I decided that I wanted to review my video game want list, aka my sacred, long standing, ever evolving list of video games I'd like to own and have in my collection. Primarily I wanted to divide all the games on it into tiers of how badly I wanted them; tier 1 essentially means I'd pay ebay prices for the game and represents the games I want the most. Tier 2 are games I want a lot, but can't justify paying more than 75% of the game's current ebay price. Essentially I want these games, but don't mind holding off on them until I can find a decent price on them. Then there is Tier 3, which are games I just can't justify paying more than 50% of the games current ebay price for, and are games I will only buy if I find a store significantly slipping on or find it in the wild for dirt cheap. There is also a tier 4 which means I won't spend more than 30% of the games value, but only a handful of games are in this group, mostly because of how insanely expensive they are and how I'd never even spend half of what they're worth since even half would mean these games would be worth over a hundred bucks still, sometimes even more.
But while reviewing and revamping want list I came to the realization that there are maybe around 10 games total that I really, really want at the moment. Mind you, these only include games from gens prior to the current console gen we're in since new games are still being released for the present generation. I had probably about 25 or so Tier 2 games as well, and then literally hundreds of tier 3 games. Essentially, there is barely anything else left in regards to "retro" games that I actually want, at least enough to pay significant money for.
What all this means is that I'm not nearly as much into collecting, particularly retro games as I originally thought i was since returning to collecting. It also means that I am mostly content with my current collection, and there isn't a ton of gaping holes in it that I desperately want to fill. Sure, there are those games I regret selling, but many of them I'm fine with holding off until a great deal comes along (essentially a tier 3 deal for the vast majority of them). By definition I am still a collector, but outside of mostly newer games coming out I doubt I'll be adding a lot to my retro game collections, including the PS3, 360, Wii, and Wii U which aren't retro, but are unsupported legacy consoles at this point. With that said, I do have some pretty big plans in the future regarding my retro game collections.
Currently, the NES, Genesis, SNES, and N64 only include tier 3 or 4 games, however when I am finally able to afford a permanent living situation (I currently rent part of a house with very limited space), and hopefully have more disposable income than I currently do, I'd like to start getting into more CIB collecting for these systems. Not only do I want to upgrade many of the cart only copies of games I currently have for these systems, but would like to obtain many games I don't have for these systems and add them to my collection CIB. During this time I'd also like to get back into NTSC-US Saturn collecting and also big box PC collecting again as well, deliberately going out and buying them. So pretty much all these retro platforms will be upgraded to tier 1, or at least tier 2. The biggest reason for this is both cost and space, which hopefully won't be as much of an issue someday. In the meantime, if I can score a killer deal on the systems and platforms mentioned I'll gladly add them before and if this ever happens.