Collecting without the Internet
Imagine with me if you will, a world without the internet. I'm sure some of you remember this world quite vividly, others could never imagine such a thing. I was fortunate enough to remember what it was like not having the Internet, anyone else remember cutting up old magazine pictures for school reports? Or hand writing everything? Well I'm getting a little off topic now, but you get the idea.
I started writing this to allow you all to imagine game collecting without the use and help of the internet. Some of you rely completely on the Internet to get your games through the usual sites, while others (like myself) buy completely from the "wild" as it's now called. But just from the simple fact that you are reading this people proves that we all use to Internet somewhat in our collecting ways.
Maybe you just use this wonderful site to track your games and occasionally chat with others, or maybe you use the internet to its fullest extent and get every piece of information you can find on a game before you buy it.
This blog doesn't really have a point, I was just thinking of how different my collecting habits would be without the internet. Maybe you would like to explain how your collecting life would be different? Or maybe the thought of not having an Internet makes you want to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room, and you don't want to think about it anymore.
I don't rely on the Internet a whole lot in my collecting ways, I don't buy from the Internet and I still keep offline collection lists. I would probably still be buying a lot of the same stuff, but it just wouldn't be as much fun. Without my printed checklists, I wouldn't know which games I had left to buy, or which ones were considered rare. I would have no idea what a game was worth and without the huge audiences of Internet stores/auctions, a lot of stuff just wouldn't be worth nearly as much. Plus, I would have no idea there are thousands of other people who collect old games and I would never get to show off my awesome collection.
I was about to post this in the Collection Diary, but it was getting kind of long and off topic for that, so I decided to make it a blog post instead.
Anyway, here's the situation: my parents had a "card party" last night, which included 4 of my cousins, two around the age of 10 and two closer to my age. Me and the older ones get along great and we were playing Guitar Hero III, but then the younger ones wanted to play also, and kept "trash talking" us saying they were better and we were playing too slow. So I hooked up a spare PS2 and another guitar with Guitar Hero II on another TV for them. They got bored with it after 5 minutes, and then wanted to play Duck Hunt, so I set up an NES with that. At this point I was tired of listening to them, so I left to play cards with everyone else, but every 5 minutes they were coming to me asking me if they could play the Wii. I told them "No" every time. So a few hours later I go back up to find the youngest playing World of Goo on my Wii 
I don't mind them playing my games, as long as I set them up because I simply don't want them breaking something. It's bad enough when they're tripping over cords and stepping on guitars, but it really irks me when they go against my permission and start playing something I don't want them to.
It seems like every time they come over and play my games, I have bitter feelings about it. On one hand, I know they're just games and they're meant to be played, but on the other hand, they're mine and I don't like others going through them and playing whatever they want. To a very small degree, I have a similar feeling as when someone gets robbed, how they just feel violated that someone touched their stuff without permission.
And I think the worst part of it is, that they have no respect for not only other people's stuff, but for the games themselves. They see most of my collection as "old junk" and think it's worthless and don't care about it whatsoever. They just don't understand how a 20 something year old boxing game is worth more than their precious Rock Band.
So, now I'm thinking of banning them from my game room altogether. I don't really want to, but I really don't want something to break either.
Now, this wasn't supposed to be just a rant, I want to get your opinion on how other collectors feel about other people touching your stuff. So give the world your opinions on how you feel about friends/family members playing your collection.
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