Hanging up My Collector Hat
The Beggining
I started collecting games only a few years ago when I realized my adolescent OCD had left me with a few boxes of pristine games stashed away in my parents’ basement. Over the years I developed some clingy need to keep every game I ever bought and at one point even had them hanging on pegboard in my childhood bedroom like a personal game store. Then the PlayStation era rolled around and I hawked most of my Genesis collection just to pre-order Loaded. By college I was writing for Videogamers.com and the All Game Guide and would buy and return games to Electronics Boutique on a weekly basis. Any that I kept usually got sold or swapped or “borrowed” by friends of roommates and never returned.
In 2000 I was back at home and still writing for the All Game Guide and GameFusion.com and still had a few PR contacts. Infogrames was especially kind and constantly sent a stream of PlayStation and PC games which I’d play and then turn around and sell on the then-eBay-independent Half.com. I had a small collection of PlayStation games, some Saturn stuff, my old 3DO, and a handful of Nintendo 64 titles always at the ready.
The Spark
Around this time I started working at Blockbuster Video where I would pass the downtime by reading Tips & Tricks magazine. I’d never felt the need to buy an issue before and never realized they had a growing selection of editorial content. Inside were two new features, The Room of Doom and the Collector’s Closet, where rabid collectors sent in photos of their wall-to-wall collections and Chris Bieniek discussed how and what to collect. I also got involved with the CinciClassic, a local sometimes-annual gaming convention, and that long lost OCD (coupled with a desire to see how much my stuff was worth) suddenly came boiling back up.
I ran to the basement and set up my own meager Room of Doom and like any good collector I set out to find some bargains. At this point GameStop and EB still had tables full of Genesis, NES, and PlayStation games which I riffled through each week. I hit up our local flea markets and set about with an odd sub-collection in mind; to re-buy every game I had gotten rid of while picking up some sure-fire rarities in the process.
The Rub
As it turns out, many of the games I’d lost were the most valuable and the ones I kept for nostalgic reasons were worth hardly anything; I’d relied on my love of quirky little releases to guide my collection. It’s taken a long time to admit it but when it comes to game collecting instincts I’m more idiot than savant. Sadly, my place in the world has never afforded me much frivolous spending cash and I’ve always been more interested in new games than investing in something from the past when it comes down to a $50 price tag.
The proliferation of emulators (legal and not-so-much) has also played a big part in my collecting decline. When once it was only possible to play Y’s Books I & II on a real TurboDUO, it’s now available in a number of rereleases and remakes on console and portable platforms alike. I can even put a burnt copy on disc in my original Xbox and play it with a wireless dual analog stick controller. Emulation is more convenient, cheaper, and takes up less space than owning a physical copy and the paraphernalia to play it.
Space is another motivator. As I’ve hit my 30’s and moved twice I’ve started thinking about all the stuff in my life. Most of my mint condition retro games aren’t worth much and all this PR junk is really just heavy stacks of fancy paper and plastic. I’ve been going through my tubs of games and press materials and weeding out stacks of burnt discs with data that’s been backed up in quadruplicate over the years. Some of it I’m selling but a lot of it gets a quick scan and a ceremonious toss into the garbage (or recycling bin).
I’m not planning on selling off much of what I have left, but I’m trying to curb my desire to buy more. Just because a game is marked down to eight bucks in a clearance bin doesn’t mean that it’s worth the trouble of hanging onto it for another twenty years waiting for its value to possibly shoot up. The games that have proven most profitable — role-playing games — are the ones I’m least interested in, and though it was hard to see in the past, I realize now that I’ve always been into games for the fun of simply playing them. It does sting a little to think of all the money I’ve spent in the last eight years buying these cartridges and consoles to turn around and sell them off again (typically for less than I paid), but the reward of decluttering my life and making room for more new games is pretty comforting.
