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Nostolgia for the collecting era

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sworddude:

--- Quote from: Warmsignal on January 19, 2026, 10:51:24 pm ---
I would say the golden years were over by around the time I first joined this forum, 2013/14 or so? Game collecting was getting so popular, and so competitive already by that point, you couldn't find stuff the way you did in the years before. This is when it started to go from being purely a joy, to sort of a chore. You had to be more crafty, more diligent. The world was slowly turning to shit because everybody was getting a smart phone and corporations were beginning to take over the Internet and subsequently destroy society. So there's this sort of split between game collecting in the old days before Internet was real life, and you would just use it to communicate about your real world findings, and then the era after it had taken over where there was little left out there in the real world to find, but everyone online had everything that you wanted and was dangling it over your head like a carrot. I'm not so nostalgic for that era where it all got tougher and tougher, and was mostly relegated to buying things online. The fun was all but gone by that point, especially by the later 2010s.

Once the pandemic hit, the hobby was wrecked. I continued on collecting for several more years beyond that, but it was honestly painful at that point, not fun at all. I haven't actively been a game collector in nearly two years. I don't really miss it, because of what it eventually came to be. I do think of the early days a lot, hence the topic. At this point, I know all of the retro libraries quite well. The sense of discovery is gone, I own most of what I ever wanted, everything feels like a ridiculous waste of money now... the past can't be repeated, is the point. You had to be there. I'm just thankful I'm not subject to the present day, where all the most followed and praised hacks of the retro gaming scene, are all these reseller jerks. Those clowns were probably still in daycare when we started collecting. Little did we know they'd come along to turn the entire hobby into a racket a decade later. If you just want to play the games, you're probably just modding or emulating at this point.


--- End quote ---

Covid was such a negative experience for many that people got to be penny pinchers, just like how many companies made allot of rules to milk as much money as possible. I remember this one retro store named cex which in the middle of covid removed free shipping, now charged shipping for ever item purchased in a single order (4$) imagine buying multiple 1$ dvd's) individually and worst of all while their prices where dirt cheap for many years suddenly hiked up their prices by a fuck ton for almost everything including niche stuff. also unironiclly eventhough they increased their prices and trade in values they didn't get as many trade ins compared to prior to covid so it's not even that their supply got better. they bankrupped now in my country unironiclly. but they made so many bad decisions that pretty much shoved their old userbase away from them. I used to come there daily, people knew me on a first name basis over there. when covid struck and them rules got implemented 1 by 1 I returned less and less till I just stopped coming.

I will agree with you. I did start in 2012 and it was definitely a different era of collecting. deals where everywhere stuff was dirt cheap I wish I where more seriously collecting at the time for especially nintendo cardboard, maybe stacked up on some boxed pokemon games. That being said till 2019 collecting was pretty great. when pandemic hit stuff just tanked. For me personally best memories of collecting where 2012 to like 2018. collecting is still fun for me but I won't deny it wasn't more fun prior to the pandemic.

I will however say even in the early era's while allot of stuff did pass through if you where casual. if you did put effort in you did get the peak stuff. in every era effort does reward a collector or that's just how the world works in general. although it wasn't a bad era if you did buy at retro stores market considering people already complained when a game was over 40$, you'd have the good stuff at a fraction compared to what allot of stuff costs today.

Still at the end of the day if your not having fun, it ain't a bad time to move on.

bikingjahuty:

--- Quote from: Warmsignal on January 20, 2026, 04:03:26 pm ---
--- Quote from: bikingjahuty on January 20, 2026, 02:33:01 pm ---But yeah, sorry for the massive tangent there.


tl,dr: I have a ton of nostalgia for my collecting era between 2008 and 2022, and especially between 2010 and 2014. Those were such fun, special years for me. I acquired literally thousands of games during that 4 year period, most of which I bought for a bargain. Deals were everywhere, some of the best places I've ever looked for video games were still around, and I also met a ton of great collectors too during this time. Also, the online zeitgeist around gaming felt so alive and vibrant around this time. Hell, it's during this time I joined VGcollect and my most wonderful memories of using this site were during the first 5 or so years I was here. I do miss that time and even though most of the places I used to buy games at are gone, the world has changed heavily since then, and so have I, I still remember that era maybe just as fondly as I do being a young kid and experiencing some of those older games for the very first time when they were brand new.

--- End quote ---

No apologies necessary, the tangents are the reason for the thread. I like the stories. Sounds as though we had a similar trajectory in game collecting.

Although, when I started out I had very limited amount of money I could spend on the hobby. At the time, you really didn't need a ton of money, but it would've helped of course. It always seemed to me, like the more money I had to spend on games, the more the prices would continue to rise, resulting in making it just as difficult as it was before regardless of what I had to spend.

Around here, I didn't have a ton of brick & mortar game stores besides GameStop, but back then I loved those stores. I used to go to GameStop so much that I felt self-conscious about the employees seeing me come in all of the time, and that was between three different stores that used to be in my town. I would hit them almost on a daily basis, checking for new trade-ins, price drops, and clearance stuff. Man, Nintendo DS games were so cheap and plentiful there back in those days. Of course, most people then still felt like DS was a gimmicky child's console that would never be worth collecting for a serious gamer. So I would regularly pick up $10 DS games that are now going for $100+ today. I probably spent thousands of dollars buying super cheaply priced games at those stores over the years. That's why it guts me to go in there these days, and the whole store has like 20 games over in the corner, and the rest is all a bunch of non-game junk. You have like 10 Switch 2 games on the shelf, and 3/4 of them are key-cards. I don't think the joy of the hobby could be any further obliterated than it is, short of every major video game company shutting down completely, which seems like that's not too far off.

I remember discovering that you could buy used games at Blockbuster, they had some pretty good deals too. We never had anything like Hastings here, but I did order from their website one time. It's funny how I can still point to any game on my shelf that I got all those years back, and could still tell you where I got it at, and roughly how much I spent on it. That stuff is just etched into my memory for some reason. A lot of my retro came from flea markets, and Salvation Army (because Goodwill here never put any video game stuff on the floor) and a few pawn shops. Aside from that I was always at GameStop, Blockbuster, and Kmart. A lot of people didn't realize how good Kmart was for modern game deals back then, because nobody ever shopped at those stores, their video game department would always mark the prices down little by little and you could get sealed games for like $10 - $20, where other places were still asking MSRP for the same game, so I did that a lot. CheapAssGamer used to have a dedicated Kmart price-list thread that I would follow regularly. The guys over there had so much pull with that thread they made some sort of connection with a guy who worked for Kmart corp and started I believe it was a loyalty program called Kmart Gamer which latest for all of a few months. I remember trying to pre-order a game there one time, and the manager had no idea of anything about it and he's like "why don't they just wait until we have the product before they make us sell it", but he somehow managed to do something on the register and give me a pre-sale receipt. It was so disorganized and half-assed, I don't know how it even become a thing there for a bit.

Then there was the time I went to look at some guy's games advertised in a local ad. I got there, ring the doorbell and slip and fell into deep snow. I get up, he opens the door and invites me in and I'm covered in snow head to toe, looking like Jack Frost while I'm melting in his living room. Didn't end up buying squat from him, but hey I got the memory. I'll never forget that. Good times, good times.

--- End quote ---


What's funny is during my collecting heyday years of collecting, I had this irrational hatred of Gamestop which I now deeply regret based on what you just mentioned. When I finally lightened up a bit about them around 2015 or so, it was the twilight years before they stopped carrying 6th gen stuff (and before they started carrying them again in recent years). i did manage to get a few hard to find gems on the PS2 and Gamecube from them, but for the most part i was mostly getting my 6th gen stuff from Tradesmart. The reason I was so into that store for a bit was because they priced all retro games at $3 regardless of title. I found some insane deals at that store. Of course, this made it a popular place for other collectors and resellers eventually, including the employees. I also used to love scoring games in what I called "plain sight." This is where I'd go to an independently owned game store and look for crazy deals within their inventory. I scored a ton of games doing this, especially at a now defunct chain of games stores called Buy Back Games. Their pricing system was all over the place. They'd be way overpriced on something like Mario Paint, but then they'd have Kirby's Dreamland 3 right next to it for like $5. I loved that store for that reason lol.


I never really hit up rental stores, mostly because the majority of them were gone by the time I started collecting, and the ones that were still around definitely weren't renting games out anymore. Still, I've heard some crazy stories about people finding out grocery stores putting out their old rental games out for like a buck a piece and having games like Action 52, Contra Force, and other heavy hitters mixed in.


One thing I really regret never doing was going to one of the big retro gaming conventions back then. I really, REALLY wanted to go to the Retro Games Expo in Vegas, mostly thanks to how amazing The Game Chasers episodes were on that event. I actually began to arrange to go around 2015 or so, only to find out that the fate of that con was up in the air based on a few factors. Unfortunately, they never had another one and I never ended up going. I went to a local retro gaming con around 2018, but found it pretty underwhelming compared to what I'd seen on Youtube over the years. But whatever.

bikingjahuty:

--- Quote from: sworddude on January 21, 2026, 06:23:19 am ---
--- Quote from: Warmsignal on January 19, 2026, 10:51:24 pm ---
I would say the golden years were over by around the time I first joined this forum, 2013/14 or so? Game collecting was getting so popular, and so competitive already by that point, you couldn't find stuff the way you did in the years before. This is when it started to go from being purely a joy, to sort of a chore. You had to be more crafty, more diligent. The world was slowly turning to shit because everybody was getting a smart phone and corporations were beginning to take over the Internet and subsequently destroy society. So there's this sort of split between game collecting in the old days before Internet was real life, and you would just use it to communicate about your real world findings, and then the era after it had taken over where there was little left out there in the real world to find, but everyone online had everything that you wanted and was dangling it over your head like a carrot. I'm not so nostalgic for that era where it all got tougher and tougher, and was mostly relegated to buying things online. The fun was all but gone by that point, especially by the later 2010s.

Once the pandemic hit, the hobby was wrecked. I continued on collecting for several more years beyond that, but it was honestly painful at that point, not fun at all. I haven't actively been a game collector in nearly two years. I don't really miss it, because of what it eventually came to be. I do think of the early days a lot, hence the topic. At this point, I know all of the retro libraries quite well. The sense of discovery is gone, I own most of what I ever wanted, everything feels like a ridiculous waste of money now... the past can't be repeated, is the point. You had to be there. I'm just thankful I'm not subject to the present day, where all the most followed and praised hacks of the retro gaming scene, are all these reseller jerks. Those clowns were probably still in daycare when we started collecting. Little did we know they'd come along to turn the entire hobby into a racket a decade later. If you just want to play the games, you're probably just modding or emulating at this point.


--- End quote ---

Covid was such a negative experience for many that people got to be penny pinchers, just like how many companies made allot of rules to milk as much money as possible. I remember this one retro store named cex which in the middle of covid removed free shipping, now charged shipping for ever item purchased in a single order (4$) imagine buying multiple 1$ dvd's) individually and worst of all while their prices where dirt cheap for many years suddenly hiked up their prices by a fuck ton for almost everything including niche stuff. also unironiclly eventhough they increased their prices and trade in values they didn't get as many trade ins compared to prior to covid so it's not even that their supply got better. they bankrupped now in my country unironiclly. but they made so many bad decisions that pretty much shoved their old userbase away from them. I used to come there daily, people knew me on a first name basis over there. when covid struck and them rules got implemented 1 by 1 I returned less and less till I just stopped coming.

I will agree with you. I did start in 2012 and it was definitely a different era of collecting. deals where everywhere stuff was dirt cheap I wish I where more seriously collecting at the time for especially nintendo cardboard, maybe stacked up on some boxed pokemon games. That being said till 2019 collecting was pretty great. when pandemic hit stuff just tanked. For me personally best memories of collecting where 2012 to like 2018. collecting is still fun for me but I won't deny it wasn't more fun prior to the pandemic.

I will however say even in the early era's while allot of stuff did pass through if you where casual. if you did put effort in you did get the peak stuff. in every era effort does reward a collector or that's just how the world works in general. although it wasn't a bad era if you did buy at retro stores market considering people already complained when a game was over 40$, you'd have the good stuff at a fraction compared to what allot of stuff costs today.

Still at the end of the day if your not having fun, it ain't a bad time to move on.

--- End quote ---


I'm incredibly grateful I was pretty much done collecting retro games once COVID began. I remember seeing prices go absolutely insane on older games to the point where even making what I do now, I'd never pay most of what people were asking (and mostly getting paid) for certain titles. The prices on Pokemon stuff still disgusts me seeing how common most of those games are. And what's ironic is how many people jumped into retro gaming and collecting around that time period too. You'd think the prices would have deterred most of them, but I think it was a matter of people not knowing any better and really needing an escape from the state of the world back in 2020 and 2021. I felt sorry seeing people pay $200 for a yellowed NES, a few controllers, and few common games. I would just think how 10-years prior I'd find practically the same set of stuff for under $50 easily all day long. But times change I guess, and if that's what people are willing to pay, who am I to tell them how to spend their money?


But yeah, game prices are still an absolute joke. I'm glad there really isn't much else I have a desire to own, especially older stuff. I almost never play retro games with their original disks or carts; everything is through ODEs and flashcarts now and seeing how it's all running off the same hardware, I honestly don't miss playing them the way they were originally intended to be played.

ssj4yamgeta:
I'm actually looking forward to being done with collecting soon. I've got so many games now that it will take me years to play through everything, and even though I'm interested in playing the new stuff I'm buying, there's really no joy in the actual purchase anymore. Back in my youth I'd be amped up to get a new console, but when I bought my PS5 Pro back in November I remember unboxing it, attaching the disc drive, plugging it in, and staring at it thinking, "I know I got a good deal on this, but I kinda wish I still had the $680 instead." Spending a lot of money on video game purchases used to be fun, but it just kinda hurts now. What I do miss is when used stuff was affordable, before youtubers, resellers, and grading companies hyped the bejeezus out of the hobby and jacked prices up on everything. You used to be able to find used games for $10 or less all the time, but now if you find anything for less than $40 you got a good deal. Some stuff is just inflated beyond all reason. Take Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire for example. Those games have lifetime sales of over 16 million units, they are not rare, there's no reason they should go for over $150 on the used market. Pokemon games are not rare or valuable, it's one of the best-selling IPs in the world. There's no reason for these prices.

sworddude:

--- Quote from: ssj4yamgeta on January 25, 2026, 10:19:20 am ---I'm actually looking forward to being done with collecting soon. I've got so many games now that it will take me years to play through everything, and even though I'm interested in playing the new stuff I'm buying, there's really no joy in the actual purchase anymore. Back in my youth I'd be amped up to get a new console, but when I bought my PS5 Pro back in November I remember unboxing it, attaching the disc drive, plugging it in, and staring at it thinking, "I know I got a good deal on this, but I kinda wish I still had the $680 instead." Spending a lot of money on video game purchases used to be fun, but it just kinda hurts now. What I do miss is when used stuff was affordable, before youtubers, resellers, and grading companies hyped the bejeezus out of the hobby and jacked prices up on everything. You used to be able to find used games for $10 or less all the time, but now if you find anything for less than $40 you got a good deal. Some stuff is just inflated beyond all reason. Take Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire for example. Those games have lifetime sales of over 16 million units, they are not rare, there's no reason they should go for over $150 on the used market. Pokemon games are not rare or valuable, it's one of the best-selling IPs in the world. There's no reason for these prices.

--- End quote ---


as common as retro pokemon games are the demand is there,

so while you only got like 20 copies of say a more rare game like hagane on the market. maybe only a couple hundred people atm are potentially gonna splurge on that.

Now with pokemon ruby, so you got 1K copies on the market at the time yet you got thousands of people still looking for em and willing to pay decent money for em.

The demand for retro pokemon stuff is so much higher than pretty much anything else in this hobby, and eventhough it's common too many people that want it

that's supply and demand for ye. with other stuff it's gotto be actually scarce cause way less people that are looking for it. Blame pokemon go for this btw, cause prior to that while the demand was there after pokemon go it literally exploded 5 to 10x and it has never gone down since.

I could still find cib copies for 5$ at thrift stores of like soulsilver literally weeks before pokemon go launched. they'd just fit it in among generic titles for same prices.  allot of people didn't care thus prices while still high for what it was where much much lower than they are today.

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