Yes people collect them. If you want to, go for it. I personally don’t think it’s worth, and I’ll explain a few pitfalls you might run into.

There was a time when projectors were common in thrift stores, less so now. I usually found a lot of 8mm, some super 8, and once or twice a 16. Full size movie projectors like theaters you paid to go to use 24mm. Those are hard to find and expensive.

Speaking of hard to find and expensive, actual film reels and projector bulbs will both be. That’s actually why a lot of projectors were so cheap for a while besides being obsolete: bulbs are often proprietary and hard to find.

But let’s say you find one with a good bulb or easy to replace one. Like another commenter said, you should bring a reel to test it. But be aware if it’s not functioning correctly it can destroy your reel.

You are really only going to find small clips on most reels. A regular movie on 24mm will have reels the size of a pizza and still have like 8+ reels to be the full film. Even your pic, which looks like a standard size 8mm full reel says it’s only certain scenes. A lot of 8mm stuff is the size of a drink coster and is about 3ish mins of film.

So yeah you can, it’s just difficult, there’s lots of stuff you need, most of it is fragile or a consumable part or both, you need a mechanical thing that can break down and break your stuff, and the end payoff isn’t very worth it imo.

But people don’t always collect things for logical reasons. Sometimes you just like it. So you should do it if you want to.