I started in about 07, pretty much the same story with having all my childhood games still, but what kicked it off for me, was going to my buddies house, and he was heavy into retro gaming at the time, we went out after school to the local Value Village, and there was a Sega Genesis sitting there with Sonic Spinball sitting inside it for $11.99, I had some Genesis games laying around from my childhood, but the console was long dead, so I picked that up and had the bug ever since. Every day on my way to work from school, I'd stop there and check for games and systems, a few weeks after I got the Genesis I found Super Mario World, Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and some sports game all priced at $3.99, you can guess what I left behind, right after work I went to a nearby card shop/game store and picked up a SNES for $40, pretty much since that first few months, I was balls deep into it for years til around 2016
I slowed down quite a lot and was pretty burned out by all the stuff going on in the communities back then, I took the last four years to keep to myself and enjoy my collection, eventually got into other hobbies such as Warhammer, building guitars, getting old cars road worthy. I've bought a handful of games here and there to add to the collection, but I'm seeing more and more shops stocking these games (And at reasonable prices), and it's giving me the itch again.