Has collecting become your life?

Used to, but it has calmed down and now I'm even trying to slim it down and selling of lots of it. The big move to a new city I recently made got me thinking of how much stuff/junk I have that I never use (or even look at).

 

I go through spurts.

I'm always on the look out for a cool new PC game but my retro collecting habits come and go. Some times I'll buy a few DC games, other times I'll buy a few sega genesis games, and then I stop and I go back to just enjoying my collection.

I never needed a full set of any collection. I will admit though that I'm probably never going to sell my collection. My kids will inherit it.

 

Yeah, that's a big aspect too. Organizing, putting all the games / hardware in plastic protector thingies and so on, all that can be a lot of fun apart from the plain joy of gaming. It can be a pain in the ass either, if you have no space left and almost no room to display the games in an adequate way... I am someone who doesn't want to be the owner of a simple storage area, but at some point there's no other way. I've also put some things into the basement, otherwise I'd be totally crowded.

 

I used to collect many platforms, and for a while it did rule my life. Searching shops and bidding too high on Ebay.
After selling of all my games for the second time, i decided to pick one platform and try to complete it... Then pick another..:nod:

 

Why did you sell off all your games.....twice? OH:

 

First time was because of moving house twice in as many years, and couldn't stand to move it ALL AGAIN... Second was a split up.. you know moving on and starting again.. All that BS. So just decided to pick one platform and (try to) stick to it.

 

Selected option #2 - It's a part of my life that I seem to be losing interest in. I haven't even played 80% of what I own, I have systems I've never even booted up becasue I don't have an NTSC-J compatible television, I bought a Wii and DS and have turned them on less than a dozen times over the last year... Truth be told I play PC games now more than anything else. I haven't even updated my website in a good 6 months. After sitting in front of a computer all day at work, going home to sit in front of a game console all night is the furthest thing from my mind.

 

Oh that's nothing to be ashamed of you know. That's how everyone feels about Nintendo these days... once a year is just enough to most people.

But how can you not have an NTSC-J compatible TV? I know it's a bit tricky with RGB in the US, but I always thought it was actually easier to hook up import consoles than here in Europe.

 

I think it might sound daft, but does anybody else feel inspired to collect after seeing other peoples collections, like here at ASSEMbler? I know I do. ^_^

I think collecting has become a part of life for me, but no more than that, and I told myself in the past I do not wish to collect forever (I wish there was a middle option in the poll).

 

I would have never gotten a cabinet (or two, for that matter *lol*) If it wasn't for ave's and Parris' collection and restoration pictures.

 

You can bet it, since I saw these collections I started to hit flea markets and watch for good offers in the web. It's kinda hard and expensive to make a collection here in Uruguay (and import taxes of 60% don't help at all) but it's slowly getting into shape.

Anyway I'm not talking about collections where you spend all day trying to get stuff just to expand your collection and you end having so many stuff that you're not able to try it all. I collect because there's nothing like playing games in their original platforms. Of course, you can save space and money with emulators or newer consoles offering old games, but it's just not the same.

 

Absolutely. When I began with collecting back in 2003/2004, I used to browse a lot through the DigitPress galleries (back when they DP consisted of only a "few" selected, very impressive collections). I was really impressed with all those great game rooms that just aspired retro & cozy memories...

Back when I was only buying PAL games, I was always fascinated by those unmemorizable (not anymore, apparently) names and obscure covers of Japanese games. In comparison with PAL/US soft, especially the CD games from Japan looked to immaculate and beautiful with their spine-cards around the back.
Pictures from collections such as this probably motivated me to research on Japanese classics and finally got me to JPN-only collecting.

I also have gigabytes of selected collections, game room pictures and obscure stuff that you don't see very often. So to sum it up, pictures from other collections/rooms really had a big influence on my own collecting.

 

Also I use the pictures of HUGE collections to show my family and friends, so that they think I am not mad in comparison

 

I consider my family my life, but collecting games is a close second. I have a hard time passing up local shops, even though I've long since picked most of them clean for anything I'd consider collectible. There is always this voice in the back of my mind telling me that someone may have sold another Vectrex or R.O.B. and that if I don't keep checking I might miss out on a really good deal.

I've been a gamer since I was a little kid, but I sold off my collections twice. (Actually I wouldn't consider them collections as the first time I only had an NES and SMB, and the second I had 2xNES a SNES and about 6 games between the three of them). But when I turned 18 I got an SNES in lieu of the repayment of a loan worth twice as much, and since then I've held on to everything I bought. At last count I think I had just over a thousand individual games (counting compilations as a single title), and around 50 consoles. It isn't very impressive compared to some of the uber collectors on Assembler but I hand-picked every single one of them - none of them were lot purchases, and only a handful of them were bought just to fill out a set. (I.E. I own a copy of every Square/Enix game released in North America, and I own a copy of every game Working Designs ever released)

It's probably some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder - I have a real hard time parting with something once I have purchased it - I may have sold a total of about 10 games in the last 12 years and three or four of those were duplicates. I've re-purchased pretty much all but three of them - TMNT IV (SNES), Batman Forever (SNES), and Earthbound (SNES).

One of the driving factors for me wanting to move to a new house is to have more space to display more of my collection. I am very fortunate in that I have a wife that completely respects that motivation and is as interested in seeing it all spread out as I am.

As a hobby, game collecting sometimes supercedes game playing for me as I'll often buy a game just to have it and not play it until years later.

 

Your story is eerily similar to mine in the sense that I really don't have any time to play the new games I've bought.

I think this week I finally got the chance to sit down and play some games but ironically the only reason I did was because I took a couple of sick days on Thursday and Friday. The only real video gaming I get to enjoy now is quick multiplayer matches of mindless PC FPS games.

As you stated above, I can't bring myself to play a long winded indepth RPG game on my PC after a day of staring in front of a computer monitor at work.

 

Gaming, retro gaming are nice hobbies, not worse or good than any other.
Especially in japan. I could spend hours to sneak cheap games just for the fun of it.

But i prefer old dusty stores than Super Potato which is surfing on the western retro game collecting trend. You will not do bargains out there. The usual suspects (Taromarou, Radiant, etc) are 30% much expensive than Trader that is also a little bit pricey. I mean there's no fun to go at Mandarake, spend your 25000yens on Taromarou and find 2 days later that it was 14000 at Trader or cheaper at another obscure seller or YA. It's a matter of time but i do myself a favor and a pleasure to not rush for love at first sight.

To sum it up i would say i do not take gaming hobby too seriously (like i would never buy games too expensive and hate speculation) though i can consume a lot of time on it, quite paradoxical...

That said i could easily sell my gaming collection for music instruments, old records, other things i'm collecting.

 

That's the way, man!
:clap:

I think I'll do the same.

 

I and my signficant other as well as my parents think it's perfectly fine. I myself draw a line at "Man, I should get a storage shed/locker/what have you." Soon as I'm paying to keep the collection, it's too much.

 

Collecting is not "my life", but yeah, I think about it at least once a day. However, I've tried to steer away from it in the past but (and it may sound really geeky) I still have more fun playing a Famicom/Super Famicom game that I've never heard about than the latest PS3 title, even if it definitively looks amazing. Damn, I already sound like an old fart...

 

I HAVE NEVER ENJOYED A COLOR FILM AS MUCH AS A BLACK AND WHITE ONE.