As I said in the main thread post, 2010 is when my status as a collector went into overdrive and at one time I was accumulating about 500 games a year in my collection. As many of us know being a video game collector during the first half of this decade was a fairly cheap, easy, and rewarding hobby; you could literally go into any random thrift store or pawn shop in 2012 and find rare/valuable games for a couple bucks each. This was absolutely my experience and from 2010 until probably 2016 I lived for the hunt.
It was around 2013 that I really started noticing a huge surge in popularity in retro gaming and game collecting. At the time there was a large used media store where I used to score the majority of my deals, and it felt like it went from being a goldmine I scored at constantly to being a place where I was literally racing hundreds of other collectors, resellers, and even the employees that worked there for games. This pretty much became the case more and more from that time period. So more and more of my games started coming from ebay and game stores, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing since this allowed me to pick up rarer and more expensive titles that had eluded me in the wild for years. Sadly, by 2017 I feel like game hunting in my area had pretty much dried up. Sure, there was still the odd score here or there, but all my main channels for finding games on the cheap had pretty much dried up.
Around this time however, I found myself with nearly every retro game I'd ever wanted. Also by the time I had become a much more focused collector, picking up games only for consoles I really cared about. This essentially meant I ditched most of my NES, Sega CD, and Gameboy stuff since I didn't have the attachment to it I did for consoles like the Dreamcast, PS2, or N64. Some of that was a willful acceptance, but a lot of it was forced downsizing as I found myself in financial jams a few times as a result of large unexpected expenses at various times over the decade. The biggest one was my girlfriend, now fiancee, and I needed to get out wisdom teeth removed within 5 months of each other. Even with insurance that ended up costing a total of $4000 between the two of us. I probably sold 10% of my collection during this period, leting go many titles I'd preferred to have kept. However, it made me realize that letting go of games was a lot worse than not having them anymore; essentially once I sold the game and it was gone, I didn't care as much as I'd imagined.
Following this great purge I tried replacing many of the titles I'd sold off, as well as a bunch of new titles I still wanted, but sadly the realization that I didn't care of a lot of my games were sold or not greatly diminished the importance of being a collector. I fought this feeling for the better part of two years, until this summer while rearranging my collection I realized that I no longer knew why I had so many video games; I got into collecting to rebuy titles I had growing up or titles I wish I had, but that then turned into getting rare, obscure titles; and then into titles that looked like they might be cool, but otherwise I didn't know if I'd ever play. The result was a collection of games, a quarter of which I didn't care that much about and likely would never play. Realizing this was difficult to admit to myself, but it wad been the elephant in the room for too long.
This brings me to where I am as a collector right now. I've made a point, even before this realization that I have a massive collection to play, and if there are games I'll never play or play and realize they aren't that great, they don't belong. This trend towards downsizing has been good for me in a variety of ways, but i has also left me wondering where I see my collection in the future. At one time I imagined having a large bedroom or basement filled from wall to wall with games on shelves. I wanted to be one of those mega collectors like The Flea, and while I still think collections like that are amazing, I would no longer be satisfied in having that many games I'd never play or even think about playing. In a funny way VGcollect was responsible for fueling my collectorism during the middle of this decade, but due to many others finding themselves in my situation and also things like the 52-games challenge, this site now fuels my desire to play my games and to experience what they're actually like. It's now significantly more important for me to play and experience the games in my collection more than simply owning them and having them on display.
So finally, where do I see my collection in 2029?
While I am definitely way more of a gamer than a collector now, I think that I'll still have a very large collection by then, probably even bigger than it currently is at the moment. The reason for this is there are still a ton of games from this gen that have and have not been released that I'd love to own and play someday, as well as a whole new generation of games that is on the horizon.
In terms of retro collecting I am nearly 100% done collecting older games I don't already own. However, one thing I've been casually working on is getting boxes and manuals for my loose cartridge based games. I really want to have these games as complete as possible not only for the sake of collectability, but because I want the full experience of having these games including the box art and manuals that someone would flip through when these games first came out. It's definitely more of a nostalgia thing for me. In regards to consoles like the TG16, 3DO, Neo Geo, and other consoles I never got into collecting for, I likely will never do this since I have no nostalgia for them, they've become prohibitively expensive to collect for, and I simply have too many other games to enjoy that I'd likely find more enjoyable. So in all my retro collection will likely stay the same over the next 10-years despite the box upgrades I plan on getting for most of them. If anything, I can see my retro game collection being a lot smaller in a decade from now, and that's okay with me.
One final thing I sincerely hope I've jumped into by 2029 is being able to buy and own arcade cabs and pinball machines. I've always loved arcade and pinball machines, but given their size and cost, owning even one has been absolutely out of the question for me as someone who has been forced to rent this entire last decade. I plan on working my ass off harder then I ever have to be able to buy a home in the next 10-years and I can't think of a more appropriate way to celebrate home ownership than filling it with arcade machines and pinball machines of my childhood. I'd love to have a basement with a House of the Dead cabinet sitting right next to a White Water pinball machine. Obviously, this part of my collection will be very dependent on my future income and my ability to finally afford a house, but if I can accomplish this you can be certain I will finally own one of these glorious machines.
Before I end this very, very long post, I want to also say that this next decade I'll likely be assuming a different primary hobby instead of gaming and certainly collecting. That's not to say I'm going to abandon either (especially after writing all that lol), but I yearn to get back into other interests of mine that have been sorely neglected or pushed aside for the last 10-years of my life. For one I used to be an avid cyclist and only wanted to ride by bike as long and as far as I could over 10-years ago. I also was a huge hockey nut around 15+ years ago which I'd like to try and get back into. I'd also like to try and discover new interests as well, maybe travel or something. In many, many ways I want my life to look way different then it did the last decade, but one area I don't want to change, nor could I ever change, is how much I love video games and how important they've been to me my whole life. They will certainly be important to me in the coming decade and until I die someday, that I am certain of.
