About What Year Did You First Desire On Being A Collector

[oldgamerz]

I first desired to become a collector around the year 2015, that is when I had a giant increase in spending money I started buying retro consoles around this time. I can't quite remember what console I bought first, but I remember purchasing a used beat up PlayStation 3 Super Slim in summer of 2015. I may or may not had already a PlayStation 2 console around this time.

I started mass buying my video games for the 2nd time in around 2015, but my Tiger Woods Collection is older. I actually had a teenage hood collection but I sold most of them off, but I was actually more of a player than collector back then

[droaa]

Between 2008-2009. I was out of school by 2008 but my plans to go to college immediately so I got a job and the money came in. It wasn't until I want to say 2010 or so when I started going to this big flea market in my state that I started to see a bunch of sellers so I took advantage and it went from there. This was before the retro gaming boom started so I was able to get a good amount of stuff pretty cheap compared to now relatively cheap.

[bikingjahuty]

2008. I was still in college at the time and was having mad nostalgia for the Sega Saturn, a console I never owned growing up, but two of my good friends did. I remember playing games like Virtua Fighter 2, Nights, Die Hard Arcade, Bug, and various others titles at their houses during sleepovers and after school countless hours, and I always envied them for having Saturns. I had just recently transferred schools in 2008 and moved back to Colorado where I grew up. I went to a local game store that is sadly no longer in business and bought a Saturn console along with a copy of Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and some other game I can't seem to remember. During this time I discovered so many games for the Saturn that I never knew even existed as a kid, and from that I created my first video game want list that consisted of just Saturn games I wanted to own. Sadly, during the summer of 2009 I took a summer semester class that I miscalculated my expenses on and ended up about $2000 short of what I needed in order to pay for a class I needed to graduate. I didn't want to take out a student loan so I sold various things to pay for that semester including my entire Saturn collection. I didn't own anything crazy at the time and even games like Panzer Dragoon Saga were under $200 at the time, but I ended up getting around $500 for everything which wasn't bad. I have never got back into NTSC/US Saturn collecting since then unfortunately.


While I technically began collecting back in 2008, I feel like it wasn't until 2010, the year I graduated college and got my first real job when I began to collect hardcore, and collect for a ton of different consoles. From 2010 to 2013 I was a game hunting, game collecting fiend with very few consoles that didn't appeal to me. My collecting has become a lot more focused since then, but I feel like 2010 was definitely a noteworthy year regarding my status as a collector and video game enthusiast.

[wartoy]

February 21 1986 zelda how i loved thee

[kamikazekeeg]

I sorta casually had interest in it for many years, I've always had collecting needs, whether it was cards or games or toys, but I didn't get more into it until I moved out of my small town and moved to a place where I actually had way more options for collecting, which would put it around 2008 for me.  Flea Markets, game stores, way more thrift shops.  I don't exactly have the money for keeping collections, so I regularly sell off stuff before casually building up things again, but I'll always be a collector of some sort.

[redblaze57]

The Myspace days back on those forums due to talking to collectors at the time.

[kypherion]

Probably 2015. A friend of mine gave me a ton of games, we're talking PS1, PS2, DS, 3DS Wii, and a good amount of PS3 games. Another friend gave me his N64 with some games and that really jumpstarted my want to collect and own a lot of good games.

[hoshichiri]

No specific year, for me it was a natural evolution of just playing games. Back around 4th grade or so, we sold our family NES to pay for a Genesis... and we missed those games enough that I vowed to never just dump a system again.

I suppose it kind of started around 2001- that's when I bought my first Sega CD. It marked the turning point of just getting what was new & setting my old systems aside, and actively buying older machines I had no nostalgia for. I wasn't seeking them out yet, though- the early pickups were ones of opportunity. The Sega CD was a high school friend cleaning out as he moved for college, the SNES was another friend's mom getting on her case for too many game consoles... that kind of thing. I bought the NES becuase Gamestop was closing out the system & i was afraid I wouldn't be able to find one later. I bought a Dreamcast becuase I was offered a free game collection for it.


So, not so much that I ever actively desired to collect... I just gradually realized it was what I was doing anyway, so I ran with it.

[ferraroso]

I’ve always loved to keep the boxes and manuals of the games and consoles I owned as a child. So, in a way, one can say that I started collecting in the Christmas of 1990 when I got my Master System with Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Paperboy. However, I started to seriously hunt for older games in early 2011 after moving to Japan. I couldn’t resist the low prices and abundance of retro games around here...

[chrismb]

I've always been a gamer from a young age, but I started buying and playing games more regularly in December 2016 when I bought a Dreamcast and a SNES. I probably had about  100/150 games at the time just from my childhood (I had a PS2, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and a few handheld already) and now i'm probably round 450/500.

[ignition365]

I've always had a bunch of games, but I can't quite recall when I really started "collecting". 

June 2014 was when I hit pretty hard and my collection exploded in growth, but I had already been collecting for some time.  I had gone to the flea market and ran into a guy with a booth selling stuff and advertising his facebook group (guy turned out to be a huge scum bag who was literally scamming people, I think Pat the NES Punk even called him out on his bullshit at one point.  Essentially they did a raffle for Stadium Events or something, made a shit ton of money, he wound up winning the raffle, so he got the money and kept the game, and then he raffled it again a month later.  Plus a lot of other fascist bullshit)

For sure before February 2013 I was collecting in some manner, because the day before starting my first career job I picked up a lot from Goodwill with a SMS system and 13 games for like $25... man the good old days.

Best I can tell, I started collecting in 2012, picking stuff up from Craigslist, goodwills, pawnshops, and yard sales.

[emporerdragon]

Somewhere around 2004-6. As a kid, my game collection was rather small and grew slowly as new games typically were only obtained as part of Christmas or birthday gifts. But then I got a job. With the fact that I could just buy a game I was interested in coupled with the rise of achievements, which encouraged playing lots of different games, my collection and backlog exploded. Eventually, I looked at the massive pile of unplayed games and just admitted to myself that I had become a collector.

There's still the desire to play through everything, but with new ones always coming out combined with my love of games that take 50+ hours to complete, that backlog's never getting smaller.

[pizzasafari]

I think I was about 2013 'cause that was when I got my first job and I remember immediately starting to collect from there. Shortly then before I'd started seeing other peoples' awesome collections and it made me really want one of my own.

[98dgreen]

2014

[NickAwesome]

I started collecting when I was young, around 11 or 12.  This was around 2002-2003.  I would babysit and mow lawns in order to buy as many games as possible. While all my friends frequently traded in their games, I always loved collecting and rarely traded or sold any games I had.  I however only collected PS1 and PS2 games for many years.  I did not have a very big collection but I would spend hours cataloging and organizing the games I owned, I still have some of my handwritten lists.  When I learned to drive, that helped me add more to my collection and by the time I was 17,  I had around 50 PS1 games, 300 PS2 games, 50 PS3 games and some GC and other miscellaneous titles.  When I went to college in 2008. my collecting slowed down quite a bit as I was not working but I was able to continue building up my ps1 and ps2 collection.  I nearly stopped collecting around 2012, I was working and living on my own and I did not find much time to game or collect.  I sold off some of my collection and most of the rest was stored in bins in my closet.  My brother who had also had a strong interest in games had started collecting extensively and convinced me to get back into it by dragging me to the local retro expo in our town.  I loved it though I was still strictly a playstation collector at that point. Around 2013-2014 is when I really started collecting and began to expand to new systems and when I got a major pay raise, I began to expand into new systems.  My brother also left the scene and sold me all his boxed N64, DC and boxed GBA stuff which led me into looking for those systems too. I began to start collecting for cartridge systems, DC, Saturn, TG 16, Genesis, and this last year I even got a 3DO and a Jaguar!  Now I collect for a ton of stuff.  I love this hobby!  I've met so many great people, have gotten a lot of great stuff and I can't wait to finally own a place so I can display it all.

So I would say I have desired to be a collector since I was a kid- 2002-2003, but it was not until 2013-2014 where I began to collect on the scale I do today.