Last year, consumers spent more than $834 million on expensive collectible Christmas ornaments - up 17 percent from the previous year, according to Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of Why People Buy Things They Don't Need (Paramount Market Publishing; $34.95). "Christmas seems to be the one area in collectibles that hasn't completely tanked."

Most collectible sales have declined as consumers moved away from the cocooning trend that spurred them to buy home products during the 1990s, she says. "It's getting harder and harder for manufacturers to get consumers to invite purely decorative objects into their homes," she says. "The one exception is Christmas."

"Christmas connects with emotions and our feelings about the past, the present and the future," Danziger says. "Long before there was a collectibles industry, you built collections of objects. In bringing them out for the holidays, you relived those experiences and thought about your future. That's part and parcel of what we do when we decorate our tree."

Michele Day