Collection Conundrums

[CandyBob]

I've had a serious look at my game collection recently and wondered to myself if I have gone too far or have reached that point where a lot of it needs to go.

I mostly get my retro gaming fix these days from a Candy Cab coupled with a bit of PC Engine and 8bit and 16bit computers.

Like many of you I'm sure, there is so much stuff sitting on shelves that I will never play it all. Some, like AES games, only seem to still be sitting there because I love the way the boxes look on the shelf as I don't see the point in playing them over MVS on a cab. A lot of it is impulse buys that I have never gotten around to playing and probably never will. I don't have a working Spectrum at the mo but will buy Speccy games I find at a boot or charity shop and on the shelf they go.

I go through phases where I try to justify keeping it all and I know that this collection/hording bug is a bit of an obsession. I know my next boot or charity visit will find me searching out more stuff though. I guess part of it is that I enjoy the hunt and it is always thrilling to find treasure tucked away on a stall or shelf.

I was wondering if anyone has been through this and what the outcome was?

[whopper101]

Hahahahaha, I hear you. I go through periods when I get really annoyed and sell loads of it. Now Ive just stated collecting PS1 PS2 and Megadrive games. Focus man, focus, thats all you need. Just leave everything else alone.

[Plopboy]

Been there, still there. I do do big clear outs mainly of current stuff as it is easy just to take it in to a shop to trade in.

Currently I have £400 on a GameStation card which will get blown on a 3DS come Friday

The problem I find is, if you keep stuff too long it tends to become not worth that much after say eBay fees or the like so I prefer to keep hold of it.

Having said that I have been thinking of just getting shot of my AES just because I don't use it and maybe some more bits and pieces, but like the OP I like the way boxes look on the shelf and the knowledge that game A is rare etc

I think some people have had success by just getting rid of all the stuff they don't use and just keep a small core of games and hardware, but I just can't bring myself to do that just yet, as sadly it defines who I am to a greater or lesser extent.

[Oh Danny Boy]

been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, now i just stick to games that i know i like and that i'll play a lot. I don't buy a game just for the sake of it otherwise it will just be lying on the shelf collecting dust. If your not using the AES sell and use the dough to get something you want (like another candy cab!)

[memories]

The AES seems to be a recurring theme so far, so I will add to it.

Been humming annd heying about selling my system the last couple of weeks, mainly as I now have a MAME cab with several Emus in place and all the stuff can be played though that.

Been checking prices here and paid a visit to the delights that is Neo-Geo.com to see what price things are going for.

Always in the back of the mind is, do I really want to sell this. Last night I was checking over the boxes to see what condtion they were in and just spent about half an hour looknig at the lovely artwork and just taking the carts out to look them over.

I don't think im going to sell now.

[CandyBob]

I've boxed some stuff up recently to sell but haven't actually put it up anywhere. Everytime I go to put it up for sale I don't have the heart to do it.

[masterhand]

I sold off a lot of my AES stuff a few years ago when the value was high and the cash was more important than the amount of time I'd ever play the games. Just kept my favorites.

I sold loads of my Gamecube games when they spiked in value due to the popularity of the Wii just after it's launch. In the last couple of years I've managed to buy all of them back for a fraction of the price I sold them for as they were not rare just in demand for a short time and I knew it.

[Lorfarius]

I decided 2 weeks ago that I've had enough. I'm selling off my entire NES and games collection, life is for living etc. Thought long and hard about keeping it but time for it all to go, thank God for free eBay listing days! I've already sold half the lot with another chunk going this weekend.

[memories]

I decided 2 weeks ago that I've had enough. I'm selling off my entire NES and games collection, life is for living etc. Thought long and hard about keeping it but time for it all to go, thank God for free eBay listing days! I've already sold half the lot with another chunk going this weekend.

It wasnt that long ago that you set up your NES site, are you closing it down?

Have you had enough of gaming full stop now?

[Lorfarius]

Nope, after all the hard work I will be keeping the NES site running but letting the collecting side of things fall away when it comes to doing reviews I'll be using emulators. I already do for screenshots and gameplay footage so it's not that big a jump will most likely pick up a NES USB pad to make the experience more real. I did recently pick up 5 rare issues of Club Nintendo (which cost me £40 in total!) which have all been scanned and to be added as weekly updates sometime soon, however these will be going back on eBay soon as well.

I rarely play games these days, just keep amassing piles of it and got to thinking I could be doing so much more with my life. Last year I spent 2 weeks in Japan and had the time of my life, I want more holidays some travel etc. I'm 31 now and I keep thinking life is passing me by! So the plan is to sell everything I can and use the cash to pay off some debts then do something different. My next big purchase will be the 3DS but even then I don't envision keeping it for long.

[memories]

Everything your saying makes perfect sense really, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Are you heading to Ebay with everything? haven't seen any trade threads here for your goodies.

Would be interested in what your moving on like.

[Lorfarius]

Yeah I just bunged the lot on eBay. There's around 240 NES games to sell around 90 of which I listed last week, another 100 or so over the weekend. Accessories even the NES console is going though I'll do a decent bundle with that using the left over games I don't sell at 99p.

That's another thing that's annoyed me, a lot of these games cost me around a fiver yet I've tons that haven't budged or gone for 99p each! Trying to make as much cash as possible so it's a right pain when they don't go for much

I'll PM you a link to what I've listed.

[CandyBob]

Nope, after all the hard work I will be keeping the NES site running but letting the collecting side of things fall away when it comes to doing reviews I'll be using emulators. I already do for screenshots and gameplay footage so it's not that big a jump will most likely pick up a NES USB pad to make the experience more real. I did recently pick up 5 rare issues of Club Nintendo (which cost me £40 in total!) which have all been scanned and to be added as weekly updates sometime soon, however these will be going back on eBay soon as well.

I rarely play games these days, just keep amassing piles of it and got to thinking I could be doing so much more with my life. Last year I spent 2 weeks in Japan and had the time of my life, I want more holidays some travel etc. I'm 31 now and I keep thinking life is passing me by! So the plan is to sell everything I can and use the cash to pay off some debts then do something different. My next big purchase will be the 3DS but even then I don't envision keeping it for long.

That's interesting. Do you not have the time for games or have you just fallen out of love?

I find that now I'm 40, with my youngest son now 14 and doing a lot of his own thing, my gaming time is coming back whereas for some years it was obviously very limited (although for some reason now the wife wants more of my time!!).

Glad to hear you are keeping the site going though as the NES was probably the one machine I never really got into and I found your Youtube vids educational. I reckon you will catch the bug again one day though. I don't think its something that ever leaves you.

Re: your last post. You seemed to amass a lot of NES games in a fairly short period of time. Do you feel this is part of the problem? When I buy a PCB at the moment I'm trying to play and ring as much use as I can out of it before I move onto another game. The temptation to pick up whatever you can when it is available can dimish the collecting side of things I feel.

[Lorfarius]

That's interesting. Do you not have the time for games or have you just fallen out of love?

I'm gutted I'm doing it to be honest and didn't really want to, had some real soul searching before I decided to take the plunge. But I need to start doing something with my life, not married, no kids etc and want to see something of the world. Material things can come and go so I'm going for it. I'd say it was a mid-life crisis but I'm still in shock at turning 30

So I haven't really fallen out of love with games I just think I need to start veering away from them, it's all I ever seem to do.

[Lorfarius]

Re: your last post. You seemed to amass a lot of NES games in a fairly short period of time. Do you feel this is part of the problem? When I buy a PCB at the moment I'm trying to play and ring as much use as I can out of it before I move onto another game. The temptation to pick up whatever you can when it is available can dimish the collecting side of things I feel.

I have been at the NES collecting for around 2 years, I picked it mainly because of a lot of fond childhood memories. No matter what retro I play I always tended to drift back to it and last year started to focus on it a lot more. That's how the website came about, the reviews for example always kept me focus on each new game I was writing about as I would spend time playing them properly.

There's been a few uber rare games which were quite frankly crap to play but I actually had a lot of fun tracking them down strange as it sounds. I'm actually going to miss that and I know I put a lot of hard work into it but something had to give.

NES-Bit added sssooo much to the collecting fun, taking pictures, coming up with things to write about, the database, magazine scans etc I dread to think the amount of time I put into all that but I'm still proud of it all. Still have plenty to do (another 200 reviews for example) for the site as a whole but with all I've gathered the site has had more than a massive boost of content. Thankfully by buying all the rare stuff and adding pics, info on each one to the site I'm all set.

[CandyBob]

I'm gutted I'm doing it to be honest and didn't really want to, had some real soul searching before I decided to take the plunge. But I need to start doing something with my life, not married, no kids etc and want to see something of the world. Material things can come and go so I'm going for it. I'd say it was a mid-life crisis but I'm still in shock at turning 30

So I haven't really fallen out of love with games I just think I need to start veering away from them, it's all I ever seem to do.

Sounds like the right thing for you at this moment in time. The thing with all this stuff is that you can come back to it in 10 years or so and get right back into it if you want.

Can absolutely appreciate the tracking games down part. It does add to the fun of it all.

[CurryKitten]

Sorry to hear you're getting rid of everything Lorf, but if you feel it is getting in the way of "life", then it's the right thing to do. I'd especially recommend going out and getting well travelled, and trying lots of exciting things along the way. The great thing about all of our retro stuff, is that it doesn't ever go away, it'll go into a collection and then back on ebay and continue in it's little circular life like that ad infinitum.

From my point of view, I've been very careful to only "collect" games I really want to play.. in that way it's not really a "collection" as such, as there's plenty of games I just wouldn't bother with. So I've always been able to be excited about finding one of the games I've always wanted to try, but at the same time I'm not out hunting them. Let's face it, if you have the money, you can have all the games you want... it's far more fun to find it at a boot sale for cheap. I always feel to that if I miss something, then it's not the end of the world, as another one will be along soon.

I once turned down a NES for £3 as it was missing the power adapter, I changed my mind on it, but too late. 2 weeks later I picked up a complete NES (with a game) for £2. I keep hoping the same thing will happen on that copy of Terranigma I turned down for £16.

So anyway, all this means, that I'm not getting multiple retro stuff every week, perhaps not even a game a month. This lets me always get the most out of one should I pick one up... that's not to say I don't have the ever present backlog that I'd like to always get to though.

But going back to the original post in this topic, yes I have lots of games on lots of platforms I'll probably never play again. But I think it's a bit like keeping photos. Each one of these games can provoke a nice memory of playing it, I have enough space, so I like to keep them around. Nothing is that precious though, if they need to go one day, then that's just the way it is. But for now, that's not an action I need to consider.

[Joyrex-J9]

I'm gutted I'm doing it to be honest and didn't really want to, had some real soul searching before I decided to take the plunge. But I need to start doing something with my life, not married, no kids etc and want to see something of the world. Material things can come and go so I'm going for it. I'd say it was a mid-life crisis but I'm still in shock at turning 30

So I haven't really fallen out of love with games I just think I need to start veering away from them, it's all I ever seem to do.

Nice post. Doesn't sound like an easy decision but it also sounds like you're doing the right thing

Good luck man.

[strider]

I sold pretty much all my Pal Dreamcast games (was around 40 short of a full collection). It was quite a cathartic experience that I only occasionally regret

[lordcookie]

I was spending around £3-5k a year on gaming stuff but I was finding I was far more interested in adding to collections than playing the games. About 5 years ago I sold the lot and haven't looked back (I kept hold of the machines - even the rarer ones aren't that expensive so it seemed daft to get rid of them just in case I fancied playing on them from time to time - and about 4 games for each console). Admittedly I'm in a slightly different position to many here as I've gone right off gaming altogether but there was a short period where I did actually just enjoy playing the games rather than collecting them.

Now if only I could cure my film and music hoarding.

[Wools]

I’ve had a similar experience to some of you, but I was not really bitter about games and knocked it on the head some years ago.

Collecting really started for me around the age of 17 where I was chasing my career with a part time job, and had another part time job on the side to get me through. As such I had time to play games and money on the hip to buy them. During the height of my madness my bedroom was full of games, quarter of the loft was taken up with boxes and it totalled around 20 consoles and 300 – 400 games. Despite my passion for them, it came to a head with me needing money for a car as I had just passed my test and the realisation that I had only completed around 3 games in 2003.

I started to offload a ton of stuff I never played to help towards my car and with that now brought, I had hit 20 and got my first serious job in the Videogame industry. Oddly, rather than reinforcing how much I loved games, my 6 months showed me how little I play and just showed up how much I spend and collect. Around 2006 I decided to keep my 360, PS2, Dreamcast and sell everything else that I was not using.

Now I currently have a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, 20 or so games between them and 2 small plastic boxes in my cupboard that house games that I could never sell, like some PSone classics, my original Sonic Mega Drive trilogy, Mario 64, Shenmue, Resident Evil 4 and a few other odds and sods. I have nothing else stashed away, that is my entire collection of games, and I don’t think I’ve been happier.

I now only buy games I want to play, occasionally splurge and buy something far too expensive like a Wheel because I get tempted, and unless the game is disappointing me, I’ll always dedicate myself to one game and complete it.

I found that having a massive collection was sapping my enthusiasm for gaming and that if I narrow my collection down to games I play, along with a few classics, I have far more fun. Like keeping a classic car vacuum sealed in a garage, it may make you feel good when you look at it, but it’s not the same as getting out and driving it.

[Lorfarius]

The worst part so far has been putting the games I've sold in jiffy envelopes to post to buyers. I've found myself holding back the occasional grumble/groan as those hard memories come flooding back, some of them were just to find, but cold turkey is the best way forward! Off they go

Next Sunday is going to be the even harder as I'm selling the likes of Aladdin and Mig 29, those babies were like gold dust and the chances of tracking them down again is pretty much zilch. But no regrets is the best way forward, things afoot etc.

[Streets Of Rage]

I've sold a good chunk of my collection in recent years to fund travels and adventures in America, Australia and now Vietnam and I'm quite glad to have got rid of 90% of it. I will get back into it when I'm next back in the UK but I'm going to go with keeping to the games I really want and selling on the chuff that I don't like and passing over things just because they're cheap. It'll be nice to have the consoles I want and a collection of 10-35 games on each that are the ones I love. Rather than I've got console X and game Y which is so RAAAAARE

My two cents anyway!

[Inky]

I think the worst trap to fall into is the notion of a 'complete collection' for a particular platform. Not only because such an undertaking would be huge financially and space-wise, but because you kind of commit yourself to buying dozens if not hundreds of games that are barely worth playing, let alone ones you actually want to play.

I've never been a collector in that sense of the word, though over the years I have amassed and gotten rid of countless games. I've largely managed to keep it to favourites I wanted to play or revisit, but I did have a period where I was rabidly collecting vintage PC adventures and RPGs and I spent an awful lot of money on things that really just sit around gathering dust. I mean, they're even more impractical than ancient console games, because they're genuinely unplayable these days unless you want to invest in a variety of old computers and hope that the tapes and discs will still work.

Having said that, the PC games I have remaining are the only albatross around my neck in terms of a pile of stuff I'm unwilling to shift because a) They cost me so much and some were hard to track down, and b) they aren't worth anything like those amounts now

These days I've got no problems with everything being digital, and many years of gaming has had the effect of really honing down my true favourites and genre interests. There are a handful of games I genuinely 100% love playing and can revisit time and again (and dedicate dozens of hours to)... and then there's everything else that I could take or leave. Other than the aforementioned PC games I think I own less than 10 console games in physical form. Cutting out the mediocrity is a vital step in balancing gaming against the rest of your life.

[Yiggy]

I limit myself to £50 worth of retro stuff a month. It actually forces me to play some of it.

Stuff has come and gone over the years.

[Plopboy]

I'm guilty of hoarding rather than collecting in most cases, I am getting better but still I find a way of justify some real tat that I have. If I can muster up the will power to get shot I think the only things that I wouldn't get rid of are my Street Fighter collection and my CAVE home version collection (I am staying well clear of the arcade board side of CAVE collecting) .

The problem is I like the games as objects (as mentioned before) probably more than playing some of them, I'm also guilty of such temptations as the Zavvi Mega Monday sales and thinking that game X is cheap I'll get that but never playing it.

The thing is when I have got rid of a console and games, only occasionally have I had any sort of regret so it may be time to have a better sort out and be more brutal with myself. Meh ramblings.

[klargon]

Although I know the amount of games and systems I have is massively unnecessary, it's difficult to find a real reason to sell. I don't really need the money, and I can't think of any other use for the room I have dedicated to all my retro stuff. However, recently I've decided that, for the right price, anything's for sale. I've sold almost all MVS carts (just a couple of individual games and multi-carts now), sold all my PSP games (got a PSP Go for yarr now), and have listed my NGage and Lynx collections on eBay. I list for a price that I couldn't possibly refuse (usually more than I have spent on the collection), and if it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, then I'm not really bothered.

I've also been keeping an eye out on eBay for valuable individual games. Just sold OutRun on the Game Gear for £15 today, as an example. Makes it easier to delay selling off the rest of the collection.

[gone fishin]

I'm gutted I'm doing it to be honest and didn't really want to, had some real soul searching before I decided to take the plunge. But I need to start doing something with my life, not married, no kids etc and want to see something of the world. Material things can come and go so I'm going for it. I'd say it was a mid-life crisis but I'm still in shock at turning 30

So I haven't really fallen out of love with games I just think I need to start veering away from them, it's all I ever seem to do.

I hate to say this, but you'll probably regret getting rid of them... and then just end up buying them all again!

I've gone through similar things and just chucked stuff out, given them away or sold it off. And years later, I always regretted it- especially for things that you can't keep a hold of later on in life. There will probably come some point when you do have some time on your hands, and you'll wish you'd kept them in your loft. I'm only saying this because I've done the same thing!!!

[BeeJay]

The relatively small value of my items is what puts me off selling in a big way. I am currently clearing out my 360 games, more recent PC games and then I'll move on to xbox games but they aren't worth much and are sitting here doing no harm really. I really should sort out my mega drives, master systems, dreamcasts etc. as I have shit loads of those in the attic.

[Vimster]

Recent events have made me think very hard about whether what I have is a collection or just a hoard of old tripe.

There are a couple of problems for me:

- I see something and think "will I be able to get that at a good price later on?" and more often than not I think no, so I snap it up. It could sit on a shelf for ages but at last I got it.

- I feel guilty playing stuff on emulators. It's probably down to the 8-bit musicians I know who scoff at not using original hardware for anything, plus I would be missing out on the authentic experience.

- In my mind there is this point in the future where I'll knuckle down and really play through some games, really take the time to get into a bullet-hell shooter or massive PS1 RPG. But it never comes, even when I have a full week of annual leave from work I never do it.

Now I have crates of tapes and whatnot filling up my little flat. A serious declutter is in order, but the hoarder in me will be very sore at the end of it.