Am I a Packrat? Or is Collecting A Legitimate Hobby

I am often accused of being a packrat. I love getting free samples or items that are being thrown away and are still useful. I constantly ask myself: am I a packrat? My wife often answers in the affirmative. Whenever I bring something home from work, such as two cases of perfectly good copy paper, well, not so good as it won't work in the copying machine, she greets me with a scowl. But this is now drawing paper for my children that could last for quite awhile. Although with my children, a week would be a better estimate. Of course I don't collect paper, but I know a useful item when I see one. Recently we had an outside company take over the kitchen at the facility where I am employed. Previously we had our own employees run the kitchen. And they left behind a lot of good stuff. I scored cases of drinks, food and other assorted goods. Unfortunately the soda machines and coolers will not fit in my house. But I have been eyeing a brand new popcorn machine that would fetch me some cash on Facebook marketplace. But this isn't really a collection, just a bunch of useful items. My real fascination is in completely useless items. Over the past year I have begun to collect special addition Hot Wheels (I'm truly proud of my A-Team van), Hasbro mini figures from 80s and 90s television shows and pop culture micro figures (for example, a mini lite brite, mini Richard Simmons RIP, a mini Bob Ross and a mini E.T.). Do I need these things? Well I know what my better half would say. Me, I'd say yes. It's a real danger to bring me to any collectible or toy store. I may get even more excited than my kids. We have a wonderful local toy store in town and I often use my children as an excuse to check out the new Legos and other assorted collectibles. I am of course limited in how much I can collect due to the lack of space in my humble abode. I can only imagine what I'd have if I had a garage. I'd like to get into collecting old advertising and maps. But due to the success of American Pickers, everyone charges way over value for many of these items. For now I am settling for reproductions. I don't think that I've ever met a man that identifies as a minimalist. It's encoded in our genes to hoard. It's probably a leftover survival instinct when food was scarce and the more you had correlated to the power you could exert. I'm pretty sure our ancestors did not have a mini Richard Simmons (RIP) in mind when hoarding Sabertooth Tiger meat. I am sure that some women collect. But most of the time it's limited to teacups and pins. I used to collect souvenir glasses and only recently tossed them out. I kept a few higher end ones but disposed of the rest. It was definitely a sad day in my household. My newest obsession for collecting is pounds. I have collected quite a few of those after having kids. Not a good thing to collect but if I were a caveman, I would survive a famine with ease.