Advice from people who have sold their collections

[Leon Retro]

Now, I’m not suggesting that we’re going to have a mass video game crash and everyone’s going to ditch their stupid touch screen phones (if only)... but it does make you wonder where it’s all going to end.

I think a lot of gamers are happy to focus on a few games, so there will always be enough "big thing" games every few years to keep them happy. The few big publishers still around don't have anything to worry about.

I just hate hate that video gaming has gone completely mainstream. I was much happier being a nerd buying Mean Machines to find out what NES games were good.

As much as the industry is bigger than ever, I think it has always been mass market. The Atari VCS/2600 was a huge success in the late 70s, home computers were used by all ages in the 80s, and consoles like the Mega Drive and SNES were popular with kids, teens, and young adults in the 90s. Also, the NES was a hugely succesful mass market console in 80s America.

When people say "gaming used to be the sole domain of nerds", I don't think that's true at all. I remember clearly that all sorts of people were into gaming back in the day, even if it's true that there were nerds/geeks who embraced the hobby with more enthusiasm than your average gamer. The nerd/geek gamers were very important in the early days of gaming, but their influence had waned quite dramatically by the end of the 90s.

The major difference in gaming I've seen over the past 20 years, is a move away from the industry catering to nerds/geeks. Instead the focus has been on the broader casual market. This has led to lots of devs and publishers going out of business, because sales expectations are based on mass market titles like Grand Theft Auto V. Games that the nerds/geeks tend to crave and appreciate are unlikely to sell 10 million copies, so the few remaining publishers naturally cater to the broader casual market.

[Escape-To-88]

Thinking of a purge. A question, has anyone ever successfully got rid of their gear and STUCK to it?

[Wools]

I did!

From the age of about 14 - 25 I spent almost all my spare time and cash playing and collecting games ending up with about 25 consoles & handhelds with around 500 games. I adored that era of my life but a few things happened which whittled down my enthusasm and collection. Firstly was pratical, I passed my driving test when I was 20 and quickly worked out that insurance will be more money than I possessed so spent 6 months breaking the collection up. Over the next few years till I hit 25, I slowly got my head on and realised that games collecting was becomming detremental to my life.

Rather than enjoying my life, I was spending too much time and money buying new and classic games, hoarding **** games and talking about them rather than actually playing them. Combined with the fact I worked in the games industry too, I was being consumed and they were becomming a bit too of a drain. So I originally decided to sell everything and keep 1 modern console and 1 retro console. Over the next decade, I had a few ups and downs with the collection, re-buying consoles and games, but now as a 35 year old man, I have a PC, all my games are digital on it and I have just 5 physcal games under my bed. 3 are games I worked on and mean a lot to me, 1 is my original import copy of Ridge Racer Type 4 (It means and symbolises more about my life than it should!) and a signed copy of Metal Gear Solid 3 when me and my Brother meet Hideo Kojima.

I'm sure I'll pick random bits up over the years but I'm so happy I was able to get all that **** out of my life and focus on what I enjoyed about gaming more than anything; Actually playing them.

If anyone is considering it, my advice would be to ask yourself, why do you have this collection and does owning it bring you real joy? If so, keep hold of it! However, if you work out that the enjoyment you now get is just staring at the spines of the NTSC games, unpacking a limited edition box and then re-packing it and not much else, maybe try to focus on what brought you into the hobby in the first place, from Arcade thrills or in-depth RPG worlds and for the next month, just play the games. That may help you disconnect the idea of collecting vs playing.

Finally, another issue for me was retro. I adored it and still do, but found myself choosing 1 game from my collection of 500, playing it for 5 minutes and thinking 'Mario 64 is still the best game ever!' but then putting it back and not doing anything else. I finally worked out that playing and thinking about a retro game wasn't just enjoying the game, it was revisiting the era in which it was released. It was just nostalgia. Although that's fine in and of itself, it became poisionous when I was picking up all my old games and assigning them a real world meaning, almost like buying a cuddly toy and thinking it's real! Over the years of my purge, I found my current happy place is playing brand new games day to day but with the occassional jaunt back to retro titles and for that, emulation is perfect for me.

Although I look back between the era of 1998 - 2010 with real fondness as a gamer when I was collecting it all, I do sometimes wish I could go back and not spend so much money, waste so much time and forge a more healthy relationship with gaming than I did back then. Still, I learned from my mistakes and try to not allow collecting to ever invade my life again.

[samanosuke]

I’ve stuck to it pretty rigidly since selling off almost everything circa 2006, from PCE to Saturn, Amiga 4000 to AES.

Like Wools described, I felt much the same; that my collection was taking over my life. I had all this crap that took up a lot of space, and moving anywhere became a pain. Every payday I’d spunk money on the premium Saturn games, playing them for just a few minutes each, and then spending more time wondering which game to play out of my vast collection than actually playing games.

I pared back, keeping just a MegaDrive and SNES, and a very modest collection. It still requires discipline - sometimes I get the urge - but I remind myself there are still games in my small collection that I haven’t finished, some even that I’ve barely played. Life gets in the way so much that it’s hard to dedicate much time to gaming, and even when I do get time I find myself playing the same games over and over again. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of clocking Streets of Rage 2, or trying to one-credit Golden Axe, and I’m much happier for it.

[trev1976]

I've been collecting for over 20yrs but just recently I've decided I'm not going to bother. It's no fun anymore and I've got way to much stuff. I don't plan on selling any of it but I certainly don't want anymore retro.

[gordon]

I’m in the same boat, funding whatever I buy on Switch & PS4 with money from selling my retro stuff. I can’t decide whether I’ll keep a few favourite games from each system (in the same way that I keep books I’ve read but never will again), or just get rid of the whole lot. Either way it’ll take a few years before it all goes.

[Cepp]

Looks like I'll be doing this myself, or at least severely pairing back. I've wanted to do it for a couple of years now but always put it off or rebuy stuff. I'll have a friend lodging with me in the coming weeks though and he'll be taking the gaming room. There isn't really anywhere else to put it and I don't want it taking over my living room or bedroom.

It's more an excuse I suppose to finally get on with it.

[vanpeebles]

I still have tons of stuff, but I did trim it down by loads to focus on quality over quantity. Space is always at premium sadly, hoping to do the loft out into a retroden.

[importaku]

Lol my god how did I miss this thread just finished the entire thing, teh drama!!!

Have to agree about as a collection grows it can start to take over both in space and the hassle of been an insurance risk. Especially bothersome if someone no longer plays the games then it’s an additional burden. Apart from a few things I have got rid of like my pc engine & super famicom collections the rest is mostly intact but the n64 will be leaving next as I no longer play it at all, I doubt i’ll Get much for a lot of it but there are some pretty rare hardware and games in there to offset the rest of it not been worth much.

Some stuff is served by emulation nicely but other systems I prefer to still have the hardware about.

[Mayhem]

Been thinning my collection for the last 2-3 years and still going, deciding what bits to keep and sell on. Ongoing, C64 tapes and disks right now, and perhaps Vic20. Next will probably the original (non homebrew) Atari 7800 games. After that, maybe some more Club Nintendo items, and Nintendo handheld bits. I'm definitely keeping everything NGPC and Vectrex, and all my C64 cartridges.

[JazzFunk]

I really need to thin my stuff out. I started off by giving my mate a PS3 with about 30 games and I gave our kid about 50 360 games. But I've still got hundreds and hundreds of games.

It's a bit like a ball and chain. I have stacks and stacks of games. I find them cheap all the time, great stuff as well! Got the equivalent of like two rooms worth full of games, CDs and DVDs!

Even from where I'm lounging right now, I can see a stack of games and films I don't really need. For example:

MEN OF VALOR OG XB
HALO OG XB
DUKE NUKEM FOREVER PS3
RED FACTION ARMAGEDDON PS3
LA NOIRE 360
ISS 2 OGXB
MASS EFFECT 2 360
RESIDENT EVIL V 360
BLOOD DRIVE PS3
TERMINATOR SALVATION PS3
THE DA VINCI CODE OGXB

All those cost me 50p-£1. I don't NEED any of them. I've clocked Resi V on two formats and own the remaster. Red Faction I clocked on 360 a decade back. DNF in 2012. Got two copies of ME2. Halo twice in the early noughties. And I just can't be arsed with the rest.

Multiply the above by a hundred or so. Need to sort the wheat from the chaff!!!

[JazzFunk]

(best thing though was I just found a 360 copy of LEGO INDIANA JONES 2 at the bottom of that stack, it's BC, I really wanna play it and I don't even remember buying it!!!)