He also has a larger-scale time probe which enables him to fish for artifacts in other time periods of a world’s history than its present.
Battle Armor: Collector possessed a suit of Monstrous material strength Battle Armor which is made of a substance called Etherion. This suit enables him to fly.
Starship: The Collector’s starship appeared to sustain substantial damage when it crash landed in the Blue Area of Earth’s moon during the Brethren’s escape from captivity. As this escape was actually engineered by the Collector, no damage occurred to the life-receptacles the Collector uses to store his specimens. Since the Collector has access to so many worlds, this many not have been his only ship. However, if this were his only ship, and if it did in fact house rare or valuable specimens, getting it back would certainly be a priority of the Collector’s. Before the crash, this ship had CL5000 warp-drive capacity. Collector usually kept it in hyperspace while or biting a planet and procuring specimens. Projecting from the ship into real space was a small, invisible, booth-shaped access-portal.

Virtually immortal, the Collector spent the first millennia of his existence with his wife and daughter on the tranquil world he chose as his home base. After their daughter had grown to maturity and left them, the Collector’s wife died from mysterious causes. The Collector was wholly unprepared for her demise, having thought her as immortal as he. In meditation, he realized that an important factor in an Elder’s immortality is the will to live, and his wife had simply lost hers.

Determined not to succumb to his wife’s malady, the Collector meditated upon what he might do to give his life meaning. In a vision, he foresaw that beings of great power would arise one day determined to destroy all life in the universe. To prevent this from happening, he decided to devote his life to collecting living beings and artifacts from throughout the known universe, and placing them in safekeeping. If what he foresaw came to pass, he could repopulate the universe and bequeath to them the knowledge and cultures of the past.

Building himself a large starship, the Collector set forth, stopping at every inhabited world he found to acquire a sample of their finest achievements as well as living representatives of the world’s various life forms. In a matter of years, his ship was completely filled, and the Collector was forced to suspend his mission in order to build expanded facilities for his permanent collection.

With the aid of robo-mechanics acquired from the planet Cron, the Collector converted several uninhabited planets into giant museums; and transferred his collection there. Every time his ship’s hold was filled, he would return to the museum-worlds to deposit his recent acquisitions. At present, the collector has filled ten museum-worlds with artifacts from a hundred thousand planets.

Over the eons, the Collector’s monomania became more and more obsessive, making him lose sight of the original reason for which he began his collection. In recent years, the first being of great power he had foreseen as a threat to all life (Thanos of Titan) has been born and later defeated without the CoIlector’s intervention.

When the second such great threat to life, Korvac of Earth, appeared, the Collector decided to send his daughter Carina to spy on him. Korvac slew the Collector before he could reveal to Earth’s heroes what he know of Korvac. A short time later, one of the Collector’s kinsman (the Grandmaster) played a contest of champions with the spirit of Death itself and won the power to resurrect the Collector. Apparently, though, this was done at the cost of the Grandmaster’s own immortal life.

Resurrected, the Collector resumed his ancient task. In his most recent known vision, he foresaw the recently thwarted attempt of Surtur to destroy Asgard.

The Collector has joined his fellow Elders of the Universe in a plan to slay Galactus, thus causing the existing universe to collapse. By surviving the destruction of the universe and the following Big Bang which would create a new one, the Elders hope to acquire powers on par with those currently wielded by Galactus.

It is ironic to note that the Collector has now become one of the very life destroying beings which he had once foreseen and planned against.

The absolute compulsion for collecting which now defines and consumes Taneleer Tivan initially started as a benevolent attempt to preserve all life in the known universe against those who would destroy it. Through these actions, he hoped his own immortal life would be given meaning and thus also be preserved. Now, many centuries removed from when he first started gathering life-forms, the Collector has filled ten museum-worlds with specimens and artifacts from hundreds of thousands of planets. No longer concerned with preserving life, the Collector is now, in his own words, “about the art of collecting.” Nothing demonstrates the Collector’s obsession more than his most recent attempt to add humanity to his harvest of interstellar species.

Humans have a reputation throughout the universe for, among other things, having been the species which first defeated Galactus. Though this is the stuff of whispered legend, the Collector has long wanted to add humanity to his collection. In accordance with his own stipulation, for his collection to be “complete” the Earth’s specimens would have to be the last of their species.

Toward this end, the Collector allowed the murderous warrior race called the Brethren to escape from his vivarium and kill off that part of his collection which he found redundant. He then allowed his starship to crash-land on the Earth’s moon, letting the Brethren escape and seem to overpower him. His hope was that the Brethren would lay waste to Earth and its inhabitants, thereby allowing the Collector to claim his prize. This elaborate ruse was apparently necessary to hide his true intentions from beings such as Uatu the Watcher until his plan was well under way.

The first life-forms the Brethren en countered on Earth’s moon were an advanced scout team sent out by the Inhumans, the inhabitants of the Blue Area Earth’s moon. This team was made up of Karnak, Timberus, an Alpha Primitive, and Pietro (who is also known as Quicksilver). It was Timberus who told the Brethren that they were orbiting the planet Earth.

Thane Ector, the leader of the Brethren, knew of the Earth from the legends that it was the first planet to defeat Galactus. Not realizing that their good fortunes had been carefully engineered by the Collector, Ector concluded that the Brethren’s situation was, in fact, destiny and decided they should lay siege to the Earth, subjugate it, and make it their home planet.

The Brethren were actually a germ-based, genetically engineered race who had been created by the space gods known as the Celestials. They were developed to be a system of checks and balances so that no other race could ever rise to challenge the pre-eminence of the Celestials. Their niche in the grand scheme was to travel throughout the universe like a disease in a healthy body. It is interesting to note that the Collector sees his role of gathering up the survivors of dying species as being not dissimilar to that of the Brethren’s role of wiping planets clean of life, both maintain the galactic balance.

In the end, the Collector’s plan failed because he underestimated his former captives. The Collector had not thought the Brethren capable of creating the Unimind, the collective will of a race incarnate. Though they had been created by the same race who produced the Eternals, the Brethren were considered to be made of lesser stuff. The Brethren created the Unimind and destroyed the Collector in a mass explosion. Though this explosion scattered his atoms over a large enough area of space that he could be considered truly dead, the Collector may be able to resurrect himself. Though humanity escaped him this time, the Collector will undoubtedly be back at the art of collecting at some point in the future.