Would you like to come up and see my comic book collection? Not, perhaps, the most appealing chat-up line. It might sound a little sexier if you added that a Superman No. 1 from 1936 fetched US$5.3 million (S$7 million) in 2022. But the idea of a comic book collection reeks a little too heavily of The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy or the insufferable vinyl snobs in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.

Yet, there was a time when people could indulge obsessive hobbies and collections – and were not, perhaps, as much sneered at as they might be today. Some of the world’s wealthiest and most successful people were avid stamp collectors: from Alphonse Mayer von Rothschild to Freddie Mercury of Queen and, well, the late Queen, herself.