It is, after all is said, the masterpieces that bring the unwaning satisfaction. Most collectors find that the few supreme treasures of their collections give them more pleasure than all their other prints put together. Therefore it is well for the inexperienced collector to bear in mind that quality, not quantity, will prove his most profitable aim. For it is one of the delightful characteristics of collecting that the collector's perception is likely to grow continuously in fineness; and the acquisitions of his earlier years may fail to satisfy his more educated taste of later days. This will sometimes be true of even the prints he once loved best; and much more is it likely to apply to those which he bought merely because they were cheap or would increase the bulk of his collection. Discrimination is the life-blood of collecting. He who collects everything collects nothing; he is the owner of a scrap-heap or a second-hand shop, not of an ordered series of specimens that illustrate historical or artistic ideas. The true collector would rather have ten selected prints than the whole mass of prints now in existence, if in the latter case he had to keep them all. Many a collection has been improved both in monetary value and in power to give pleasure by merely throwing out of it the second-rate things it contained. The collector, as a rule, sets out in the beginning with little knowledge and with no very definite notion of what he intends to collect. If he is to profit by his efforts or is to end by having an interesting group of possessions, he must before long define for himself the idea of a collection and the conception which his own is to express. He may decide to obtain at least one representative example of the work of every important artist; or he may prefer to specialize, and assemble all that he can of the works of a single man or a single period. A certain well-known collector has selected Harunobu and Shunsho as his special objects of interest, and has brought together a notable and illuminating series of specimens of their work. Another has chosen Hiroshige, and after many years of effort he can display to the student a fine copy of almost every important print by that artist. A third has especially sought the works of Kiyonaga; while a fourth has pursued the less costly but very interesting aim of bringing together the sheets of Kuniyoshi. Another is devoted to surimono; still another, to pillar-prints. The possible list of specialities is inexhaustible. Narrow and exclusive specialization is, however, uncommon among amateurs of Japanese prints; and even the specialist tries to have in his collection a few representative examples of all important types.