Professional Collector Profession

Professional Collector Profession

While most of the other non-traditional professions fully qualify as non-traditional, this one really set the high-water mark in the area of non-traditional!  And that begs the question just what is a Professional Collector and how do they make their money?

In a nutshell they are Sims who spend their day hunting for collectables and then transform them into money in a variety of ways.  The primary tool of the Collector is the Collection Helper, which makes locating the items that they are seeking a very simple click and scan action, and thanks to the Helper they can even narrow in on the specific types of collectables that they are seeking!

Helpful Traits:  Ambitious, Charismatic, Friendly

The Collector's Lifetime Wishes: Private Museum / Great Explorer

The Professional Collector finds their living everywhere!

-- Career Levels/Titles and Details --

The profession of Collector is not one of the ones that you can go down to City Hall and register, which means that there are no formal titles for each level because there are no levels!  I suppose that we could make up our own titles and levels, but really, that would be silly wouldn't it?  Because after all, the whole point behind the profession of Collector is to obtain items that have value and then sell them to other Sims or Sim Companies in order to realize that value.

There are basically X types of items that can be collected for resale, in addition to other items that are not so much valuable as they are useful, specifically scrap, which rather than sell we want to stockpile for use in the Inventor track.  Taking a look at the viable collection items we find that:

Gems: The basic logic for handling Gems is simple enough -- any Gem type that has a rarity level of Rare you will want to send off to have cut, while the Uncommon types you will want to send off to have cut with an eye towards running them through the transmogrification process to convert them into a resource of greater value that will realize a better profit.  Gems that are below Uncommon in rarity are simply sold outright by dragging them to the sell window on your HUD.


Metals: Because you must factor in the cost of having the ore smelted and cast into ingots in its overhead, when you do the math you can see which types warrant that treatment and which do not.  The only justification for smelting ore is usually to make it easier to store -- at least for the type you want to keep for a rainy day -- and of course to have four or five ingots to display in your loot chamber for the aesthetics of it all...


Bugs: While some of the rarer variates of insects can be worth quite a bit, the bottom line is that all of them are worth something to the Science Labs, who like for you to donate the ones you find that you do not intend to keep as pets to them so that they can study them.  Not only do they show you their appreciation in words, but they show it in Simoleans as well, as each bug you donate earns you a "donation reward" and how cool is that?

When you click on the Science Lab and select the Donate Bug option you get a list of the bugs you possess and, if you select them individually, the value that the Lab will give you in exchange for your "donation" of that insect.  Bear in mind that holding on to some of the more beautiful bugs like the butterflies makes sense, as when you place them in your home they are automatically put into the proper small display case / habitat.


Relics:  While not actually an item that your Sim can find using the Collection Helper, Relics are nonetheless one of the primary collectables that your Sim will grab whenever they are encountered while exploring tombs -- and for good reason.  Most Relics are worth a pretty penny!

-- Challenges and Opportunities --

Despite this not being a non-traditional profession that can be registered at City Hall it still has a pretty robust challenge and opportunity system under its heading -- both for the typical collectables and for the Relic System since we group the pickup jobs and mission system clearly under the umbrella of the Collector (as it makes sense to do so). 

Between those different types of activities there is plenty of challenge and opportunity events and, naturally, rewards to be had in the process.  To fully grasp the opportunities that are available to you I urge you to read (or if you already did, then re-read) the Collectables Sections of the guide in the previous chapters, and pay particular attention to the mechanism for transmographying collectables using the display table.  Why?  Glad you asked!

Basically you can take Gems or other items that are not necessarily valuable and, with a bit of forethought, you can transmogrify them into something that IS valuable.  You just have to follow the different formulas based upon what you are putting in and what you hope to get out.

-- The Collecting Skill Journal Page --

Because Collecting has a page in the Skills Journal a lot of players think that it is a "Hidden Skill" and believe that there is an associated level system to it.  So far there has been no evidence to suggest that this is the case -- the process of collecting items does not improve or get faster the more that you do it, and the skills for evaluating the value of the items that can be evaluated appear to be more closely associated with intelligence and the Logic skill than they do on the Collecting "skill" but hey, since there is nothing to prove it one way or the other, you get to believe what you want to :)

Now as for that page in the Skills Journal, well, it is actually pretty useful -- not only does it spell out for you the details of the Collecting Challenges (and where you stand with respect to them) but it also provides you with a nice set of statistics that includes entries for:

Gems Collected (#)
Unique Gems Found (%)
Metals Collected (#)
Unique Metals Found (%)
Rocks Found (#)
Unique Rocks Analyzed (%)
Butterflies Collected (#)
Unique Butterflies Found (%)
Beetles Collected (#)
Unique Beetles Found (%)
Fireflies Collected (#)
Unique Fireflies Found (%)
Insects Donated to Science (#)
Spirits Captured (#)
Spirits Sold for Science (#)

As you can see from the listing above this gives you an easy go-to place to see how complete your collecting has been for each of the major types plus the percentage of the complete set you have managed to find.  Cool that.

The Challenges that are listed on the Journal Page include the following:

-- Gem Collector: Collect 10 types of Gems and your Sim is rewarded with the rarest cut type.

-- Metal Collected: Find 5 unique metals and your Sim gets rewarded with extra ingots when smelting.

-- Amateur Rock Finder: Once your Sim finds half the types of Space Rocks it gets easier to find the ones that they have not yet found...

-- Awesomest Rock Collector in the Universe: Find all of the types of Space Rock and your Sim is rewarded by being able to find more valuable ones.

-- Butterfly Collector: Find 10 types of Butterfly and your Sim is rewarded by it being easier for them to find Butterflies and Beetles.

-- Firefly Collector: Finding all of the types of Fireflies rewards your Sim with increased ease at finding more Fireflies and other bugs.

-- Beetle Collector: Collect all ten types of Beetle and your Sim is rewarded with the ability to never fail again when collecting a bug.