tattoos are like potato chips ... you can't have just one: the process of becoming and being a collector

Abstract The following article examines the processes tattoo collectors undergo to become collectors.I examine howtattoo collectors learn that they want to become collectors, are recruited into the social world of tattoo collectors by other collectors and artists, and learn howto interpret their collecting as appropriate for themselves. This ethnographic study is framed in Matza's (1969) theory of the etiology of deviance and Schutz's (1962, 1967) phenomenology.