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How long have you been a game collector?


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To damn long... probably didn't really start collecting games until like '89-'90 even though I had consoles and games prior to that era and I have collected then purge, collect again, purge... now I am on hiatus collecting again but I do still pick up Switch games every so often and everything else is on hold to an extent though I did go bonkers and caught up on the mini consoles and even some random mini "arcade machines" but I am fairly sure this will be short lived (I am eyeing that Astro City mini that was announced/leaked) 

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I didn't really see it as collecting at the time, but in the late 90s I started to emulate old games and rebuy stuff I'd previously sold. About a year before I got access to the internet my parents threw out my old NES and games because it "did't work" (blinking light) and I was so gutted when I found out.

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I started collecting around 2014ish when I was 18 and got a decent job. I always wanted to play earthbound because I thought it looked so cool and had a unique style, and one day I went into a retro shop and they had a copy that was traded in just an hour ago. Snagged it, and loved it. Then I started looking into more SNES games I wanted, and then I just started getting whatever i thought looked neat. Eventually i started buying every gamecube game I'd see since that was my favorite and childhood console, and then I decided to full set gamecube. And that's when it really began!

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6 hours ago, BriGuy82 said:

An old friend of mine had about 200 nes games in 1998. He would ask any kid he would come across if he could have their old games. I didn't give him jack shit but apparently everyone else did.  Seeing his stack of nes games blew my mind.

I think I knew the same guy. Smooth talker, but kinda an a-hole...At least the guy I knew was. Lol.

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Around 2003 I sold off my SNES with a bunch of games. Final fantasy 3, Chrono Trigger, Contra 3, DKC trilogy, Mario world/Kart/ Yoshis Island, Super Metriod and Link to the Past, and lots of other games like that. I was deep into the 6th gen and at the time it seemed like I was over the 8/16 bit era. Going back to the 80s I was always prone to sell off the older gen stuff to fund the new. But this time was different.

Literally the next day, I had a gut-wrenching 'sellers remorse' punch in the pit of her stomach. I even went as far as contacting the buyer( it was local) and offering them more than they paid. Nope, they were holding onto it. So I went onto Amazon and bought a system, then went on a thrift store/garage/ yard sale goose chase tracking down SNES games. This was at a point when they were as commonly found laying unloved at the bottom of a storage bin as something like Wii/Ps2/xbox games were a few years ago. People were giving them away or selling them for relative pennies. 

What's happened in recent years was a push to expand my horizons to other systems I once owned: Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, Genesis, Gamecube. But its led to some unfocus, of 'this game is $2 so why not' purchases which have padded out the collection, but I realize that alot of these games were bought with only casual intent to play 'eventually' and that ship has sailed in many cases. I could do with a good curating and refocusing of what I actually want to play and what merits ownership beyond simple possession for possession sake. I don't have a huge unmanageable collection but some games just don't need to be in it anymore. 

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Started around 1998. I had a Nes with Arkanoid, SMB3 and various Koei games along with a Genesis and NHL95, Dune and Herzog Zwei. I then got a 32X and my first taste of Doom. In 1999 my wife and I bought our first home computer. Discovering the internet and finding out about various Strategy games and RPG's I caught the bug. First started buying on Ebay then discovered Gametz in 2000. For me 2000-2008 were my glory years in collecting. Games were easy to find. It was fun/easy to trade online(shipping was cheap!) And older games were relatively cheap then too.

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5 hours ago, Bighab said:

For me 2000-2008 were my glory years in collecting. Games were easy to find.

I second this! Those times were magic. Not many people collecting to compete with, and SUPER cheap games or in many situations for me, FREE games. I met random people and stuck up conversations and they found out that I collected old games and would say "Here's my number, call me with week and I'll give you everything I have. I just need to get rid of it."

Those days are gone forever.

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1 hour ago, Tekdrudge said:

I second this! Those times were magic. Not many people collecting to compete with, and SUPER cheap games or in many situations for me, FREE games. I met random people and stuck up conversations and they found out that I collected old games and would say "Here's my number, call me with week and I'll give you everything I have. I just need to get rid of it."

Those days are gone forever.

Those were truly great days. Games weren't treated like a form of currency so if anyone caught wind that you liked games, you'd often get 'oh those old things? I got about 50 of them in an attic. You can have em for $20'. It was at it's best before it became a 'thing' to collect old games.

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A buddy of mine is an older collector like myself (He doesn't collect anymore, but maintains his current collection) and we talk all the time about the early 2000's and collecting. He is a huge Metal Gear fan and has some super rare, and old ball stuff in his collection. He has two of the MGS2 VHS video tapes used to showcase the game at E3 in 2000. You won't say how he got them, other than he "knows a guy". But he got them for free.

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Even though we had game systems in our home my whole life, starting with a NES Deluxe Set, i wouldn't say i became a collector until high school. 1998 was when I walked into the video rental store next to the grocery i worked at, and asked the owner if anyone still rented NES games. he said "nobody rents nintenda tapes anymore, everyone wants the playstation" so I asked him if i could buy all of them. he agreed, so every week when i got paid I'd go there with $100 and walk out with 20 CIB games. thankfully this place made copies of the manuals for rentals and kept the originals in a binder in the back, and the boxes themselves weren't all that banged up despite being on the shelves. After i bought all of their games, and added a few from my friends, i had ~200 titles in the collection. From there i just bought a few titles here and there from places like Gametrader.  

Then Katrina hit. i lost pretty much all of my boxes and manuals, but thankfully a friend of mine with a big station wagon picked up all of my cartridges before he evacuated, as i was already in Baton Rouge at the time and couldnt go back home. the only CIB i didnt lose was Stack Up, as it was still in the Deluxe Set box up in my parents attic. my SNES console box was up there too, along with a Super Scope box. but yeah, all the other paper was destroyed.

that kinda depressed me for a while, but around 2008 i got the itch again and started buying out old video rental places again, as a lot of mom and pop spots started shutting down. by 2010 i had a lot of stuff, and then i joined Nintendoage a year later and things really took off.  

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I started during a summer road trip in 2011.  Bought a SNES from a pawn shop in Washington state on a whim, cause it was only 40 dollars, and I never got to have one as a kid.  My only opportunity to play one was when we visited my cousin's house.  I found someone in Bellingham selling a copy of Chrono Trigger with the manual (my favourite game) for a good price, and grabbed it on my way through back up to Canada.  That started my love of collecting.  I started with just a handful of games that I knew, like Turtles in Time, Starfox, Earthbound, but very quickly got serious about it.  Now it's 9 years and many dollars later, and I can't stop.  I still love the hunt, and my wife has now caught the bug as well.

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Not counting these Covid times, when was the last time you all found a really good deal. When I go game hunting, I always come up empty handed unless I go to a specialty shop. I haven't really seen anything "In the wild" where I live in years. Then again, the last five years or so collectors have sprung up all over the area I live at.

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It's been a few years since I've found anything worth mentioning, though in truth I haven't really looked all that much either. My habits in terms of collecting or even just playing games has really dropped off. I try to manage what I have but there are times I just want to scale it right down to personal favorites.

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I had like 30-40 games up until 2013 but it wasn't until I had lots of free time at a part time job in 2013 that I actually started collecting games. I learned about so many games' existence only from NA during this time. Some of which have ended up becoming some of my favorite games for certain systems like Tingles Rosy Rupeeland, Digimon World DS, and Ivy the Kiwi. Never would've known about any of those if it wasn't for NA. 

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10 hours ago, Tekdrudge said:

Not counting these Covid times, when was the last time you all found a really good deal. When I go game hunting, I always come up empty handed unless I go to a specialty shop. I haven't really seen anything "In the wild" where I live in years. Then again, the last five years or so collectors have sprung up all over the area I live at.

Pretty much all of my good finds have come from specialty shops lately.  There's a few places around that don't really keep up to date with price changes.  As far as garage sales and flea markets, those days are definitely long gone.  A friend of mine still finds the occasional item doing the daily thrift store / pawn shop rounds, but I find it isn't really worth the effort these days.  They're out there, but definitely rare.

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Events Team · Posted
54 minutes ago, Makar said:

I had like 30-40 games up until 2013 but it wasn't until I had lots of free time at a part time job in 2013 that I actually started collecting games. I learned about so many games' existence only from NA during this time. Some of which have ended up becoming some of my favorite games for certain systems like Tingles Rosy Rupeeland, Digimon World DS, and Ivy the Kiwi. Never would've known about any of those if it wasn't for NA. 

Hey, looks like we started collecting around the same time. Was kind of feeling bad seeing some people who started collecting before I was even born 😛

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8 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Hey, looks like we started collecting around the same time. Was kind of feeling bad seeing some people who started collecting before I was even born 😛

All the people who started collecting before it was cool and still have their games are really lucky. I had all the original Pokemon games complete but my mom made me throw the boxes and inserts away years ago. Also missed out on owning Pokemon box and the Metroid prime windwaker bundle when they were $50 because Pokemon box was not really a real game and I already had windwaker.

Having said all that, I am very glad I got all the DS and gamecube games I wanted back in 2013-2016. Prices for those have exploded lately. No way I'd have half of what I have right now if I was just starting to collect right now. 

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Events Team · Posted
6 minutes ago, Makar said:

All the people who started collecting before it was cool and still have their games are really lucky. I had all the original Pokemon games complete but my mom made me throw the boxes and inserts away years ago. Also missed out on owning Pokemon box and the Metroid prime windwaker bundle when they were $50 because Pokemon box was not really a real game and I already had windwaker.

Having said all that, I am very glad I got all the DS and gamecube games I wanted back in 2013-2016. Prices for those have exploded lately. No way I'd have half of what I have right now if I was just starting to collect right now. 

Super lucky, yeah. You and I got in to collecting right as it was starting to get real expensive it seems. And even then, looking back on prices in the mid 2010s, it still seems so much cheaper than some stuff is now. I'm hoping by the time I get everything sorted out and I can finally dive back in to the collecting scene headfirst, prices will stop getting higher and higher and higher. Probably a bit of a pipe dream, but I can hope.

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40 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Super lucky, yeah. You and I got in to collecting right as it was starting to get real expensive it seems. And even then, looking back on prices in the mid 2010s, it still seems so much cheaper than some stuff is now. I'm hoping by the time I get everything sorted out and I can finally dive back in to the collecting scene headfirst, prices will stop getting higher and higher and higher. Probably a bit of a pipe dream, but I can hope.

What I've done over the years is buy what I can that I want when it's cheap. And then anything that is really expensive, like $100+ I'll only buy it if I sell other stuff to cover the costs, or I'll trade a lot of stuff for one item. This is how I got my aerofighters and Groudon GBA SP. No way was I going to spend a couple grand on a GBA SP system but I had lots and lots of stuff to trade and worked out a deal. I haven't actually paid for a game without offsetting the costs somehow in years. I used to be pretty bad about spending too much on games, and have dialed it in recently once I realized just how much I was spending. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is you can get whatever you want "for free" if you put in the time and effort of buying, selling, trading, repeat. Oh and waiting. Sometimes all you have to do is wait a year or so and a game you have doubles in price. Just look at GameCube games within the past year. Go Go Hypergrind for example was not a $400-500 game a year or 2 ago. It was was closer to $50 lol. 

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Events Team · Posted
14 minutes ago, Makar said:

Sometimes all you have to do is wait a year or so and a game you have doubles in price. Just look at GameCube games within the past year. Go Go Hypergrind for example was not a $400-500 game a year or 2 ago. It was was closer to $50 lol. 

This is very true, the only problem with that is that a lot of the time it's impossible to tell which games will go up in value. Feels completely random sometimes.

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11 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

This is very true, the only problem with that is that a lot of the time it's impossible to tell which games will go up in value. Feels completely random sometimes.

Very true. I never expected paper Mario the thousand year door to be a $100+ game. I mean it deserves to be since it's incredible but it's not rare at all. 

There are general trends that I've noticed over the years though. Atlus games tend to get very pricy over time. Go go Hypergrind is an atlus game for example. So is cubivore. Drone tactics and super robot taisen of saga on the DS are both atlus games too. 

Then you have game series that if you fast forward 5-20 years almost always end up being pricier than they were upon release. Fire emblem, the main series Pokemon games, and lately dragon quest games are all ones that are above the $30-50 price tag they initially cost. 

But for most it's a total crap shoot. Some games start out more expensive and then come crashing down to earth when there's a reprint. Just look at pikmin 3 and to a lesser extent cave story 3d, both of which had reprints and Nintendo select prints. Pikmin 3 was going for $70, now it's like $15. Cave story was over $100, now it's like $60. 

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I got my first NES and N64 in the summer of 2006. Hard to believe it was so long ago. Those represented my full, both feet first leap into vintage games, but I’d been into snes as an afterlife kind of system for a couple years before that. I’ve been more into old consoles than modern ones ever since.

Edited by Koopa64
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