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Do you play with your collection


Jim Pez

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Consoles I own are hooked up, with the exception of a few backups/older model revisions in storage. I don't have anything on display. Games I've acquired over the years don't get used as much as I've moved over to flash carts, soft mods, drive emulators etc.. for convenience and saving money in this ever increasing costly hobby. I've sold off unused stuff in small spurts over the years.

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When I buy a game for my "collection", it's always to play it. However, due to time constraints and other obligations, a lot of times they just end up sitting on a shelf. But the intention is to play when making the purchase.

This.

 

I've got a backlog of probably dozens of games I've gotten in the last couple of years that I haven't even fired up yet. I swear, I meant to play them when I got them! :P :-D

 

Part of the issue is I have soooo many different consoles, and of course, so little time to play them.

 

There is one instance of a game I wanted to play, but never did and now I kind of don't want to. I got Motorodeo (Atari 2600) for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I was excited to play it when I got back home from all the relatives' places up north. But then one of my bunnies died that night and I kind of forgot all about it. Now whenever I look at the cart I get kinda sad. :(

 

OTOH, Tank (that was her name) would have wanted me to play it, right...? :ponder:

Edited by BassGuitari
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See now with having 2 friends who also collect and play we setup usually one night a month to just sit down and play whatever hits the fancy. We swap systems in and out and go through tons of games in a 14 hours time frame. Other than that though I still find myself buying games and letting them sit for a bit before I personally get around to playing them. Then there is always the issue of talking some of those fairly pricey games for the Saturn and actually using them. (Now I tend to use backups of my games rather than the originals for preservation sake...or just paranoia).

 

Like today I am headed out later to pickup a box with a Genny model 2 and 20 plus games. I probably wont get to all of them till the end of the month at least but I will go through them all even the sports titles.

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I play everything in my collection, and I spend about about 20 hours a week doing so most weeks. I'm one of those collectors who doesn't like to keep anything in their collection that they don't enjoy playing. Sometimes I do end up buying games that I think I'll enjoy playing but later change my mind about when I try them out, but in those cases I just resell the game or system and put the money towards something else that I will actually have fun playing.

 

I used to have a pretty big backlog of games that I hadn't played or didn't have much desire to play, but I didn't find much satisfaction in having systems and games that just sat around collecting dust so about a year ago I started selling off the things I didn't play and slimming down my collection to just games and systems that I would use. I've been much happier with my collecting hobby since then. :)

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The only things I ever buy for display are things like paint, posters, and little doo dads like amiibos (which I also use). Everything in my collection is bought and played. Some more and some less, but it's all played. I even run game parties ever month or 2 months so other people can come and play with my toys.

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I always intend to play the games I buy, but what I intend to do and what I actually do are two different things. I have so many games at this point that most of them just go on the shelf and I tell myself I will play them when I get time. Whether I will ever get that time is the big question.

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Over the past few years I've only bought stuff I intend to play. However, in the past I did intentionally buy a lot of consoles mainly for display. I think I played all of them at least once or twice, but mainly just to try them out, I never had much intention of keeping them hooked up.

 

That pretty quickly got out of hand, though. So now I try to buy only things I think I'd have fun playing.

 

I do still have a few things that are mainly for decoration, like I've got an original Famicom on a shelf that I don't even have cables for. I just think it looks cool.

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I play my 5200 and Vectrex mostly on a regular basis,but I do always test out/play new systems and games I get.

 

Certain systems I haven't touched in awhile though. Still have so many games to try out I've bought years ago.

 

I still need to get some games for my Sega CD.Been on the lookout for a good copy of Time Gal.

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I buy with every intention of playing, but sometimes you grab a deal here and there. I think I would use my collection more if the prices never skyrocketed. I am very appreciative that I got a Jaguar and 5 games for like $40 years ago, but never did I imagine that collecting for the system would inevitably turn out of what I'm willing to play for a system I'm not attached to. So I amassed items (that I still want, to be fair) that never got used because my collections never got completed with the things I want for them. The ease of emulating on my Ouya also makes it nearly impossible for me to want to bring out OG hardware. I didn't know back then that emulation was going to get SO easy. I didn't know even stuff like Gamecube was going to spike to a high degree. Most of the stuff I buy today are games I always wanted, but put off thinking I'd find a deal and never did, so I figure since I have a small Gamecube collection, I may as well add stuff to it that I actually want to necessitate the collection I do have.

 

But the kicker in all of it is because you really can't sell your collection off because you need OG hardware to play light gun games anyways, and I have guns for all my systems. And who wants to keep a shitload of systems around taking up space and not have a decent amount of games to throw in them if you ever do hook it up? I suppose I'd get rid of shit if I ever needed the money. With eBay and Paypal fees and the over-priced shipping I paid getting a lot of my items to Canada, I'm better off just "adoring" my nice sized collection than taking the time to get rid of it because if I ever wanted anything back, with the current even more insane shipping to get to Canada, a poor Canadian exchange rate and high prices, I'd NEVER get any of this stuff again. eBay buyer prices and eBay seller's profits... two totally different things.

 

I think the shelf collector stigma is against those who are buying up really rare, expensive titles. If you're buying up affordable games, even if you don't get around to them, you're in it because you love it.

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Yes. Everything I bought, I picked up to play. Acquisitions over time has made it to where if I wanted to put a system or two on display, I could. Stuff gets rotated...just like it was a library or something. Lol.

 

I have made some repro PSX discs as an art venture. They play...but I also have less dressed up versions as well.

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Ok let me ask this part of the question.

 

Lets say you got an official Air Raid for the 2600 or a NWC cart would you plug it in and play that?

 

Admittedly for cart systems there is not much risk for what can happen unlike a disk system which can suffer disk rot or scratches or explosions (did the last one with a PC game some time back that was messy).

 

Personally I play with whatever is on hand but then again I don't own anything I would consider too pricey to replace. But knowing some collectors and their standpoint on condition and such would you play with your $1000 plus games?

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Personally I play with whatever is on hand but then again I don't own anything I would consider too pricey to replace. But knowing some collectors and their standpoint on condition and such would you play with your $1000 plus games?

 

Well sure. I mean I drive a $30,000+ car. I play a $2,000+ guitar. I live in a $400,000+ house (that I don't even technically own yet, but am responsible to the bank for).

 

I understand buying stuff because you just *want* to display it, and don't care about playing it, but I would never buy something and then be afraid to play it. That doesn't make sense to me, because unless you are really dirt poor, in which case you probably shouldn't be buying $1,000 games anyway, I think we all use stuff every day that's worth more than that. And I don't just mean stuff necessary to modern life; many people have other hobbies (like music or photography) where the stuff they buy and use on a completely elective basis is worth more than even the rarest video game. And they may use those things to the point of wearing them out.

 

If you're worried about condition, I mean to me it's no different than buying a really expensive camera lens or something and then never taking it out of the box because you want to resell it someday. Why did you even buy it then? Just use it; yeah, it's going to wear and you'll probably get less money for it because of that. But you're going to get a lot of good pictures out of it in the meantime, and that's what your depreciation is paying for.

 

Same goes for games. You're paying for the enjoyment you get out of the game, whether that's by playing it or just by looking at it, but don't worry that much about the depreciation. Not many things in life are "free". Trying to keep a game in perfect condition with the intent to resell for the same or more than what you got it for is the equivalent of trying to get free entertainment out of it. That's not even really "collecting" to me, that's "investing" or even worse, "speculating".

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Same goes for games. You're paying for the enjoyment you get out of the game, whether that's by playing it or just by looking at it, but don't worry that much about the depreciation. Not many things in life are "free". Trying to keep a game in perfect condition with the intent to resell for the same or more than what you got it for is the equivalent of trying to get free entertainment out of it. That's not even really "collecting" to me, that's "investing" or even worse, "speculating".

See that makes sense to me as well since really the market that's been created for video games is one that volatile and with rules never set in stone. How you value something is personal preference compared to how others consider its value.

 

I guess though there are some that might question keeping things in a superb condition for historical reference though and not just resell ability. maybe that is more to the point of wondering what in your collection are you okay playing with if you might have something that's historical in nature.

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