My sister gave me her NES and games in 1993, when she went off to college. I didn't have any home systems at the time, so I enjoyed a small home-gaming revival then. My wife told me about Funcoland, and I picked up a few classics I had missed (DK Classics, was this the first retro compilation? Burgertime, Elevator Action, etc.). I didn't play it too much though. I started collecting Atari in 94, but not the NES. It was the Digital Press 'zine that started me off. They had a top 75 Games you might have missed list ( http://www.digitpress.com/archives/arc00003.htm ), and I went to Funco and picked up all the NES ones when I could find them. Playing all these hidden gems opened my eyes to all I had missed on the NES, and I started picking up everything I could find. These days I'm limiting myself to complete games, so it's slow going, but still fun. I know there's games I'm never going to find unless I win the lottery, and I have stopped worrying about the games that got sold or traded away (like the 2(!) complete Stack-Ups that I HAD, although one of them is in good hands with TheSmirk). Finding Atari stuff in the wild these days is next to impossible for me, but not so for the NES. I've got a long ways to go for a complete collection, so there will always be something out there to look for.
I love this forum, I hope it never goes away.