He's lent some of his stuff to museums. He's helping Americans learn their history, he says - through the items that they know so well. Imagine what people could learn. Maybe we're all trying to figure something out, those of us who collect. We don't become Alex Shear, blocked by stuff from entering two of his bathrooms.
Few people go that far.
But perhaps you have a tin of deco jewelry stowed under the bed. Or a shoebox of 1950s baseball cards that you've moved into polyethylene-paged albums. Maybe you bid for a chunk of the freshly demolished Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. In our mass-produced world, this is what Americans do. Fewer of us hunt, but we certainly gather.