Abstract Accumulating assemblages of significant, rare, and/or valuable items is not a new phenomenon. Interesting pebbles, found amassed in an 80,000-year-old French cave, may mark the beginning of collecting. Over time, Noah, King Tut, and the Medicis kept the collecting spirit alive. And aristocrats followed their lead; as explorers and amateur archaeologists told of their finds, upper class wanted to emulate them by accumulating the world's treasures; 'cabinets of curiousities' (...