Okay, so I have a guilty pleasure to admit. I enjoy reading the boy books that I enjoyed as a boy. To be more specific, I love the Hardy Boys. Many a rainy or snowy day, trapped in the house as a boy, I recall my mother surprising me with a Hardy Boys detective book. And then she was irritated with me because I devoured it in about an hour and a half of steady reading. One talks about childhood influences, and I think many of us between 30 and 100 recall the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe seemed to do everything perfectly, from getting great grades in school to riding motorcycles and saving their father from dastardly gangs. The books were written under the pen name of Franklin W. Dixon, who in fact was many different people over the life of the stories meant for young teens. I got sick the other week and found myself wanting something banal and mindless to read. I reached over to the blue spines of my collection and started to read one. Okay, so I could figure the plot out pretty quickly, but it still took me back to my childhood. Boy and girl books were a common phenomenon from the early 20th century that lives on to the present. For collectors, this poses a great opportunity to collect something that is familiar, has infinite printers variations and covers, and can be found everywhere. I have put together probably six sets of these in my book-reading career. I admit they are usually the first thing I sell when I am moving, both because I cannot justify the space in the moving van and because I know that I can rebuild the set anytime I wish. There are several pricy collectors guides to Hardy Boy books out there, and while I have never owned one, I would recommend them to the serious collector. Even a quick Wikipedia look at the history of the series reveals infinite variations and categories primed for an obsessive collector. Long an advocate of how you engage young people in collecting, I think these books are a great place for a budding collection. They are easily available. I have rarely seen an antiques mall that does not have a bunch. There are common and rare examples. You can collect books with highly graphic dust jackets that will set you back a few bucks or you can buy reading copies for roughly $3 a piece. That is a lot of variant for a new collector and something definitely to consider around the holidays. In the meantime, it has been a long week, and I will go home, make myself a scotch tonight and settle down with The Bombay Boomerang. Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth of antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.