[img width=640 height=189]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8808/18226401432_5aac114362_z.jpg[/img]I've been collecting video games in some fashion for a little over a decade now. Lots of those early years were spent waking up early to hit garage sales, leaving for work early each day so I could stop at pawn shops on the way, checking every paper buy/sell/trade in town, or refreshing kijiji/craigslist ads every free moment I had in order to scoop up awesome game deals before anyone else. However, since opening the store about two and a half years ago, those collecting habits have changed greatly.
When I first opened the store, quite a large chunk of our initial stock was from my personal collection. I did my best to locate several big lots, and got help from many friends selling me doubles and unwanteds for good deals, but a lot of it was games from my own shelf that I was hopeful I'd be able to find again down the road. I severely gutted my N64 and SNES collections in particular in order to get off to a strong start. At that point in time, I expected the store to be fairly niche and would have been content to just keep plugging away at completing my licensed NES collection leaving most other sections in a lesser state.
After opening the store, two things happened much quicker than I expected:
1) I finished my licensed NES set; and
2) The store took off far quicker than anticipated.
Both of these events got me re-evaluating my collecting goals. I no longer had time to hit garage sales or pawn shops. I was only able to make trips to pick up larger lots after an employee was hired and I just couldn't be bothered to keep up to date with buy/sell/trades of any type. Afterwards, all the games were now coming to me. It's a collector's dream, right?
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Gotta make the pickups bigger and badder than ever!!It may be a collector's dream, but it's certainly not a hunter's dream (
Bloodborne reference, yeah!). I noticed pretty early that it didn't quite have the same appeal when I got a cool game like
.Hack Quarantine or
Spike McFang handed to me across a counter than when I found stuff, even more common items, like
Earthworm Jim or a boxed console under a table at a community garage sale. The collection was growing, but the thrill of the hunt wasn't there. What's a guy to do?
I decided to focus more on the collecting side than the hunting side. Instead of one grand goal and a few lesser ones, I made myself many bigger goals. Instead of just going for an NES set, why not see how much of a PS2 set I can get? or maybe a Dreamcast set? TG16? SNES? N64? All the ATLUS games? I never see Game & Watches, I'd better track a few of those down! I've neglected foreign games, why not allow them into the game room? Is loose SNES really good enough? Nah..........let's do CIB SNES games!!!
After returning home today, with two new pinball machines that I had to drive nearly two hours each way to pick up, I realized I still really enjoy adding new items to my collection, just as much as I loved hunting before. I just had to shift my focus a bit and it's helped keep my collecting fun and fresh so that when I get those cool games passed across the counter, I still get to hold onto that joyful feeling I used to have while scooping up a box of games from the back room of a pawnshop that hadn't hit the sales floor yet.
