My original inspiration to collect art came from this class assignment from Paul Sachs that was described by Thomas Hoving. The idea that you could wander around looking for and actually find affordable objects worthy of being in a museum really appealed to me. I took up this challenge and applied it to living artists who needed a patron to fund such works: 
Discussion
This is awesome, makes me want to go out on the hunt in my local area.
This kind of thing still happens. I was doing it on eBay though because it was low hanging fruit: