Four different types of collections were identified in the CONTRAB collection: Accumulations, Amateur Collections, Files, and an Archive. Accumulations are sets of objects that are collected out of functional necessity and made use of in some way or other, and the vast majority (46) of the 56 CONTRAB categories are of this type. These are things like Household Goods and Clothes – things that are just collected in the normal course of life, and that are relatively commonplace. The other ten instances of CONTRAB collections are listed in the table below.
| Categories | Number | % of Total | % of total excluding photos | Type of Collection |
| Silver | 269 | 3.0% | 4.9% | Amateur collection |
| Dried Flowers | 43 | 0.5% | 0.8% | Amateur collection |
| Wedgewood | 33 | 0.4% | 0.6% | Amateur collection |
| Sea Shells | 331 | 3.7% | 6.0% | Amateur collection |
| Matchboxes | 20 | 0.2% | 0.4% | Amateur collection |
| Documents | 1059 | 11.8% | 19.2% | File |
| Bridge Club Documents | 16 | 0.2% | 0.3% | File |
| Bridge Competition Documents | 115 | 1.3% | 2.1% | File |
| Pamphlets & Brochures | 29 | 0.3% | 0.5% | File |
| Family Archive | 32 | 0.4% | 0.6% | Archive |
Amateur collectors decide what they want to collect as a hobby, and then seek out and assemble appropriate pieces at their leisure. In this case, the Silver collection (of salvers, dishes, jugs, spoons and the like) was characterised by a diligent documentation of the markings on the pieces to identify dates and makers; the collection of Dried Flowers (in two boxes nearly 1 metre in length) was assembled to support a hobby of flower arranging; the blue Wedgewood pottery was displayed as a group in the house; for the Sea Shell collection a wooden cabinet with 16 drawers was custom built; and the Matchboxes were stored, unused, in a labelled box.
The four CONTRAB File categories are easily recognisable as such: three are of Documents and one of Brochures and Pamphlets (though a more general definition of a File could be ‘a collection of factual information assembled on a specific media, retained to refer to and/or use later’). Finally, one Archive appears in the list – a collection of objects which have been moved from their original locations and placed into long-term storage. This is a collection of old family papers – birth, marriage and death certificates, identification papers, and the like – going back over several generations and stored in a special small leather case.
These examples illustrate why Accumulations seem less remarkable than the other types of collections: Amateur Collections, Files and Archives are simply less common – and more unusual – than mere Accumulations of clothes, furniture etc.. Having said that, the increase in paper documents in the last forty years, and the emergence of the mass storage of digital documents stored on personal computers, in the same period, has perhaps made the File category just as unremarkable.
The documentation of CONTRAB was a large complicated exercise, and the allocation of Collection Types to each category was made in the heat of the moment. However, on reflection and in retrospect, the following qualifications are worthy of note.
| Category | Collection Type | Notes on the allocation of Collection Type |
| Photos and Memorabilia | Accumulation | It could have been argued that neither photos nor Memorabilia were really functional necessities and therefore not Accumulations. However, the Photos were taken to be looked at, and the Memorabilia items were kept as a reminder of something when they were looked at, and these were their functions. Furthermore, they were generally accumulated somewhat randomly, rather than deliberately acquired to add to a collection. |
| Cutlery | Accumulation | A cutlery cabinet was specifically made for part of the cutlery collection and that might suggest this subset could have been an Amateur Collection. However, the cutlery in the cabinet was used regularly for its functional purpose and so was considered to be an Accumulation. |
| Glassware | Accumulation | Part of the glassware collection was a set of crystal glasses that was documented on a list, and this could have been considered to be an Amateur Collection. However, the crystal was used regularly for its functional purpose and so it was considered to be an Accumulation. |
| Dried Flowers | Amateur Collection | The fact that this was integral to supporting the hobby of Flower Arranging (for which a tuition course was taken) is what determined this to be an Amateur Collection. |
| Silver | Amateur Collection | It is mainly the documentation of the items, supported by books to aid identification, that made this an Amateur Collection. |
| Wedgewood | Amateur Collection | The relatively large number of items (33), and the way they were displayed together, is what determined this to be an Amateur Collection. |
| Sea Shells | Amateur Collection | This was a classic Amateur Collection – a hobby collecting a non-functional item, for which a special cabinet was made, and identification books bought and used. |
| Jewellery | Accumulation | This could easily have been classed as an Amateur Collection since great attention was paid to what was in the collection, and to acquiring new items for the collection. However, the primary reason for having the items was for their function – to be able to wear them. |
| Music | Accumulation | This could have been classed as an Amateur Collection since the material was kept together, listened to regularly and the collection gradually built-up over time. It could also have been argued that it was not a Functional Necessity. However, no attempt was made to document the collection nor to specifically build it up, and its primary focus was functional – to listen to the music – and hence it was determined to be an Accumulation. |
| Matchboxes | Amateur Collection | This was another classic Amateur Collection – a hobby collecting a non-functional item, and the items were kept separately in their own labelled box. |
| Addresses | Accumulation | This could have been classified as a File, as it essentially consisted of information, albeit stored in a variety of media (Address Books, Telephone Number flip Booklet, Presentation Folder, and Database). However, addresses were a functional necessity and acquired as and when they arrived; and these characteristics, as well as the variety of media, determined this to be an Accumulation. |
| Diaries | Accumulation | This could have been classified as a File, as it was information written on pages. However, this was a box of pocket diaries, one for each of many years (45), without any specific index information, which was gradually built-up year after year, and this is what determined it to be an Accumulation. |
| Pamphlets & Brochures | File | It could have been argued that this was not a File because it was more akin to a collection of books (which are not classed as a File unless special controls are applied). However, these items were generally very thin with a relatively small number of pages, and there were quite a few of them (29), so they were very similar to documents; and this is what determined the collection to be a File. |
| Recipes | Accumulation | This could have been considered to be a File as there were a lot of individual cuttings and handwritten notes in this collection. However, many were shoved into booklets, and at least one whole book (which also contained blank pages for writing on) was included. That, and the fact that it was not ordered in any way (in fact it was extremely disordered) is what determined it to be an Accumulation. |
| School | Accumulation | These could have been classed as a File as they were mainly exercise books and work books. However, there were only a small number of them (5) and they weren’t arranged in any particular way, and hence they were classed as an Accumulation. |
| Family Archive | Archive | This was a classic example of an Archive – very old stuff associated with earlier generations, kept in a special case. |
| Owner’s Home Town | Accumulation | This was borderline to qualify as any kind of collection, as it was just 4 Christmas cards showing different old-time scenes of the owner’s home town. In retrospect they would have been better placed with the other Memorabilia items rather than giving them their own category – though that would still have classed them as an Accumulation. |
| Religious Artefacts | Accumulation | This was borderline as a collection as there were only three items. However, they were specific artefacts of the same type, and this is why they were considered to be a collection. |
It will be evident from the above that specifying Collection Types – and even deciding whether a group of items are a Collection at all – is NOT an exact science. However, neither is it of any great importance other than a) assisting in organising a set of collections, and b) contributing to our analysis and understanding of the Collecting activity. I subscribe to the view that a collection is anything that an owner considers to be a collection (which, I might add, may involve just one item); and that, if collection types are to be employed, then the important thing is to allocate them as consistently as possible.