How long have you been a game collector?

[Tekdrudge | 126]

I was thinking about this the other day. Most of the collectors I know started collecting within the last 10 years or so during the big "Game Collecting Boom" on the 20'Teens. I started collecting in 1999 a few months before the release of the Dreamcast. I realized I missed my NES games while watching the sneak peeks at the new games coming that fall. It was mostly the 8 bit graphics I missed. I had a weekend job while in high school, so I had money to burn. I went to a local flea market and found a vendor selling NES games for a dollar. YES! All games were just one dollar each! I picked up all the Mario games, all the Castlevania games, Contra, TMNT, Zelda, Double Dragon, Battle Toads, etc. I bought 20 games and an NES for $30! I continued to go back to that flea market and buy games for about a year. I even picked up a game I never heard of called Little Samson. What could it hurt, it's only a dollar.

Did you start game collecting before the new millennium, or in more recent years? And what got you into collecting?

[goldenpp72 | 1,232]

I started collecting about 12 years ago, though I don't recall it being popular when I began, a lot of the stuff I got was very cheap or junk to many. I remember being able to amass a large amount of 32x titles for very little. I regret not having more money at the time to deal with it, but in fairness I also went well beyond my initial dream too. Interestingly I began collecting only because my Fiancee had skipped the generations between 2600 and N64, so I bought Genesis/Snes stuff and we had fun with it, so it just kinda spiraled into a thing more and more.

Edited July 17, 2020 by goldenpp72

[a3quit4s | 4,093]

Black Friday 2015 - didn’t find anything good to buy. Was at bagel shop with future wife (married 10/10/15 lol) and her friend. Her friend offers to sell me her Super Nintendo and games. The rest is history. Still have the Super Nintendo! Here is an early picture of my collection for fun!

Edited July 17, 2020 by a3quit4s

[Reed Rothchild | 9,510]

Always.  That's a cliche answer but it's the truth.  I had the biggest PS1 and PS2 and 360 collections of anyone I knew (by a large margin), and I bought every SNES game I could find for decades.  I was the guy going to rental shops and asking them to sell me their rentals at bargain prices.  That's how I got everything from Secret of Mana, to Tactics Ogre and Suikoden II.  In college I got rather skinny because I would rather buy games with my limited funds than food.

Of course things took an upturn once I got a real job and had real money to work with.  But coming out of high school and college I still had a rather obscene number of games 

[jonebone | 1,307]

I started reselling NES consoles and games around May 2008 on the side to help save money for a house.

By August 2008 I found myself keeping nice CIBs I came across while moving NES lots and consoles.

By November 2008 I joined NintendoAge and the rest was history.

I do still have my N64 childhood games but my parents did purge NES and Genesis during my college years. Thanks mom and dad for inspiring me!

[Tabonga | 2,314]

Since 1991. Although I never really considered myself a collector per se as opposed to simply buying games I like - most of my games I bought new back in the day or used at the then current prices at used game stores.  I have always favored RPGs and also gotused  games complete (I had a lot of good contacts at game stores so I could usually easily find missing parts) - as it turned out my games are now (collectively) worth a small fortune if I ever decided to part with them.

[Tekdrudge | 126]

Don't get me wrong, I have been buying games since the 80's. But I would sell my current gen stuff to buy whatever the new thing was. NES sold to buy the SNES, and SNES sold to buy my Playstation, so on and so forth. I didn't decide to start buying and keeping the stuff until the Summer of 1999.

I have an insane amount of respect for people that bought games as kids and teenagers and never sold them.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,510]

I had never sold a single game until about 2012.  Not one.  Not even Spice World.

[BirdDogGaming | 218]

I actually never sold my games growing up, so all of my games from SNES forward I still have to this day, which is great.

But I’ve been “collecting” since 2014-2015ish. I missed out on all the golden years of garage sales that everyone talks about.

[tbone3969 | 304]

25 years.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

I would say I started around February of 2014, when I took an interest in the many different variants of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Obviously since then I've expanded to other things, until I took a hiatus which I am still on until I can get my mental health in check.

[drxandy | 3,225]

Growing up my parents never really understood my gaming obsession, my dad was a computer guy so we had a few Atari computers, I remember the 800xl getting a lot of use as a kid and 2600. This was when nes was in it's release so I would go to friends houses and play with awe.

Eventually got an nes in the snes days, as to placate me from my snes lust. Asked for a super Nintendo for 3 years in a row for Christmas but it never worked out, however I played as much as I could at friends. I did have a original gameboy during this time as well, the first console I saved up for and purchased from Kmart myself. I saved for a genesis after playing NBA jam and mortal Kombat with older kids and fell in love with it. It was around that time I became a collector, maybe 98,99,2000 era I would go to funcoland and try and find cheap games,  goodwill/thrift, and garage sales with my mom but had always had a smallll budget.

Once I got a job at 15 it was on, played a ton of 64 at friends and loved Zelda oot so I got a used n64 for Majora's mask around it's release. 

I kept at it through the gcn, PS2, Xbox era and during the 360,ps3,Wii I decided i didn't need to have so much stuff and that my collection was a burden to keep carting around as I was moving a lot. Sold a large bulk and eventually realized that games are what I love and got back into gaming with the DS and 3ds.

Edited July 17, 2020 by drxandy

[MrPeaPod | 121]

Any game that was "mine" growing up I held on to. I'd say I actively starting hunting and collecting games in 2007

[Hammerfestus | 3,824]

2013.  I never got rid of the majority of my childhood games and I’d picked up a few NES titles at a used media chain near me circa 2004.  After we bought our house, I finally decided to go through some banana crates full of NES games that had been collecting dust.  It had my NES games plus  a bunch of stuff my wife had been given at some point.  Well in the stuff my wife had was a Little Samson.  Eh whaa?  Bug bitten.  
 

First title I added after that point was Dragon Warrior II which I’d been passively looking for since late high school.  I just recently upgraded it to a CIB copy

[O.G. CIB | 415]

1998........ I owned a computer store and decided to stock N64 and PS1 games. I was young at the time and the thought of selling games was like being a kid in the candy store. Before I noticed I was buying items from my distributor at the time (Ingram Micro) that I wanted for myself. Purchased two heavy a$$ display cabinets and I was rolling. A $50 game back then I wold buy for $44-$46 so not much in terms of margins but I ended up separating the gaming profit from regular store activities to fund buying old games I could get as NOS (New Old Stock) for myself. I started selling some extra stuff on eBay in  1999 when I decided to get out of the computer business and enter the dot com boom but game collecting never stopped  ...... it was great times. 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Mr. CIB

[DefaultGen | 5,400]

You can pinpoint it to the day Nintendo announced Wii Virtual Console pricing. $5/NES game was ludicrous considering I had a dozen free NES games in my Animal Crossing basement. I’’ll just spend $1/ea on the real games! DigitPress, RFGeneration, GameTZ, and honestly the history episodes of the Angry Video Game Nerd sometimes provided made it easier to fall deeper into it.

Edited July 17, 2020 by DefaultGen

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Technically always because I never got rid of games I bought or were gifted from the 1980s NES through the mid 2000s until a change happened.  Because I don't treat the stuff like disposable property I hold onto the stuff, so I collect, so a collector.   Seriously though I guess when I started buying second hand goods in 1995.

[Amermoe | 150]

This one's tough for me to answer, I had a decent library of games by late 1990s (around 97/98) mainly PS1 rpgs and some sega games but wouldn't call myself a collector then. I was never into NES/SNES/N64 at the time, but I realized much later how much I missed out and went back after those games, particularly SNES (with exception to NES, which I still don't care much for, save for a few select titles) . 

I guess I started actively collecting after PS2 launch, which was around 2001 (PS2 is easily my biggest library). Since then I've been collecting for pretty much all home consoles up until the PS4. I only collect what I like, I've never been one to go after complete sets/libraries. The concept just doesn't appeal to me.

[Tekdrudge | 126]

2 hours ago, thatgamernerd said:

I missed out on all the golden years of garage sales that everyone talks about.

I remember those days. I passed on a lot of stuff because there was no guarantee it would work. I even passed on a TurboGrafx in box with four games for like $10. I wish I hadn't.

[Tekdrudge | 126]

20 minutes ago, Amermoe said:

I only collect what I like, I've never been one to go after complete sets/libraries. The concept just doesn't appeal to me.

The concept appeals to me...just not my wallet. Now I just collect what I know I will actually play. I'm much happier about my collection now. Smaller but easier to manage.

[docile tapeworm | 4,196]

3 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I had never sold a single game until about 2012.  Not one.  Not even Spice World.

damn i been selling/trading them since recess in 88'

[docile tapeworm | 4,196]

@DefaultGen what is a collector?

[Nintegageo | 582]

I bought games in every generation since the NES, and have games that I've owned since I was a kid. In my opinion, I was a collector when I decided to get every JP developped game on the SNES which thus had me buying games I wasn't really interested in playing.

[fcgamer | 4,719]

I started collecting around 1997 or 1998 when a Funcoland moved into the area near where my parents took dance lessons. They'd drop my brother and I off at Funcoland, then they'd head over for their lessons. After we finished up at Funcoland, we'd head a few stores down at the shopping centre to a pizza place, eating pizza and drinking mountain dew while waiting for our folks to finish. I was in 5th grade when this first started, that's how the whole thing kicked off.

My brother and I never sold our games as kids, we also never stopped playing the classics. Initially at Funco wed start grabbing the games that we always wanted as a child but couldn't find, then later I started grabbing other interesting titles.

This was around the same time my parents got the internet, so I started learning so much about gaming oddities then.

By University I lost interest and sold off a large portion of what I had (of course not selling my childhood stuff though), then when I moved to Taiwan in 2011 collecting reemerged for several reasons.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,055]

January 2011. I had some days off where I was bored and for whatever reason thought about searching to see if there was ever any video games made of some of my favorite movie franchises, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc. I found the AVGN episodes on them and was hooked on the idea of playing old games