A mainstream collector's voice, a psychologist's eye on collecting and collectors, a university teacher's questioning, and an approachable style. Put those together and you have a recipe for a winning book, which contains exercises on style and connoisseurship with photographs of antiques from Perlman's collection that he analyzes, including the compromises made in their purchase. A collector maintains a delicate balancing act keeping research, the intellectual and passion in harmony. This book addresses all three and offers the collector tools to walk that tightrope. If you are a new collector just starting out, a long-time collector, or know someone who does, this is the book for you. Perlman offers Come Collect with Me to collectors of all stripes -- from bottle caps, to snow globes to high country Queen Anne -- but particularly to those who collect antiques, casually or seriously. The book explains, confirms, and illuminates questions collectors have about their collecting. It offers insights and lessons. Understand collecting and be a better collector. The book may save you money; it may cost you money. It may save a few marriages. The book should interest any collector's partner who wonders what species that partner truly belongs to. If grown children want to understand their parents' collecting, this is the place to begin. The book is all about collectors, and the world they inhabit - physically, psychologically, economically. Buy this book and enter the world of collectors.
Baron Perlman is a long-time collector of American decorative arts. Bitten by the collecting bug as a young man he found that his childhood and teen focus on stamps, coins, comic books, and baseball cards was supplanted by American antiques. He was born to collect. Dr. Perlman was an academic for 34 years teaching and researching as a clinical psychologist. His applied work as a clinician doing psychotherapy, supervising others, and just plain listening and trying to "make sense of" serves him well as a collector. Collecting is as human an endeavor as anything Shakespeare ever described. Born in Chicago Perlman attended Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) and then Michigan State University where he earned his master's and doctorate in clinical psychology. During a sabbatical from graduate school he spent two years in the U.S. Army including a sojourn in Viet Nam. Most of his professional life was spent in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and in a variety of consulting positions. He is now joyfully retired. His interests in collecting and writing have led to numerous columns that continue to be published in Maine Antique Digest. Additionally, he pens a monthly column for the local newspaper, the Oshkosh Northwestern about local, state and national matters - involving the interactions of three people in a bar (about as Wisconsin as one can get). Married almost 50 years, his wife Sandy joins him in collecting. They have lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin for a long time and have two sons and three cats. Neither son is as consumed with collecting as their dad is. (Of course, the aircraft fixation of one son is costly to say the least.)
