How To Narrow Down The Number Of Systems You Collect For?

[Tanooki]

I only stepped into this one in early January but things have progressed nicely. My only hobby is the gaming for the most part too. Sure I can find the old toys I do for display but it's more the hunt and you can't much play with stuff that's 30-50+ years old without worry so they're mostly display pieces. Not disabled here but the wife partly is so we're stuck, can't really move forward just stuck, so on a limited budget I hunt, I keep a few, sell more, get what I want and ration. It made me more and more narrow stuff, as it is also with a small kid and limited time that ate into it as well. I get that same feeling of feeling bad about it or dwelling on the amount and lack of amount of time invested.

 

I don't think I'd probably ever be very happy either with what's there, but I am resolved to drop things to a level where I will be. Between January and now I took some large steps just as you have. I've since nixed Sega: SMS, GG, Genesis, Dreamcast entirely. Wii+WiiU are out of the picture totally too. PS4 is relegated to a movie player as the games are out. I had some SNK games I got mostly with the system and a few I burned out on/bored of from the NG forum I've sold off too dropping that a bit. Walked back into the ownership of a KIT again which I never thought I would, first on NGPC which cut that spending/collecting, but also the GB as well which cut that spending heavily too, same goes with SNES too. I recently bought 2 NES games, the first in like 5 years and I didn't feel bad about it, but it won't be a pattern of growth either (one being a long wanted cheap lucky find, the other being a 2p co-op for me the kid which the find works for too.)

 

I've given up hunting on games, it's depressing, but I hunt for anything of interest so it's fun, get the same feels from it without the gaming dust bunny baggage.

 

Going forward really not sure now. I don't know if I'd part off more games, and if so what really. NES/SNES/N64 are comfortable sitting. GC I'd probably add a few once that HDMI adapter is out. NG I'm mostly done buying on outside of a few, same with the nGPC (want baseball stars loose.) Handheld -- Gameboy of any I'd sell some, but others I still want so it's a trade. Looking into a NES and GBA everdrive as well. Using GoG.com buys lately too on my computer. My passion isn't shot, just very tempered by prices and time and I can live with that.

[Keatah]

I've given up hunting on games, it's depressing, but I hunt for anything of interest so it's fun, get the same feels from it without the gaming dust bunny baggage.

 

Going forward really not sure now. I don't know if I'd part off more games, and if so what really. NES/SNES/N64 are comfortable sitting. GC I'd probably add a few once that HDMI adapter is out. NG I'm mostly done buying on outside of a few, same with the nGPC (want baseball stars loose.) Handheld -- Gameboy of any I'd sell some, but others I still want so it's a trade. Looking into a NES and GBA everdrive as well. Using GoG.com buys lately too on my computer. My passion isn't shot, just very tempered by prices and time and I can live with that.

 

I bet it's not so much "giving up and depressing", not so much "tempered" but instead, it's more maturity and practicality and becoming enlightened. Looking to expand and go beyond the ebay - goodwill - flea market - garage sale grind.

 

I used to chase after cartridges and consoles back in the 80's and 90's. It really became overwhelming and a serious time and money sinkhole. "Hunting" is really expensive and time consuming and offers the least reward for the most resources spent. Having moved beyond that was a good thing.

 

There are many things in this classic gaming hobby to do other than collect. You can curate, write, interview, troubleshoot, create, market, demonstrate, evangelize, educate, document, organize, learn the ins and outs of emulation, build hardware mods and emulation boxes, scan manuals, image floppies, dump roms, make videos, beta-test and debug, run a forum, host or participate in conventions.. And likely much more.

 

You can even redirect "the hunt" into an "online quest" for rare or hard-to-find disk images and documentation. You're not limited to business hours or other physical factors. It's more time-efficient and cost-effective.

[Tanooki]

That would be a way about it too no arguing that. My resolve at least for the time being is minimizing what I have down to where I think I'd like it to be. From there, play what I have, play a few more that I don't too. If I find something nice, if not, whatever as it's just happen stance I was there and it was too for what I think I should pay on it. Last weekend I found Ms Pac-Man tengen-NES, and I hadn't picked up a local or local wild NES game in about 5 years. The price was under $10 so I broke the trend, and I'll use it. If it wasn't one, at the price is there I'd put it towards something I will not adding to the pile in a negative way. That's basically my take. There's no cost involved if I still go to the flea because mostly it's getting out, exercise and each time seeing something new I had never seen before due to the variety at the one I visit so it's worth it. Getting something is just a bonus.

 

I went through the scan stuff, type up manuals for others, dump-hack(.NES/pasofami config) files for release, run a website (news, previews, reviews) and ran a couple forums back in the 90s into the 00s which even turned into a media job for 4 years doing writing and reviewing on handheld stuff in the GBA-DS era. I imagine if I really had the time I'd probably take up the play to review racket again just for fun but I don't feel there's much left at this rate to contribute as everyone has to have their own review and/or video site covering the same stuff these days. I think for now on or offline hunting for solid deals on a short list of researched fun stuff to do works well. Had I not done that I wouldn't have found out how fun Great Greed for old Gameboy is.

[AtariLeaf]

I think I'm shocking those who know me and my passion for the Tandy Color Computer but I just sold the whole lot of a good chunk of change to a fellow who's driving down to buy it all in early October. I've been taking stock for a while now and there are big chunks of my collection that just never get played. I'm in the process of also trying to unload my TG-16 collection including a nice CIB system, my small Genesis collection, my C64 stuff and my Yurkie refurbed CV with a small game collection. I'll probably list some stuff here in the near future but the bottom line is I'm going back to 2009 when I first started with my Atari and Nintendo systems and that was it. I was actually happier then.

 

Three times over the decades since 1992 I've bought and sold 2 massive collections and when I started up again in 2009 I vowed to remain focused but of course that didn't last long and the more I acquired I found the less happy I was with it. I grew up with the coco but I never played it because most of the games just aren't great and don't hold up well today. I just can't justify keeping it anymore. It does feel good to unburden oneself with "stuff".

 

I'm not getting out of collecting, but I've got to get back to the collection that I was actually happy with and play, and stop being a collector that just shelves everything.

[Austin]

Wow, it's amazing to think this thread has been going on for nearly two years now. Lots of different posts from a variety of angles.

 

I like playing games a lot, however, I also like buying games a lot. The later in the past has gotten pretty dangerous for me, financially speaking. Flash carts have helped me curb my spending habits. I can still play and experience the games as they were meant to on real hardware, but not have the burden of re-buying them, most of which I have owned in previous collections.

 

Rising prices across the board has also helped me stay away from buying. I look at a lot of prices now and say, "Yeah, that's dumb. I'm not paying that," and as a result I don't spend. It's easier for me now because I started collecting in the late '90s when games were dirt cheap. I know how far prices have come and we're past the breaking point there. It's easy to just walk away when everything is priced to the moon.

 

I have been in the position in the past where I have sold part of my collection or my consoles out of regret for simply being in the hobby. Lots of space wasted with consoles and games that get little use, and better ways I think I could be utilizing my money. A lot of that though I realize was due to simply not making enough wherever I was in my career at the time. Now, I am doing OK. Not great, but not nearly as bad as I used to. I can afford to have the consoles again and not feel bad about it. And when the urge to sell a system creeps in once again, I think of my current main hobby which is doing videos and streaming these old systems. Even if I only use something once a year, it provides a real purpose outside of my own enjoyment. Others get to enjoy seeing it in action, and that's worth holding onto some of the systems I have. It also doesn't hurt knowing that, at least when it comes to consoles, my dumb-ass will end up re-buying them again in the future regardless. It's better to just hold onto them.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

You know, even after 2 years of this thread you guys never stop being amazing and inspiring. I was feeling pretty down about my game playing and collecting hobby yesterday when I revived this thread, but I'm feeling a little more cheerful about things after reading all of your replies. They reminded me that no matter who you are or what your budget is like there needs to be some kind of purpose to your hobby beyond just "this seems like something cool that I'd like to have" to give you focus and not get burnt out on it.

 

For me personally my focus has always been just buying and playing whatever seemed fun to me at any given time, and as I've learned that's not really enough to keep me jumping from system to system; buying systems and games when they seem interesting and selling them later when they stop feeling interesting. Then there's the financial aspect to the hobby, which has come into play a few times for me with systems like the Atari 7800. A lot of you probably know that over the last couple years I've bought and resold an Atari 7800 system and a pretty substantial library of games for it twice. Both times I sold my 7800 setup it wasn't because I stopped enjoying playing it, it was because I felt like I had spent too much money on a system to play simple 8-bit games; even though I really like those kind of games. So what happened? I sold my 7800, ended up missing it and re-buying it later, and now (just like Austin mentioned) my dumb ass is back to wanting a 7800 again because I sold my last one for the wrong reasons.

 

So now I'm kind of at a point where I need to reevaluate my hobby and what I want to do with it going forward. I've been doing good selling off stuff that I don't play, including about 70% of my Game Boy collection which is currently up for grabs in the Marketplace forum, but I'm still lacking focus and purpose. I had been planning on taking the $800 or so from all my Game Boy sales and picking up a Nintendo Switch (mainly to play 2016 DOOM and Sonic Mania), but now I'm not so sure. What I do know from the whole 7800 experience though is that as long as I'm spending within my means and and not overtaxing my budget I shouldn't stress out over how much systems and games cost, particularly if they have some greater personal value than simply being cool. To give you an example: My wife and I used to have a ton of fun playing 7800 together when I had one, and sharing experiences like that with family and friends has a value that you can't really attach a dollar amount to.

 

Going forward I haven't exactly made up my mind what direction to take to find focus and purpose in my hobby, but I do have some good (and some kinda whacky but intriguing) ideas to consider now.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Jin

[Professor Gull]

So one of my most recent additions to the collecting scene was a facebook group for folks fairly local. Initially I was excited to see what peple had and hear some of the stories about acquiring it but then it all dumped down to.

 

"I picked up this lot now who wants to buy it off me for retail." um not me. I did some trades with folks through that group but some of them were really pushy about throwing in extra stuff I had cause theirs was worth more and Pricecharting or GameValueNow said so. So this group has strayed more from want to worth sadly so I have left them on the social aspect and purely use them to buy off my extra stuff when I get it "for retail" ( not really I tend to just see what folks are wiling to pay and work from there.)

 

Personally I just like to play more than collect on the side of things as well thus my 1-2 times a month Game nights with friends where er break out stuff and play whatever fancy's our desires. The good thing about that experience as well makes me realize that there are some games that are really just not worth it and thus get dumped out to the sale pile keeping my collection to a happy medium typically.

[Tanooki]

Nice post Atari I can relate. That is the attitude I pretty much took for the most part (SNK aside) when I got fed up awhile back. I'm just not willing enough to rip the band-aid vs just slowly lifting it which probably isn't the best but there are limits to how much I can offload at once without doing a reseller dump lot.

 

I had decided I wanted to get back to before the N64 ran me to other systems, but even managed on that as I have no will to own a Virtual Boy again. On top of that, care to mostly only own stuff I had originally owned in the 80s/90s on the systems but exceptions can and will be made if it's appealing enough likely few and farther between. The SNK stuff, I like my NGPC but got a kit, like my arcade cab but have most what I want and a multicart so it's managed. I've dumped all the sega and sony stuff among a wide range of other stuff and it's nicer having a few 100 games vs 600+ which isn't bad going back to 1985 forward. I am still looking at more kits to nip things into control vs what I'd really like to actually own vs just (rom) use and move along.

 

I've re-bought enough stuff and not due to original job loss recovery but stars in the eyes stupidity of something in front of me which is just not good money or space use.

[Keatah]

Having done the cartridge chasing and library-buildup thing from the 70's to the early 2000's I can definitely say the best time was the late 70's through mid 80's. Kinda fell out with the "crash" and all. And in the 90's I tried to get back into it and found it to be impossible. Impossible not because of prices or anything, the stuff hadn't been dumped onto the market yet. But it was a hollow pursuit at best. Scattered things were beginning to accumulate. None of which had real personal meaning. In other words, filler material.

 

Fast forward to today.. I'm quite happy and content to simply collect things for Apple II on an accumulation basis. That means only the occasional buy of something I don't have like a certain book or perhaps a card or peripheral I wanted as a kid but couldn't afford back then. It also means I don't spend a lot of time actively looking for something of interest.

 

Like for example if I sit my ass down to do ebay. I won't do it specifically for Apple II material, but I will check for Apple II stuff if I'm there buying something else and it's convenient. This is a stress-free method that has the added bonus of a surprise. Never know what's going to be for sale.

 

I'm sort of surprised/impressed with how nostalgic the old Apple II manuals (and other select books of even other subjects) are. How important they are to defining the personality of the machine. How well they capture the aura of the times back then. The style of writing. The choice of words. The tutorials. How they grew your awareness of a topic. The portrayal of a topics which were important at the time. And especially how optimistic they were - like having a computer controlled robot butler and daily Space Shuttle launches and all that.

 

So I say to anyone getting a classic computer, you have to get some manuals. The ones that came with it, and a few extras. Especially the ones you recall having actually read back in the day.

 

---

 

Back in the 1970's and early 1980's I sort of felt bad about the idea of throwing away the manuals once I had read them. It felt sacrilege to do so. Too many times we were interested in playing games. So they got piled up when not in use or "put over there". It was just recently the past 2 or 3 years I "re-discovered" all kinds of value in them. From bringing back the good times we'd sit on our bean bags eating junk food and watching cartoons on a cold fall day, with an arbitrary manual/book open - at the ready to trigger a technical discussion or answer some obscure question only I could think of. Or just to inspire us plain and simple. They were especially important to me as a kid as a method of passing time in the restaurant while waiting for the food to arrive - god only knows how long that can seem to a starving kid.

 

The Apple branded spiral-bound manuals were awesome sources of inspiration and confidence-building. As child in grade-school I learned DOS 3.3. And Applesoft Basic. And 6502. Truth be told I had a couple of TRS-80 books I liked reading, too, even though I didn't have a Model I/III or Model II. It was easy because they were that well written. And in present day I'll occasionally pull up a PDF of it to reference a fine point on syntax or something.

 

And by the way, I never did throw away my old manuals. I'm pretty sure I have them all. And many of my old books too.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Last weekend I found Ms Pac-Man tengen-NES, and I hadn't picked up a local or local wild NES game in about 5 years. The price was under $10 so I broke the trend, and I'll use it.

One of the better ports for sure. I believe I picked mine up in late 2002 / early 2003. Then in 2004 I stumbled upon a wild Tengen Tetris. You can tell by the similar menus and game modes the same team developed both games.

[AtariLeaf]

Well I ripped the rest of the bandaid off, so to speak. I made a bulk deal with the same fellow whos buying the coco stuff. He's taking my TG-16, C64, Colecovision and Genesis stuff (minus one Genesis and 3 games). Could I have gotten more separately? Sure but I look at it as getting market value for the Coco and TG-16 items and dumping the rest free, which honestly wasn't worth that much and didn't cost me much to get.

 

What does this leave me with? A core collection that was what I ironically wanted when I started - 2600/7800/XL/XE plus the NES and a sprinkle of SNES and that's it.

 

The bottom line is I feel a great sense of relief (well the moneys going to be really nice too) to offload so much that I don't use. I was honestly thinking for months maybe a couple years to get rid of the stuff that I got rid of but I didn't want to do it piecemeal and I didn't want to do a lot (and I mean a lot) of packing and shipping and dealing with ebay buyers and all the headaches that can come with selling this stuff online. To have one person buy everything and be willing to come and get it was fantastic.

[Keatah]

I'd like to do away with all the extraneous duplicate Apple II material in that manner too. And stick to the core stuff I has when I was a kid, and extra manuals and books + spare parts and the occasional interface/expansion card.

[Tanooki]

Good on you atari.

 

I wish I had the nerve to really do a cut but the reality is I've been with the Nintendo brand at the least since 1985. I know it wouldn't bug me horribly if I offloaded the post-SNES era console stuff, but I know I'd feel bad about it and continue to do so to the point I'd probably (most likely) buckle and grab it again even if it was years later which is a waste so I just leave it be. it's why I diced out all the other stuff, Sega, Sony and random other stuff. I know I could probably dump quite a bit of the handheld games which is like 1/2 my collection in just GB, GBC and GBA though since I have or will have(gba) kits. I'd be more likely to bulk sell off local to a shop or online much of my Lego first to drop some crowding.

[AtariLeaf]

Man it's a weird feeling but it's done. Just 20 minutes ago a collector drove down to buy all my Tandy Coco, TG-16, Colecovision, C64 and about 90% of my Genesis collection. I got a good chunk of change and a lot more room. Hopefully I don't regret it but so far everything I've gotten rid of has been things I don't play. This leaves me with my 2600/7800/XL/XE collection as well as my NES, SNES, Genesis and some gameboy games and the last three are pretty small - SNES has five games, Genesis has five games and 8 gameboy games. So a much smaller collection but strangely this is the collection I started with in 2009 that I was comfortable with before things started getting out of hand.

 

BTW, I kept a few stragglers that I'll be selling here on AA this weekend like some CV games, a couple C64 carts, Time Cruise, a multi-tap, and a Turbo Stick for the TG-16 and even my boxed Time Salvo for the 7800 (good game just not my thing) and for cheaper than the store. Not going to try to make a profit on it.