, are not limited by known collecting types. While a non-Sherlockian may look at a Holmes-themed coin collection and still recognize it as a coin collection, there are those collections the non-Sherlockian will never completely understand.

Ever find joy at exit 221B of Interstate 40? Or when you look at your computer’s menu bar clock and see that it’s 2:21? Ever want to follow a road sign pointing to a town called "Norwood" to see if there is a local builder? You’re collecting mental moments of Sherlockian significance, and the deeper into the hobby one gets, the more of such collectable moments appear. Some you can catch on film, others are just stored in memory.

And while many people collect friends, collecting friends with the label "Sherlockian" stamped invisibly on their foreheads is a treat, as well.

Even if our current American economy went into a complete and utter tailspin, where both purchasing power and the amazing array of knick-knacks, gee-gaws, and utter trash in our stores disappeared, Sherlockians would still collect, I think. Memories, perspectives, ideas . . . or maybe their own sometimes badly thought-out writings, like this column. Like I said at the start, a chance encounter sparked a reverie this week. Unfortunately, a big chunk of life got in the way of putting it to the "paper" called an HTML document. On to next week!

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver