What makes collectors so special?

more and more i ask myself: "why am i a collector?".

of course its fun to track down rare items, to negotiate the price of an item at the fleamarket or to play with your new found toys.

but why are we collectors?

for example my 2 brothers: they always ask me "why are you interested in these old consoles anyway?" or "why do you spend so much money on these old and useless things?" and i just cant answer in any other way than to say "it is fun to me!"

brings me to the next question: do your siblings collect video games/systems too? or anyone in your family?

i feel im so different than any other family member when it comes to these things (apart from my grandfather).

as long as i remember i was a collector. it started with coins and banknotes from any country. whenever somebody i knew was going to visit another country i was like "bring me some coins, please!". then for a short period i collected stamps (like my now dead grandfather).
then i collected manga, but 300 pieces can hardly be called a serious manga collection. its just some complete series.
but when i got my first OWN console (a playstation 1) it was decided.
i spent a big amount of my allowance on my videogame collection and friends started to call me crazy. i always have to show them your collections here, so they know im not. or at least then they know that my collection is rather small :thumbsup:

so, what do you think defines a collector, what is responsible for us being so different? how did you start collecting?

have a nice day, and dont let anyone tell you that your crazy!

 

I get shit from my friends. We've taxed the hell out of the 360 when it comes to multiplayer, so I wanted to play some old stuff, Saturn, N64, PC etc. and they basically say fuck you, so I say it right back. All the bullshit you assholes love wasting money on that's 60$ a pop will one day be old. I thought gaming as a hobby holds memories to people and other stuff, but I guess it's just a few people, it's just material bullshit to other people. Hand me any game I own and I can tell you everything that was going on when I first played that game. Hand any game to some asshole and they will tell you the Gamestop trade in credit.

 

damn i'm not even a collector tought i do have a lot of related items... i think that i have them because of a nostalgy factor of the snes up to dreamcast times, when the videogaming market was so varied and full of different offers, when different gameplays, grafics, controllers were around.

pioneering times

i guess i can see in these old console small parts of that past, when i was younger.

I have a suggestion to escape you sickness....

 

Loose women? :lol:

How about cause it&s fun and it beats wasting money on booze, fags, drugs, clubs, etc.

 

Well put. As much as i love older games, i love the memories that i associate with them that much more.

 

i NEVER sold a console or game im the original owner of.

because i cant part with the memories attached to it!

 

I have been a collector all of my live as well, every year I would collect new stuff (from coins to coca cola cans) so I guess its part of me to collect stuff.
As for console/game specific collecting:

-Compolsive collecting urge / finding the rare items is like drugs.
-Being able to pay for all the stuff that was out of my reach back when I was a kid.. stuff in magazines that would make me watermouth while unable to get it.. it's like a childhood trauma lol
-Nostalgic memories of great times/games (that usually don't reflect reality lol) when I play these 'great memories' nowadays I'm usually like WTF I don't remember it being this ugly and boring

Strange enough I don't have the patience to actually seriously play/finish games nowadays, also I don't horde as I basically don't have the finance to keep all the old junk I buy, so for me it's more an experiance / being able to hold it myself in my own hands and just basically own it for a period in time and admire the box sitting somewhere on display in my game room
I just buy stuff and sell it again to buy other stuff while I don't exactly know why... first I thought it would go over as soon as I would settle down with a wife and kids, but looking at some fellow members here at the forum I am not sure that will work for me

 

I've been a collector since I was really small, when my parents bought a game for me for christmas, for my birthday or whatever, I kept it like a treasure since I knew how much expensive we're them and I still have all those Mega Drive games complete in it's box in the shelve after all those years, whilst many people changed them at school, and after in shops like CENTRO Mail (GAME in Spain until three or four years ago), or sold them for buying newer systems. Too, many people sold their old systems and games for nothing just to get a bit of money for getting a new generation system.

Nowdays, I get the games which I've always liked and played in emulators or pirated copies, since I have a Pentium computer since 1995 and I've used emulators since they came out, filled with roms, I remember one that my parents got which was bought in a shop called CD-Mix Emulators, good times lol! Try finding something like that nowdays. XD

And about the "how can you like such old stuff", "newer games are way better", "you are crazy", etc, I just say them... "most of the newer games you can get for your brand new PS3 or Xbox 360, even if they have some incredible graphics, incredible sound, and can pimp out through your flamant 5.1 system and HDTV, so mamy forgotten alredy a while ago the reason why videogames we're created: BEING ENTERTAINING", they usually shut up. XD

 

That pretty much is me.....minus the prototypes except a prototype MadCatz PSX steering wheel which sucks anyway.

 

I recently got into collecting. I collect consoles instead of baseball cards or stamps mainly because consoles have a use. If I ever run to money then I will definitely collect cars.

 

I wonder how many of you are Cancerians? They have a tendency to collect stuff!

 

I am. and I didnt know that.

now I have another excuse to tell the girlfriend :icon_bigg

 

Horoscope?

 

I don't consider myself a big collector (i don't have much stuff), but i buy old, used stuff, because i like the games. For instance, Gran Turismo is a series i like, and because that i'll be always looking for rare versions.

The first time i played my brother's Atari 2600 when i was just a small kid, gaming became something that i liked. It's part of who i am. It's not the only thing i like though.

You answered them right. In high school, a couple of guys that thought they were "cool" used to criticize everybody for liking games. These days they're probably playing Winning Eleven, Counter-strike and so on...

My older brother used to collect but nowadays he just plays PC games. My father didn't liked when i spent money on games when i was 19, 20,... But he now see it's something i like, and that i don't go crazy spending money.

 

Yes, apparently each star sign has different personality traits. They are pretty accurate! If your birthday falls between June 22 to July 22, then you're a Cancerian, and you will hoard things like crazy, into your cosy Cancer crab shell :icon_bigg

 

You can say something along the lines of "Cancerians smell of cheese" and there will be enough people born in that time of the year who smell of cheese to make it seem like a valid claim. Horoscopes are a load of rubbish...

As for my collecting; it's a combination of what others have already said: I collect lots of stuff (but not "seriously"), slightly obsessive, getting stuff I wanted when I was younger, games are fun, etc.

I've built on the games, computers and systems I've had since I was younger - then I started buying more when I first found eBay in about 2001. From then on, my collection was growing slowly - but I wasn't really "collecting". Once I found Sega8bit two years ago, that quickly changed.

At the time of writing this, there are almost 2,500 games (originals - not copies) in my collection, with nearly 70 consoles/computers in my collection - and increasing on a weekly.

Some people I know encourage it, others think it's stupid.

 

I collect only for my own sake and don't care at all what others think about it. There are some people who know about my hobby and ask the one or another question from time to time, but I don't have the ambition to explain my whole motiviation to them - short answers do better than long discussions I think, people who "want to know why" will never really understand "why", but thats just my point of view.

Just like Alphagamer, I always collected stuff as far as I'm able to look back. At first there were comic books, then foreign money and finally games + films - still have all of my old, abandoned collections.
Personally, I must say I'm quite addicted to buying games (and films), but I don't hoard stuff. I sell doubles and items in bad condition/incomplete ones.

I think collections are a good thing to keep your money away from useless consumer shit that other people buy who are making arrogant comments on ones passion without having a huge amount of invested money instead.

 

I really regret selling all my own consoles to get some cash. My Saturn, Dreamcast, etc.. all the games were dear to me!

Now I miss having them, I'm in the process of buying them back, along with any I have missed! It also gives me the chance to start fresh with an imported NTSC system for full speed games. Currently loving the N64, my favourite console ever. Oh, and the Gamecube.

For me I collect things so I can play them whenever I want. So often I have thought 'I wish I had X game right now'.. so I just aiming to buy back all the games I have loved.

Oh, and I find retro games uch more fun than modern games. I dont have a 360 or a PS3, it feels liks its all about graphics, capacity and bandwidth nowadays, games seem very throwaway- I like the retro games for their memories. Theres something so artistic in creating such works within big limitations.

 

There's a lot of artistic merit to be found in the indie-ish games released on both PS3's PSN and 360's Live Arcade. I think people overlook that when they see just the blockbusters, most of which I don't give a fuck about. There's still plenty of games which aren't about polygon counts and bloom, and a lot of them hark back to the good old days in new and interesting ways.

As far as collecting goes, I'm not that much of a collector or hoarder outside of gaming, but the room I'm sitting in is full of gaming crap so I guess I'm pretty obsessive about it. And despite what I said above, I'm still all about the retro games.