Hi all,
Given this some quick thought and here it is. These are normal stuff, all I had done is put it in writing and I may not be able to defend this much. I had a lot of stuff going on in my mind and I just write up whatever goes through at the moment with no critical analysis. Sorry if i got it all wrong or if i go out of topic.
From what I see, 3 general factors that govern lives of most of us are God, Glory and Gold (first figure). I think there’s a clear relationship between gold and glory. The relationship between God and the other two is subjective to our perception and sensitive and I’m not going to touch that. If we agree that these are the main purpose of our life then, everything that we do would evolve around these three factors. (Not all of the purposes are my own purposes in life/collecting, i am just trying to generalise what is the common objectives and I am not suggesting these as your goals in life/collecting as well)
Now, we have an “extra” purpose in our lives which is keris collecting. The three normal purposes why people collect and/or study keris are investment, status symbol and historic values/cultural relationship. While collecting as a tool for our investment and status symbol is quite obvious, there’s also people who collect/keep keris for it’s historic values/cultural relationship. These kerises are kept by museums, inheritors and general keris enthusiasts.
The common governing factor in achieving the first two objectives for collecting (investment and status) is quality. While inheritors and museums commonly can’t be bothered by quality, general keris enthusiasts will most likely go for that as a human nature (be it tangible or not).
If we construct the three purposes for collecting in a set (as we did in the first figure), we can see that this “extra” purpose is not really an extra since there’s a strong relationship between the two initial purpose of life - gold and glory with investment and status. Indirectly, investment and status can also be indirectly linked to God/doing good which again won’t discuss here.
So, is there any link for people that collect keris for its history and cultural relationships with God/doing any good? I think it also got something to do with quality. Since most collectors would spend most of their time trying to understand this. – To get a better investment and portrayal of their status. Along the way we actually collect experience and knowledge. Not just about keris but about life in general.
Therefore, the key word here is understanding quality. We can’t collect keris with the single aim of, say status symbol alone. For example, when we collect keris as a status symbol it is like wearing “nice” clothes when going to the mall or to the office. Why can’t we be bothered to dress like that when going to bed? Coz no one’s looking. Who decides whether our clothes are cool or not? It’s the media. Quality can be secondary in this business. Women can wear stilettos and hurt their ankles and say that’s quality fashion wear. People can have their hair dyed purple and if the TV people say that it’s cool, they would probably think that they are on the right track. You can wear a plain sweater you got for Christmas to the office but if the media says it is out of date and you look like a geek you may end up throwing it away.
However on second thought, when we know quality and choose to keep a high quality keris it does not mean that we are after the status or investment.
(Which makes Figure 2 inaccurate (?) any other suggestions?.. now i myself am confused 
). Ok, nevermind the diagram. If we know to quantify quality, we can have a keris, keep it in a drawer and studies/wonders about its history and feel good about it without relying on weather other people say it’s good or not. In other words, we must know the real quality. Not just the stuff commonly understood by normal people. Again, to achieve that level we must undergo the quality identification/quantification process described above. It takes knowledge to quantify quality and if we really know quality we can’t be bothered what other people say about it.
So, what’s quality got to do with God/doing good? It lies in the knowledge gained in attaining the knowledge about it.
A big time keris collector and a long time dealer/collector in Malaysia died last year. For the big time collector, none of his children enjoys keris very much. They are very rich people and his children had chosen to leave the kerises in his private gallery. As for the other one dealer/collector, his collections were sold off by his son. No more glory, no more gold to enjoy. What is left is the good that they had done.
In conclusion, my current opinion is that although investment, status symbol and cultural/history purposes in keris collecting may lead to doing something good, quality understanding is the most important part in keris collecting since it would lead to the ultimate objective(?) in collecting which is probably to leave a trail of useful and critical knowledge that would be useful to one's nation or perhaps to mankind – true keris making skills, knowledge and quality publications that have good references and would stand to critical evaluation. Unfortunately, i think we will need more than 20 years of critical experience before we can even consider leaving our "trail of knowledge" or we may run the risk of spreading the wrong knowledge IMHO. This "trail of knowledge" would complete "Link x" in Figure 1. i.e I am suggesting that whatever purpose we have in life we must link it with God/doing good.