I've been a videogame and Dvd collector for many years now. I've also been a member of various forums around the internet for just as long. Over the years I have seen the same debates over and over, often in different forms but always the same old arguments. I have also seen various terminology thrown about carelessly, such as 'Casual gamer' and 'Fanboy' etc. However, one particular term I have seen being used more and more lately on almost every forum I frequent, and often used in many an argument is 'Serious collector', where one person may state that they are more of a 'Serious collector' than another, in such a way as to prove that they are the bigger man. I have also experienced this specific term a lot during my many years of using eBay, where a potential buyer may state that they are a 'Serious collector', or perhaps a seller may state that they used to be one prior to selling off their collection's... The question is though, how do you define what exactly a 'Serious collector' is? And how do they differ from the 'Non-serious', if there were ever such a thing? Is one dishtinguishable from the other? What does it mean to be a 'Serious collector'? How would you describe yourself?
Serious Colletor: n; 1: collector of objects, who does not often laugh or find humor. 2: A collector who is serious.
If you start collecting anything then do it for yourself and never take it TOO seriously (we've all done that and ended up eating pasta for a month whilst a rare item sails in from Japan). The only people I can't be bothered with are those who refuse to part with information that might be useful to other collectors.
serious collector: someone who is anal about VERY small details nobody other than him really cares about
I can't define what it is, but I can define what it is not. Any collector taking himself too seriously is not a serious collector.
Collecting is serious enough as long as it looks like fun to you. I actually never thought about that. And honestly, anyone who calls himself a "serious collector" sounds like a total retard to me, lol. I collect for fun, not to be taken seriously because I have xxx games. There are some people who have whole hallways filled with shelves and there are people who don't but own a complete collection of e.g. Mario-games. Who's more serious? A bullshit-expression if you ask me. A casual-gamer is, in my opinion, someone who buys only what he plays and the further only recent, popular releases. Like a guy who just goes to the movies every once at a while to watch James Bond, then Transformers, then a teenager sex movie and so on. Casual cinema fan. There's nothing bad at all about being a casual-something, I think almost everybody has at least one area in which he behaves like a casual consumer, but I am getting aggressive if those people pose as mr. big-guy professional collector (respectively cinephile). Apart from that, I know a couple of collectors who don't have more than 200 games in their collection but they are incredibly anal about the condition. If there's a fingerprint on the manual, they need to buy a new copy of the whole game. Other collectors have complete Famicom collections and spent hundreds of hours in tracking them down, but they're just loose carts. Who's more serious, the fingerprint-haters with 200 games or the cart-collectors w/1500 games? Not comparable I'd say.
What i'm trying to determine here is where the line is drawn? There are people who instantly spring to mind when the term 'Serious collector' is uttered. Adol is one such person, and I would consider his collection very 'Serious'. But at the end of the day, how does his collection compare to someone else's such as any one of you guys who only collect Nintendo or MegaMan games? I have seen people focus only on one particular franchise, such as Gran Turismo, and nothing else. To me, they are equally as serious as any collector who has a massive three or four or even five digit collection! You may only have a very small collection of games (A few dozen or so), but that doesn't mean your collection's are any less serious than the like of Adol's... I was wondering what you may need to qualify for this glorious 'Serious collector' title though? I very often receive eMail's to end auctions early by many people claiming to be a 'Serious collector', so I was just wondering how they justified this elite status they seem to have bestowed on themselves...
Serious collectors generally tend not to have a sense of humour, tend to willy wave their collections, generally are single and not getting any sex. When they make forum posts they will generally be... 1. Something to willy wave their collections, normally they will also post it on Ebay with a stupidly high price knowing that no one will buy it and if someone was stupid enough they would make enough money to buy another collection and have enough money to hire different high class prostitutes every day for a month but will more likely buy some crap game on a system as it's rare (normally rare as it was crap the first time around that it got a tiny release or was a prize item and features something slighlty different over the version that costs $5) 2. One sentence statements when someone praises their collections 3. A pointless or useless statement in reply when you ask a question about their collections. 4. Angry posts, which will try to belittle the poster if you question something about their collection. They will normally say something like it's in the post/ on another shelf/ they don't consider it part of a collection or say you must be jealous and not answer the question... 5. Posts in the sales / wanted forums 6. Posts about other serious collectors Posts answering technical questions or in off topic forums generally never happen. They also check every version of a game the shop has to check for microscopic bends and creases or micrometre scratches on CDs and covers. Likely to have a machine to play pirate.. er I mean 'backup' games so they don't touch their precious game but want to play the game anyway... Displays things in display cases even the commonal garden stuff. Stores really rare games covered in archival quality acid free paper, covered in archival plastic then by lead sheeting in a wooden box stored in a swiss vault. Can't name more then 2 brands of deoderant, but knows every flavour of the local cheapie shops instant ramen.
