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Nostolgia for the collecting era

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BinaryMessiah:
Because of COVID I really reduced my wishlist and laser focused on game genres and platforms that mean the most to me. Before, I was buying whatever I could that was cheap enough. I got lucky and bought most of my holy grail games before COVID hit and they were reasonable prices. I started seriously collecting in 2007 when I got my first job.

Now, some games' prices just can't be justified. I also switched to flash carts, softmods, and ODE drives for most of my retro consoles because I had a feeling prices would just keep going up and there were so many games I wanted to play that I didn't get to buy before the prices went insane. I have a pretty nice collection of stuff, and still occasionally spend a lot on a grail item here and there, but for the most part I'm staying laser focused. I know many people who just got started right before COVID just gave up and switched to emulation and I can understand that. There are still a few systems that are cheap to collect for (mostly HD era systems), but I would have done the same if I didn't already have all of these systems and just had to modernize them. Now, because of the tariff situation in the US, I'm glad I got all of these parts for my consoles as prices are skyrocketing. SD cards, SSDs, pretty anything tech related is starting to price so many people out. It's a constant race to stay ahead.

bikingjahuty:

--- Quote from: BinaryMessiah on January 26, 2026, 09:39:35 am ---Because of COVID I really reduced my wishlist and laser focused on game genres and platforms that mean the most to me. Before, I was buying whatever I could that was cheap enough. I got lucky and bought most of my holy grail games before COVID hit and they were reasonable prices. I started seriously collecting in 2007 when I got my first job.

Now, some games' prices just can't be justified. I also switched to flash carts, softmods, and ODE drives for most of my retro consoles because I had a feeling prices would just keep going up and there were so many games I wanted to play that I didn't get to buy before the prices went insane. I have a pretty nice collection of stuff, and still occasionally spend a lot on a grail item here and there, but for the most part I'm staying laser focused. I know many people who just got started right before COVID just gave up and switched to emulation and I can understand that. There are still a few systems that are cheap to collect for (mostly HD era systems), but I would have done the same if I didn't already have all of these systems and just had to modernize them. Now, because of the tariff situation in the US, I'm glad I got all of these parts for my consoles as prices are skyrocketing. SD cards, SSDs, pretty anything tech related is starting to price so many people out. It's a constant race to stay ahead.

--- End quote ---


I sometimes wonder if I would have got into collecting as much as I did if flash carts had been around back when I started collecting. I'm pretty sure I would have at least gone after copies of games I owned as a kid, but part of me doubts I'd have collected with the same intensity I did during my hardcore collecting and game hunting years. Sadly, if flash carts had been way better like they are now and ODEs had existed back then, I'd have missed out on all those gret memories I mentioned in my first post on this thread. Still, Flash Carts and ODEs are incredible and I other than emulation, they're really the a miracle in terms of preserving games while also being able to play them as they were originally intended, on original hardware.

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