When Albert Brooking started collecting, his main goal was to make sure he collected the past history before it was lost. He was less concerned with how many of a type of item he had and often took people’s hobby collections such as ear trumpets or salt and pepper shakers.
Today, we continue to collect history but have to be more mindful of how many duplicates we have in order to be financially responsible. This means we cannot take things that we already have represented in the collections.