As a longtime collector (>25 years), I can think of one unhappy change.
Collecting shells today is generally not viewed as the gentle and
intellectual pursuit it was when my mother did it 40 or 50 years ago. In
the 1980s I began to rephrase my explanations as to what I was doing when
caught with my net in a substrate. I began billing myself as a concerned
observer of the local biota. While I feel unable to explain it to most
folks, it is still the gentle and intellectual pursuit of my mother's time
for me.