More likely though, it was a way for your parents to try to get you to sit in your room quietly while they reminisced about how nice life was before having children. It's also possible that collecting is a genetic disposition handed down to us by our cave dwelling forefathers who spent their leisure hours carving stone shelves on which to keep their collection of Cave Barbies, which included Hair Dragging Barbie, Gatherer Barbie, and in the later, more enlightened years, Hunter Barbie. After all, reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show hadn't been invented yet. But I suspect the true reason parents get kids to methodically collect, catalog, and search out things is that it's supposed to teach them something. Like being an anal retentive obsessive-compulsive has no redeeming social value.
People collect the strangest things.
Just go to any antique show or flea market and you'll see people who collect salt and pepper shakers, thimbles, spoons with enamel images of the Corn Palace on the handle, Zippo lighters, and strange looks from those of us who don't even have silverware that matches. My dryer lint collection is starting to feel downright normal. Animals are a popular collecting motif. Unicorns, pigs, and mushrooms are common. Cows are big right now, probably because people think having cheap plaster bookends that look like Black Angus cows doing a Nixon imitation will give them an alibi when the Got Milk police break down their door looking for people with dark colored moustaches.