Collecting for collecting sake

[blissfulnoise]

I collect for the systems I enjoy now or enjoyed from my childhood.  I do set expectations depending on the system for collecting CIB or loose carts.

For example, I personally hate the way complete SNES games look.  They're large, not aesthetically appealing to me, and are dull.  I do have a few exceptions in my collection for games that are particularly valuable or I personally enjoy very much.  For NES games, I try to collect CIB for the games I love or think look (visually) interesting, but for the most part, I collect loose, again for space reasons.  My NES collection is probably 1/3 CIB, and 2/3 loose.

Atari/INTV/Coleco games are pretty difficult to collect CIB and I don't have a collector's mentality towards those games, but I do enjoy playing them, so my Atari collection is 99% loose.  I have a couple of CIBs for games I love dearly (Raiders of the Lost Ark for one).

Pretty much for any other system, it's CIB.  This means SMS, Genesis, Playstation, GB/GBA, 32X, 3DO, CDi, etc, etc, etc.  I do not make exceptions unless the game is particularly popular and or valuable and I can use it for trade bait.

Regarding "crap" games, I try to stay away from putting "filler" games in my collection unless I'm going for a complete set.  I simply don't have the space to collect all the sports games on the PSX.  If you look at my collection, you can see I try to target popular or rarer titles.  I'd rather have a Suikoden 2 than all the Madden/Live/NHL games on the PSX.

I'm also big on imports, particularly for the Saturn and PC Engine.  They can be prohibitively expensive sometimes, but they're certainly worth it to me.

But, all that said, remember that one man's crap is another man's treasure.  Judging the worth of someone's collection via criteria like CIB or a large amount of sports games is self-defeating.  Collect what you like, and let everyone else do the same.  On DP, someone recently posted their small collection for comments.  But when you checked it, he nearly had every single Castlevania game on both sides of the ocean including arcade PCBs with paperwork.  That's impressive.

As one of the people with a larger collection on this board, I felt I needed to chime in because I don't know who exactly your post is referencing.  I don't really need to defend my collection, frankly it speaks for itself.  But know I'm as likely to plop down $2.00 for a loose copy of Arch Rivals on the NES as I am to put down $150 for Zelda's Adventure on the CDi (which I did recently).

[snes_collector]

As long as the price is right I'll buy, I'll just get the box and manual later.

[Alabama-Shrimp]

When i thought of this post i wasen trying to make anyone justiefy there collections, i was just asking as some people seam to have alot of games and did they get them as like you and me it was the one that they really liked /wanted or were they trying to compleat sets or whole system collections.

Personally i dont think i would ever want all the games on a perticular system as nearly always 2/3rds of the games will be shite or sports, i do try to collect sets though as i have alot of Castlevania and mega man games but even then they can get into the realm of crap (the PS2 castlevanias).

I do try to gte CIB though unless it is rare, cheap or i know i can sell it on the ebay (not done that in ages tho)

[wrldstrman]

i grab anything that the price is reasonable

[Funk_Buddy]

I used to buy anything that was a good deal, but these days I have to be a little more selective on what I buy. I still buy games I'll probably never play since I'm going for some complete collections, but not for all systems.