Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information relating to himself and his film-making. In 1978 he made a documentary film about a fellow collector, Ludwig Zimmerer (1924–1987), who accumulated thousands of paintings and objects of Polish folk art. This article tells the stories of these two men and their collections. I suggest that an investigation into the lives and times of Wajda and Zimmerer can shed new light on the psychological processes that inform collecting. Rather than dismissing the compulsion to collect as a product of neurosis, as some previous interpretations have done, I argue here that we should read it as a productive and compensatory method for curing addictions.