The itch to collect never ends!

[bizzarnage]

Hey all. Been a while! I've been racking up titles left and right and lately it's been dawning on me that I have a very persistent habit. I get a little comfortable with where my collection is and then things pop up out of the woodworks and my collectors itch flares up like a bad rash! I've never been too into Xbox 360 games but I remembered there's a good handful of Atlus 360 exclusive RPGs that are a bit up there in price. Operation Darkness showed up on a local shop and got snagged before I could bag it and now I'm like a mad boar searching high and low to score my own! In the midst of that, I remembered a bunch of watchlist games I had pertaining to an anime series I loved as a teen and I'm scouting those now, too!

Anyone else have these sudden waves of collector-mania? What's your experience been like? What random games if any have you had your eyes on?
 I'm curious to know how mild/persistent my collectors mania is!

[bikingjahuty]

I don't feel like it's a burst anymore, but rather an evolution for me. I started out collecting more or less anything I could get my hands on for cheap from the NES all the way up to modern consoles (PS3, 360, and Wii when I first started). This resulted in my obtaining tons of games I owned simply because of how rare they were or how much of a great deal on got on them. I always collected to play, but I definitely lost track of that at a certain point. Several years ago I sold most of the fluff in my collection after obtaining 95% of all the games I'd ever wanted, and now I feel like my collection is mostly where I want it. My collecting has sort of changed from getting this cool game or that rare game, to completing loose carts, buying new games I think look good as they come out, and on rare occasions adding a new game for like the PS1 or SNES to my collection. However, once physical media dies and I've completed all my loose carts I really don't know where to go from there. I do want to get into arcade and pinball collecting someday, but this will heavily depend on me having the space to do it some day and what the prices for these machines do (they've skyrocketed over the past 5-years). But at this point there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel for my collecting. It's just that it'll take me at least 10+ years to probably reach that light still lol.

[tripredacus]

Being a collector of many things over the years, things do go in waves. You go crazy, slow down, refactor or take a break, come back and try out something different. Totally normal in my experience.

[wartoy]

I collect more than just video games so sometime game collecting takes a backseat like when I'm buying magic cards or movies.
But I take my time collecting I never feel the need to absolutely have to have somthing. I started collecting in my early teens and Im fifty four now and I don't want that extra stress. So I figured we have our whole life to collect the things we like so why not just relax and enjoy the ride.

[aliensstudios]

I stopped heavily collecting last year when I got my house, I actually got rid of a sizable amount, ~100 games. Rather, I started buying up all of the Blu-Rays I could find that I wanted to watch. I had like 7 Blu-Rays when I moved here, now I have like 300 titles. Recently, I've been buying Intellivision games, I'm sort of going for as complete a collection as I can get since the overall library is rather small; ~150 games or so if you don't count home-brews. It's odd, I've been collecting since I got out of high school, nine years ago, and in that whole time I think I gave up collecting for good just once, for like an 8 month period in 2017 when my life spiraled out of control, I even made a post about it here a while back. Even though I'm only buying like 1/4th of what I used to, I need collecting in my life as strange as it sounds. It keeps me sane I guess. The idea is for me to have an extremely curated collection; just movies and games that I want, as opposed to a few years back when I was buying up anything I could get my hands on. Rarely has that paid off.

[emporerdragon]

I find there's an ebb and flow to all my collecting wants, typically bringing focus to one thing or another. Video games are definitely down for collecting interest for me right now with the combo of being unable to obtain the new generation (plus nothing of interest for it) combined with having 90+% of the games of the previous generation I'd want, has lead me to focus more on the backlog, exploring Game Pass, or getting digital-only releases. Right now, manga's definitely where my hobby money is going as I find myself drawn to catch up/complete a few of the series I have, and I wind up getting a half dozen or so volumes after each payday.

[bizzarnage]

I suppose we all have this in common. I also collect TMG cards, and recently I've been collecting records of my favorite albums/artists as well as movies of good films that aren't consistently available on streaming services. I've even been getting Bishoujou statues of horror icons (much to my partners' dismay) It's become something that's snowballing but does take pauses. My collection personally has been of titles/genre's I love personally, as well as oddball/bad games I think would be funny to stream. It's always evolving in small ways, but it truly never ends. I agree with emperordragon that Manga's a great hobby to get into now; I've resurged with that a lot too and I've been buying a lot of the recently released Junji Ito books, as well as the big volumes of Shaman King. I'm on the hunt for a complete Love Hina collection! All in all, I think it's pretty amazing that, though our tastes are so varying and our age groups are so diverse, we all have so many mutual hobbies. Kinda makes this place a nice comfort zone!

Also, if I EVER make the money for it best bbelieveI'm getting arcade ccabinets Segasonic the hedgehog is a NIGHTMARE to emulate, and I'd like to do my III'rd Striking the way it was meant to be done; shoulder to shoulder!

[Warmsignal]

I've been dealing with this for the better part of a decade. Reaching a goal of sorts, then realize an entirely new one that you'd like to pursue. I find that now in my later years, I'm collecting a lot of the stuff I neglected to pay any attention to when I was more of a novice collector. Back then, I mostly went for games that fit the description of exclusive, adventure, platform, RPG, quirky, niche, etc. Now, I collect a lot more racing, shooter, arcade, "sport", beat em up / fighting, multi-plats, and so on. In a way, I'm glad that I collected just that other stuff earlier on, because now that's what everyone wants and a lot of those go for good money now. Meanwhile, the stuff I'm after now most collector's still don't pay much mind to, and most of it's rather inexpensive.

Lately, I've been picking up a flurry of snowboarding games. Most of them are really easy to pick up, and good fun. Got Transword Snowboarding in the mail the other day, and I've got Amped on the way right now, still trying to find a really clean foil cover SSX Tricky. I've been going after OG Xbox games like a madman, finding both more exclusives and tons of multi-plats I never owned. As where I used to go for exclusives only... god, there's probably 100 games that are now on my want list for that system. Some of them, I've been re-buying just to own the Xbox version instead of PS2. So many great games at reasonable prices. They're hitting my mailbox about every other day.

I just recently picked up Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Why did I sleep on this game for so long? is basically what I've been asking myself of every game I've picked up over the past few months. Realized I don't own 1080 on the N64, and naturally don't own 1080 Avalanche either. Realized "The World is Not Enough" for N64 was a totally different game than PS1, and consider the superior game, so I had to pick that up. There's really no end in sight. If I'm honest, there's tons of games I'd love to have still. Gaming is just so vast, you can't possible hope to have everything that piques your interest.

[droaa]

I would say going back as far as 2019 is when my collecting started to stagnate a bit. I've always been someone who's intent is to play the games I buy but I did lose track of that a few years prior and started getting whatever and left me with a good amount of clutter that left me feeling with a feeling of what am I doing with life? So I decided to take a huge chunk of what I had and trade it in to my local game store and free myself a bit and it was liberating. That was only the first step as I have more stuff to offload but as it stands, I feel much better. These days I dont have the temptation I used to have and am focused on playing what I have. Of course I do still buy games but with more focus on stuff I want like any new releases and older stuff that I have saved on my wishlist which I started to utilize to give me focus on what I truly want which is nice.

[telekill]

I actually have a hard stop on certain collections. At one point I considered having a complete set of N. American Game Gear games. Then prices started skyrocketing. About 15 years ago, I thought $30-$40 for an old 90's game was asking too much given that many modern games could be bought for $20 or less. Now some of those games are $100-$200+. Basically, I was priced out of collecting. So at the start of last year, I had bought my last two physical GG games and then decided to buy an Everdrive. I finally have it as of last month but at least now I have an entire collection for my GG regardless that it's not worth anything in the resale market.

I've been mostly done with Genesis for a while but wanted Zero Tolerance. Couldn't find one anywhere for a decent price and eventually gave up. Then for PS1 and PS2... there's a small handful of games left I'd like to get... a couple of which are to simply replace favorite Dreamcast games now that I don't have a Dreamcast anymore. I'm not going to bother with PS4 games anymore as I feel I have everything I wanted from that gen.

That leaves current systems.... Switch and PS5. I don't even anticipate buying the next Nintendo system. Switch offers almost all of their IPs in HD and I'm fine with that being the end goal for Nintendo collecting. PS5 thus far... it's been an underwhelming launch year. Sure, there's some things to play here and there but almost all my PS5 games have been given to me via my Plus subscription. I only recently bought my second physical PS5 game since launch and it's not supposed to get to me until late next month.

As for collecting other things, I have a nerd shelf that I had hard stop on... collector's edition figures basically. I don't even buy physical movies often anymore... generally waiting to buy a couple during Black Friday sales as that's the only decent deals I see for that once... "greatest shopping day" of the year.

My days of collecting are coming to a close... at least this chapter. Now I'm simply trying to find a gaming community that can reminisce of the games of yesteryear with me. Luckily, I found this site.

[doafan]

After the arrival of our second kid I started to sell some of my games just to purchase new ones, as well started to mod the consoles that I started to get with this money, please don't take the wrong idea cause really like to collect but things right now are kinda hard, at least for me but one way or another am still adding games/consoles to my collection, or should I say our collection, there are some games that belongs to my wife, some others to my daughter and if everything goes well in a couple of years I'll start adding games for my little kid and yes, the itch to collect never ends!

[mrkonasoni]

Indeed, even if you could get ALL games you wanted, after a while you would want to give a chance to stuff you couldn't vae bought previously, and because new games get released all weeks.

I personally think after collecting the stuff I have in the list I will take a rest from collecting and buying some stuff.

[doafan]

Indeed, even if you could get ALL games you wanted, after a while you would want to give a chance to stuff you couldn't vae bought previously, and because new games get released all weeks.

I personally think after collecting the stuff I have in the list I will take a rest from collecting and buying some stuff.

Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well, to be honest got some extra money at my Mercado Libre account, this doesn't mean that am going to use it just to purchase more games, I do want more but still have a lot of them that I first need to finish and even more that I need to start, my daughter will return to school so need to purchase a lot of books, uniforms and supplies first, games can wait cause education is always a priority.

[mrkonasoni]

- Answering to @doafan

Indeed, there is stuff more important than videogames, always.
I wish the best to your daughter starting school again.

[seether]

You should get that checked out by a doctor.