How did you start collecting?

[Iron Draggon]

I searched the forums for two different but very similar questions and came up with nothing, so if this has been asked already, I apologize in advance...

I'm sure that it's been asked alot before what made you start collecting, at least as it pertains specifically to video games, because I know that I've responded to such questions here before, but I'm wondering how others here started collecting, and not just specifically as it pertains to video games... I mean in regards to collecting stuff in general, and how that led you to start collecting video games... we all know what specific video game gave us the video game collecting fever, but what specific thing or event led you to start collecting stuff in general, and what led you to start collecting video games? or was it the other way around? did collecting video games lead you to start collecting other stuff? tell us what caused you to have a room of doom now!

my personal story goes like this:

I began collecting stuff with card games at age 12 when everyone at school was playing Uno every chance they got... I got a deck of Uno cards and then I got all the other card games made by the same company that made Uno at the time... initially that was only two other card games, but they soon came out with a new card game or two every year, and of course I got all of those card games as well... meanwhile it seemed that other game companies were trying to capitalize on Uno mania by releasing their own new card games at the same rate of one or two every year also, so naturally I got all of those card games too... before long I was up to over 20 different card games...

by age 16 I was working after school at the local public library to support my desire to expand my collecting habits by collecting board games as well... but I didn't want to collect just any board game, as I knew there were way too many of them to collect them all... so I decided to narrow it down by only collecting strategy games... I got a chess set and for a while I was collecting chess sets as well as other strategy games, but I soon discovered that I could collect nothing but chess sets and never have them all, as there were hundreds of differnt kinds of chess sets, many of which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars... so I sold off all of my chess sets except for one of them, and I continued to add to my rapidly growing collection of other board games... before long I had over 100 different board games in my collection...

and then I caught video game fever... I had been considering collecting video games as well for several years, but it was Sonic the Hedgehog that finally forced me to do it... I was reluctant to begin collecting video games, as I knew that it would be much more expensive to collect them than it was to collect board games, and I wasn't making very much money... I wasn't in school anymore, but I was only working part time at a grocery store by then, and I knew that I was gonna have to work alot more hours and make alot more money if I really wanted to collect video games as seriously as I had been collecting other types of games... so I got a new full time job at a bar and started making money hand over fist... meanwhile I started shopping for video games every chance I got, and because I got tips in addition to my weekly paychecks, I always had cash and I often went shopping every day...

eventually my video game collecting caused me to develop an interest in some of the music that was featured in some of my video games, and I got into collecting music too... but surprisingly not video game music... mostly heavy metal... it was really Iron Maiden that started it all, and their music has never been featured in any video games that I know of, aside from the Ed Hunter PC game that was included on the Iron Maiden CD of the same name, but since heavy metal music seemed to go so well with most types of video games, it was still mostly my video games that got me into music...

meanwhile the New Age thing had gotten really big and everyone I knew was into quartz crystals... so I got into them too, and before long I wasn't just collecting quartz crystals, I was collecting every type of crystal I could afford that caught my eye... I went to every gem & mineral store that I could find, I attended every gem & mineral collector's show that I could, and I even went to a few places where I could mine for my own crystals... I now have dozens of different specimens, and I still get new ones whenever I can...

my gem & mineral collecting led me to start collecting animals that were carved out of various types of stones... I started out by collecting cats, and I soon discovered that I really liked tigers most of all cats, so I concentrated mostly on collecting tigers... but before long I wasn't just collecting cats that were carved out of stone, I was collecting cats that were made out of all kinds of stuff... including stuffed animals... I still have alot more tigers than I do any other kinds of cats, but I'm still expanding my cat collection to include lions and all the other big cats, as well as continuing to collect small cats...

the Gargoyles cartoon series caused gargoyles to become really popular, or perhaps it was the sudden popularity of gargoyles that caused the cartoon series to become really popular, but whichever came first the result was that I began collecting gargoyles too... I still don't have very many yet, as they tend to be rather expensive, and they're generally sold as large outdoor lawn decor to ward off evil spirits... which makes sense, since they were originally used as adornments on churches and other buildings for the same purpose... but fortunately some smaller ones for indoor use can be found, so I do have a few of them, but very few and nowhere near as many as I'd like to have...

gargoyles led me to start collecting a few other mythical beasts as well... mostly griffins, but those are only just now starting to become popular, so they're very hard to find and I have even fewer of them than gargoyles...

in 1998, Mattel celebrated the 30th anniversary of Hot Wheels by releasing alot of special edition models and special sets for collectors, and I caught Hot Wheels fever... I figured that I could get into collecting them cheaply and easily enough, since most cars sold for only a dollar and you could find them just about anywhere... in fact, my Hot Wheels collecting was how I found out about ebay, and I was so into them that it never even occurred to me that I could find video games there too until I had been buying cars there for years... so I have 1000's of different Hot Wheels now, but it's getting to where it's impossible to keep up with them all, and all the different variations of them all, so I'm very seriously considering selling off my car collection now, but so far I haven't been able to force myself to part with any of them...

about the same time that I got into collecting Hot Wheels, I also caught roller coaster fever, thanks to Roller Coaster Tycoon... which led me to start my own website for roller coaster enthusiasts, and was responsible for my current handle here... the Iron Dragon is a suspended roller coaster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH... I really liked the name of it, even though I've still never ridden it yet, so I added a 2nd G to the name to differentiate myself from the coaster, since I was running a site for coaster enthusiasts, and eventually that led me to start collecting dragons... but my dragon collection is very unique in that almost all of them were bought for me, I've bought very few of them for myself... in fact, it was mostly the fact that other people kept buying them for me that caused me to start collecting them... if it was all up to me, I prolly never would've bothered to collect them... dragons are very popular, and they tend to be very expensive, so it's a good thing that I've been fortunate enough to have most of mine given to me, or I prolly wouldn't have any, and I certainly wouldn't have as many as I do now...

and finally, the latest thing that I've gotten into collecting now is dogs... Greyhound bus lines is mostly to blame for that... I've been doing alot of traveling by bus lately, and they've been selling a series of stuffed dogs at their terminals, so of course I've been picking them up as I find them during my travels... which means that I have more greyhounds than any other type of dog so far, but I'm really more interested in bloodhounds, so I expect that eventually I'll have far more bloodhounds than any other types of dogs...

BTW, my interest in dogs has also caused me to change my handle on most sites that I'm on, as well as my email address, and you've prolly noticed that my avatar here has been a dog for quite a while now too, so I'd really like to change my handle here also... but so far it looks like the only way to do that is to re-register with a different handle, and I don't really want to have to do that, so until I can do it without re-registering, I guess I'm just stuck with my old handle and a new avatar that has absolutely nothing to do with it...

anyhow, that's my story, so what's yours?

[nintendan]

Well for me, I collect mostly Nintendo-related items. My system of choice for collecting is NES. I once had a massive collection of NES games, but sold them all years back when I was dirt poor. I guess Im collecting now to get all those wonderful NES games I had back in the day. It's always a shame when one has to sell his or her collections, but sometimes it's necessary to survive in today's world. I only collect COMPLETE games, as loose NES carts are just too plentiful.

As for your neat story, I too caught the Hot Wheels fever (only for a year or so). And just like you, I collected Greyhound Bus memorabilia. I have some neat ones by the Buddy L toyline, along with some ofifcial Greyhound merchandise (bus banks, toy models, etc.).

Sadly, all my non-gaming collectibles are in a storage locker 3 hours away from me in my hometown. I will get to them this summer hopefully.

Dan

[greedostick]

I was born in 1980 so I was just about the right age to play game games about the time the NES came out. I guess you could say paying video games are in my blood. I use to own a few atari's before that but they were all broken when my parents bought them for me brand new so when I finally got a NES the first week it came out I was pretty happy and have been playing games since.

I had a large collection of baseball cards and comics I would trade to stupid kids for there NES games. Back then kids would just give games away after beating them. I got a pretty big nes collection this way and never spent any money.

Around 1996 I got my license and use to sell games on ebay for this guy at a flea market. Alot of my time was spent on ebay researching rare games and prices. I had to test all the games to make sure they worked before selling them. It brought back alot of memories and I would sell games for this guy and keep the ones I wanted as partial payment. I was lucky enough for the guy I was selling for to give me a NES, Mastersystem, Genesis, PS1, Turbo Grafx, Sega CD, Dreamcast, SNES, and Turbo grafx in the process.

When all my friends in high school were saving lunch money for marijuana I was saving my money for my weekly trip to the flea market. Besides selling for this guy I would search the flea market for rare games I could keep or resell and buy better games. I use to hustle like crazy at that place. Sometimes finding games worth a hell of alot of money and reselling them. Including a sealed Neo Geo Homecart system for $75.00.

Around 1999 after graduating high school and getting a job I started collecting Neo Geo MVS and Turbo grafx games. At this point I had close to 1000 games including around 300 genesis games and about 250 nes games, and a random slew of games for other systems.

I eventually went crazy one summer and spent thousands of dollars on turbo grafx games accumilating a almost complete english turbo grafx system with all boxed games and a near complete CD collection.

A few years later I sold almost everything except for my neo geo stuff and a few rare turbo grafx stuff including my magical chase and dynastic hero to start PC engine collicting instead.

Unfortunatly my car was stolen shortly after this, and I kept the thousands I made selling these games and moved to columbus ohio and bought a car.

So now after years of collecting I have nothing to show except a large collection of neo geo stuff and a few rare turbo games. I just recently landed a better job at work and can't wait to start collecting again. I am only going to collect complete games. Since neo collecting is so tiring I am going to collect those on the side saving for the rare games while collecting boxed nes games, then sega master system, then moving to 16 bit games and working my way up to the present.

It has been a long road for me but I think it will be fun collecting them again.

[crazyjackcsa]

Woke up one morning and realized I rarely if ever trade games in. Turns out I was a collector with over 200 games. Since then I've focused on buying games I want to play, and keeping them.

[PentiumMMX]

I never realized it, but I started in 2001, after the N64 died off. I wanted a Gamecube, but I refused to sell my N64 to get one.

I have a decent-sized collection of stuff I'll play (I trade in the crap I don't like)

[William_the_Saint]

I always played games, selling off systems as I moved to the next one.

Regardless of how good a price I got, I was always filled with regret. When I finally got my Sega Dreamcast and I knew I could never part with it, and that was it.

P.S. Being burned by EB trade-ins helped too.

[xtremegamer]

I first started NES games back in 1997/98. I was about 15 then, had a part time job, so I had some cash to spend on the collection. I had aquired about 150 games in a pretty short period of time. Problem was that my house was broken into, and they took most of my video games. The only reason that I still have the NES games my father bought me as a child is that I had them stored in a box under my bed, they just took the games on display in my room.

After that situation, which was pretty heart-breaking at the time, I have decided to never collect NES games again. The only ones I will keep are games I like to play on a regular basis and the games my dad bought me. I mainly use any NES game I get to trade/sell for my new collection, Xbox.

I started collecting Xbox games in December 2005 when my wife bought me my first Xbox, I have owned a total of 4 in that time period, of course I still have the original one my wife bought me. I now have around 220 games, 2 systems, 8 controllers, Steel Battalion controller, 2 Sniper Guns for Sniper Elite and House of the Dead, and about every Official Xbox Magazine. Not a bad start to collection.

[Chadt74]

I started making enough money not to have to sell/trade my games.

[Nebagram]

I always played games, selling off systems as I moved to the next one.

Regardless of how good a price I got, I was always filled with regret. When I finally got my Sega Dreamcast and I knew I could never part with it, and that was it.

P.S. Being burned by EB trade-ins helped too.

Staggeringly similar story here, I first got going with an atari 2600 in 1986 (yes, when I was 3), closely followed by a vic-20. both broke, so I resorted to my mates' NESes, c64s and speccies, then got a master system in 1991 (we weren't the richest family), then entered that old loop of 'buy the new and sell the old' with a mega drive in 1993, 32x in 1995 and playstation in 1997. I got a dreamcast in 1999, and was very close to repeating the loop when something wonderful happened in 2001- full-time employment. Naturally, my first wage packet went on a PS2, subsequent ones on a Saturn, an N64, a Mega Drive... and the rest, as they say, is history. Effectively I've been collecting for 5 years and have amassed a collection of 800 games- not bad, even if I do say so myself.

And yes, piss-poor trade-in prices did help my decision to keep/ebay all my old games though £35 for F1 on PS3 recently wasn't that bad. :)

[7th lutz]

My collecting started with baseball cards, back in 1986 or 1987. I was a card collecter for 3 or 4 years. I was never a computer game collecter. I didn't get a computer till 1994.

My videogame collecting it started in 1988. I picked out an atari 2600 jr to buy with my dad bought for my brother and I in Jan. 1988. My collection of 2600 games began with me knowing it or remembering it before then. My dad had a over 30 2600 games along with an intellivision 2 with an atari 2600 adaptor. I had a late start in console gaming. I considered 1988, to be first year of console gaming with me being 9 going on 10 years old at the time. I got a 7800 a year later due to the price of the system.

I went to flee markets to buy 2600 games. Depending on the stand at a flee market they were Anywhere from 50 cents to 3.00 a loose cartridge. From 1988 to Christmas of 1991, I had a combined 150 2600 and 7800 games. At the time, my younger bother and I didn't had a clue on what 2600 and 7800 games were good before they were bought. My brother and I basically bought games based on what games we didn't own. I never sold any 2600 and 7800 games that I own.

At the time my parents thought the nes and the games were too expensive. I didn't get a nes till 1991. I was not in a poor family, a middle class family that had a stay at home mom with the dad working. I now own a neo geo pocket color,co-owner of a wii, co-owner of ps2, co-owner of a genesis/32x, gbc,gba,ds,sms, sms 2, nomad, game Gear, snes, nes, ps 1, Game Cube and lynx. I didn't sell alot of my games.

[barflytke401]

I grew up in a farmhouse in rural Ohio with 8 brothers and sisters during the early-80s. Mom and Dad both worked (Dad had 2 jobs, mom 1) and we really didn't have a ton of money. When I graduated from college and got settled in my career, I finally had the opportunity to purchase all the games I couldn't get when I was a kid. Luckily my wife is also a "weekend" gamer and understands my love of video games. After purchasing a few older titles, I found my favorite niche and started only getting the rare RPGs, not because I knew of their value, only because I remembered playing them as a kid and loved them. The first time I dropped $100 on a game, I knew I needed to really do some research and keep an eye on my finances. I also found out the hard way that EBay is about the worst place you can go to buy a rare game. (Unless it's not that fun in which case you can get some great deals). Anyways, that's my story. I have over 300 games now for 7 systems. Most are Turn-Based RPGs (Long live DW1 and FF1) but I also have quite a few sports games.

[mailman187666]

I started off collecting baseball cards as well, but since I was about 2, we had the atari 2600 in the house. I remember being very young and playing all these games for it. So my mother bought all the atari games back when they were all on clearance back when the crash happened. We never threw away or sold any of the games, just boxed em all up. Then came nintendo, bought shit loads of games, put em away when the newest system came out. Did that with genesis, sega cd, 32x, 3do, saturn, gameboy. Ever since I was a kid I almost always had the next system (my family was not rich and i really wasn't spoiled). So one day I decided to go through all the old boxes and hook up all the old systems because I had just gotten my own place and wanted to set them up for us to play. After a while I was like, hey, lets go to the flea market and see if we can get some games we never played as kids. Which lead to going every other weekend. Then I looked at ebay for games and noticed some of them still sold for good money. That made me want to look for those ones. Next thing you know I'm damn near 1000 games.

[Lemmi_Is_God]

i started collecting heavily when Funcoland opened

but i still have everything videogame related from 1978 when i got my first pong system to 1996 when i started collecting heavily, then i pretty much quit collecting in 2004ish


i only had a 2600, 7800, NES, TG-16, and Genesis, and a SNES with 1 game
then funcoland opened then it started with Sega CD then 3DO and snowballed from there to 33 different systems and over 1500 games

[Leo_A]

I've never really started (At least thats what I'd like to think, the large number of unplayed games here might disagree with me), I'm buying stuff because I want to play it. I guess I almost turned into a Atari collector at one time, but with the development of the Cuttle Cart II and Atari 5200 multicarts, I had no need to buy the expensive carts I had left to acquire since I could play everything on the real hardware and thats all I ever really wanted to be able to do.

[Videogamerdaryll]

It started with the 2600 when I was a kid,My friends thought I was cool for having lot of Games and I just kept collecting them....I stopped a bit as a teenager(had a girlfriend not into games) then started collecting again when I got older.

I remember when I started collecting games again it was like a breath of fresh air,something that I had missed.

I come from a family of Gamers and Collectors of many things.

[BocoDragon]

If I had to label one special moment, it would be when FFVII came out, and I realized how much I wanted to own the entire FF series. I suppose before that time, I had loved many games, including FFVI, to death, but I didn't think of anything as a series I wanted to collect until I had enjoyed both VI and VII. Also, games being on optical discs by that time meant that the games needed storage, and the real artwork was to be found on the front of the case. This put a higher premium on the "complete package", and collecting in general.

Collecting FFs led to collecting all Squaresoft games, then RPGs, then PS2 being the inevitable successor platform for RPGs led to me being heavily interested in flagship PS2 non-RPGs like MGS, DMC etc.

By 2001 I was a full blown collector, interested in anything from most Japanese companies, and the occasional breakout hit from any territory (GTA, Half Life, etc)


EDIT: I just remembered I was actually a collector from the moment I realized that the Super Nintendo was not really a "replacement" to the original Nintendo, but a supercharged companion to it (SUPER Nintendo ;) ) As the SNES took off, I realized that I wanted to hold onto the old NES as well...... Of course, as adolesence sunk in I cared about this stuff less and less, so you could think of the above story as why I got back into collecting until the present day....

[Steven]

Collecting? Well, as I like to call it, I began "buying games at a diehard clip" in January 2001, when my friend gave me BustaMove 2 and SF Alpha 2 Saturn for free. I bought Galactic Attack/WSB II at a Funcoland a bit later that week or something, and my Saturn passion reached new highs, I'd go on to buy 300+ games from 2001 to late 2005.

Then in early 2006 I re-discovered my old #1 flame, the SNES. Bought 200 games in the span of like 6 weeks IIRC, in early 2006, lol. I bought games at a rate you wouldn't believe.

[briskbc]

I have always collected something. It started with Hardy Boys books in Grade 2 and morphed from there. Many other collectibles came and went but it wasn't until 1998 that I started with video games.

I was getting married and selling VHS movies and video games on eBay (and doing very well) in order to pay for the big day. As the day approached it became harder and harder to sell the games I was finding. One day I looked at my back log of stuff to list and just moved it to my bookshelf and left it there. I had been gaming since I was 10 (now 35) and this seemed like the ideal thing to collect. No one else was doing it so finds were plentiful which was a bonus. The only thing I like as much as playing the games is spending a day hunting for stuff in the wild. I've sold my collection a couple of times now but that's life. I don't mind rebuilding.

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Hwj_Chim]

I have been gaming all of my life and I just never sold anything, so after a while it built up to what I have now. I am more of a gamer with a ton of stuff, Than a collector that must have every thing. I mostly do Sega stuff as I love Sega and the Genny was my introduction into gaming.

[Pantechnicon]

Must….not….write….autobiography….

Part I

The first thing I started seriously collecting was comic books. But prior to this period in my life I was also heavily into wargames (RPG’s, tactical board games, etc) and I also had a modest Atari 2600 library of around 25 carts.

In the case of wargames and videogames I can’t say I was initially a collector of these things so much as I was somebody who just enjoyed them, sometimes to a fault. Par for the course in the mid-1980’s. I bought or traded for new (or used) items when there was something I liked or wanted and in turn managed to get a decent-sized stack of each. Comic books then caught my eye. I say they were the first thing I seriously collected since in my case they lent themselves more quickly to collector-related behaviors such as cataloging, organizing and preserving. I didn’t really do these sorts of things with my videogames or wargames. My interest in all three of these things cooled significantly between the ages of 16 or 18 owing simply to becoming a more socially active teenager.

The pivotal event which turned me into a collector happened in September of 1988. I had returned home from Marine boot camp to find that my parents had, inexplicably and without my consent or foreknowledge, sold all of my Atari and wargame items at a garage sale, presumably for pennies on the dollar. Surprisingly, they didn’t touch the comics. Suffice to say I was still pretty upset about this, and on some subconscious level I resolved to get back everything that I had lost, no matter how long it took.

(continued)

[Pantechnicon]

Part II

While in the military I spent a good part of my off-duty and travel time committed to reacquiring what I had lost at the garage sale by scouring used bookstores, flea markets etc in various cities that I traveled to. I concentrated primarily on the wargames. At the same time my interest in new comic books was reignited primarily since game books and comics were often found in the same locations. I ran across a couple of Ataris during this time, but held off on buying one because there was no practical place for someone living in military accommodations to store something like that. Comparatively, books were easier and cheaper to read, store and ship back home when they started to pile up. Plus, in my day, a Marine reading a comic book or a novel wasn’t as likely to get hassled as one trying to hook up a game console (Protip: You’d be astonished at how much recreational reading Marines do compared to other branches of the service).

Shortly after getting out of the Marines (1992) I wasn’t buying wargame books anymore owing to the fact that I had no one with whom to play these games, and I had stopped buying comics because the emphasis stopped being less on the stories as it was on the pre-packages collectability factors (holofoils, glow-in-the-dark covers, pre-bagged books), etc. Since I was more interested in stories than gimmicks I dropped out of this as well.

In 1994 I found a second Atari 2600 at a Goodwill and finally had my own apartment to bring it back home to. It was a cool bit of nostalgia but I still wasn’t quite at the mindset of a “collector”. That came about 18 months later when I had married and relocated to a new city. Our new home was located next door to the largest Goodwill in town. My wife went over to visit one day and said: “I was just over at that thrift store and they had a whole bunch of that Atari stuff you like so much.” I went to see for myself. She was right. And I’ve been going back every week (among other locations) for the last twelve years.

Now I have dozens of systems and hundreds of games. My Atari 2600 collection alone is 12 times bigger than the one I had in my teens. It all started with getting back what I had lost. Now it’s become something far less vindictive and much more of a personal pleasure.

But still…gamer first, collector second.

(fin)

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Pantechnicon]

Thats the reason you bought the house isn't it :love:

It was an apartment, actually. But regarding the house we bought two years later: one of the primary selling factors for me was "It's got all that great built-in shelving that I can put my game collection on." Have a look for yourself (http://videogamecollectors.com/gallery/The_Pantechnicon).

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Mr. Smashy]

I started collecting by buying games I didn't own and keeping them.

The reason why I started was to spite all of the fatcat game collectors and resellers in town. I think to myself "that'll teach 'em" each time I find something good.

[Iron Draggon]

Must….not….write….autobiography….

Part I <snip>

ROFL I think that one qualifies for the quote of the year thread...

it's great getting to read everyone else's stories... BTW, in reading them I've realized that it prolly sounds like I'm filthy rich and I was born to a filthy rich family, but I'm really just a poor white trash kid from the 70's like many of you other guys here... I had an Atari 2600 back in the day which I sold for an Atari 5200, which was when I really seriously started collecting video games, I guess... my goal when I bought the 5200 was to own every game ever made for it, and I achieved that goal as far owning all the first party games ever made for it... but it all just sat on a shelf in my closet for many years because it stopped working and I never could find the replacement parts I needed to get it working again (it only needed a new power adapter and as it turned out a new TV switchbox too) so finally I wanted some new games for some of my other systems badly enough to get it working again and sell it all off and thanks to ebay I was able to get it working again and thanks to AA I was able to sell it all for $200 and use the money to buy some other games...

thank God for the internet... without it I wouldn't still be collecting video games, I'd be missing alot of stuff that I wanted for my collection, and I'd still be thinking that I was the only one bothering to collect board games and video games... I knew alot of other people collected Hot Wheels and other stuff, but I thought board games and video games weren't considered to be collectible yet... and I was right to a large degree, but thankfully alot of other people must've been thinking the same thing that I was thinking... I'm gonna gather up as much of this stuff as I can and hold on to it... it's gonna be worth alot of money when everyone else realizes that it's all collectible...

I often joke that I collect collections, because it's true... that's what I do...

[Vinnysdad]

I guess I started with an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. Had that thing for a good while till someone broke into my parents house and stole it. Then I got a NES for christmas to replace it and had that till I was about 15. I stupidly sold it with my 20 boxed games for cheap. I had an SNES but was never really into it at the time because I was too busy running the streets and such. I really started to collect when I bought a PS1. Then I found out about Funcoland and saw all the NES games they had and just had to buy back my old games. Been collecting ever since.

[Kevincal]

How did I start collecting? An easy, one-word answer for me...:

EBAY!

:P

[mezrabad]

Wow, good topic I.D.!

Okay, let it be known that collecting is a beast within me that I keep chained up, tightly. It has run rampant over the years for certain things.

Disney Movies -- the first "collecting" though it was only a list of Disney films I had seen. I just checked off or added to the list whenever I saw one.

Stamps -- Mint US Commemoratives, singles only (no sheets or plateblocks). I actually still have this collection. It's probably worth a good deal more than the amount of money I spent to acquire it, given that it was fairly complete for the years 1935 to 1980 if I remember correctly. I stopped collecting stamps around the time I realized the post office wanted everyone to collect stamps because it represented revenue that was never used for actually providing a service. (notice how many commemoratives are published each year now? it's a racket.)

Peanuts books -- paperback, Fawcett-Crest compilations of Peanuts strips. I have every one published from 1952 to about 1981 when I had to start saving up to feed my 2600.

Never really collected for the 2600 or, later, the C-64. I just bought games I could afford and wanted to play.

Comic books -- 1987 to about 1989. I have the very first Sandman, 1st printing, just because I happened to pick it up when it came out. This didn't last long because I realized that most of the series I enjoyed tended to either spin-off into more books (I think there were six Spiderman books at one time, there may be even more now) multiple X-men with crossovers into New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Calibur etc and that if I wanted to feed my completist compulsions I would have to spend waaaay too much money.

Computer Games -- I didn't like to think of this as a collection, but I wish I had, then I might not have thrown out all the boxes in an effort to appease my wife's complaints about my stuff taking up so much space.

Chronogames -- I still accumulate games for all systems, but I don't really go after titles unless I'm interested in playing them. For the Chronogaming project I've been working on since 2003 (I didn't start blogging them all until 2005), I've had to "collect" pretty much every videogame that came out for a home console from 1972 to 1979. I won't be keeping them. I'll need to be selling them back to eBay soon so as to begin the acquisition of titles that were released between 1980-1984.

Anyway, I've enjoyed reading everyone's collecting tales.

[shoes23]

I starting actually "collecting" about three years ago when I cleaned up. I'm a recovering drug addict, and everyone kept telling me that I needed to find a hobby (I don't quite think this is what they had in mind, but it works for me). I started visiting the pawn shop here in town and began spending ~$50 a week on used games. I've kept that same routine through the years and have amassed 1100+ games in a little over three years. I've always had a love for videogames, and its really starting to show in my gameroom. I owe a large debt of graditude to video games, as I don't know if I would have been able to stay clean for as long as I have without something to occuppy my mind on some of those boring nights.

[Iron Draggon]

I starting actually "collecting" about three years ago when I cleaned up. I'm a recovering drug addict, and everyone kept telling me that I needed to find a hobby (I don't quite think this is what they had in mind, but it works for me). I started visiting the pawn shop here in town and began spending ~$50 a week on used games. I've kept that same routine through the years and have amassed 1100+ games in a little over three years. I've always had a love for videogames, and its really starting to show in my gameroom. I owe a large debt of graditude to video games, as I don't know if I would have been able to stay clean for as long as I have without someone to occuppy my mind on some of those boring nights.

I too had my battles with addiction to various drugs during the time that I was doing most of my collecting (while I was making money hand over fist) averaging 60 hours per week working all the busiest shifts at the busiest gay bar in all of Texas, not just all of Houston, I suppose it was almost inevitable that I would become heavily addicted to cocaine... I kicked that habit and then became heavily addicted to meth... I kicked that habit and almost became heavily addicted to crack... through it all I was always heavily addicted to marijuana, and I would've become heavily addicted to ecstasy if it weren't for the fact that I never did care for it much... I always preferred acid over ecstasy, and I was heavily addicted to acid before I was addicted to coke... what I regret most about my cocaine and meth addictions is that if I had spent all the money that I just snorted up my nose on games instead of spending it all on drugs, I'd have an even larger collection than I do now...

I failed to mention in my original post that my video game collection consists of about 1500 games for 15 different systems... I own tons of rarities which were mostly bought brand new back in the day... the rest were bought brand new recently, and I'm still trying to save up for a few more that I want... and I'm sure that you will come to feel this way about your own collection, if you don't already... but it will remind you of some reasons why you stay clean...

good luck in staying sober... I still have my battles with resisting using again, and I'm still not always successful in resisting... but fortunately my few times of falling off the wagon have reminded me why I should stay on the wagon...

I'm glad you chose collecting and playing video games to help you resist... I was told that it was prolly my constant playing of video games while I had a broken arm that allowed me to regain full movement of my arm... just those little movements of my thumbs on the D-pads and of my hands on the joysticks in addition to my physical therapy and all the exercises that I was doing on my own helped me to a speedy recovery so I could get back to work and get back to collecting!

[RadiantSvgun]

I just stopped trading in games. And it grew.

[Haoie]

I bought a used PS1 console in mid 2003, that's how I began collecting games. Just a few at first, then it just kept going and going. And now 4 years later, I have over 150.

[Wolf]

I originaly had a c vic 20 from my uncle but sold that.

Well when I originaly got my nes around 88 or 89 I was living on an island between canada and the us, my parents used to take me over to watertown back then and games were alot cheaper over there so I just started buying them and keeping them, I think I had close to 30 or so, luckily my parents taught me to respect things I owned so I kept everything including the inserts and plastic in a drawer and kept the carts out to play.

Around the time the genesis came out ( and having been drawn to video games by arcade games ) I knew I wanted it, because I was just a kid and had no understanding how these damn games worked I could never figure out why the nes looked like fucking shit ( as did the cvic20 and atari ) compared to all these games I was hooked on at the arcades, so as soon as I saw that the genesis was closer to arcade graphics I said fuck this shit ( I was already sick of the nes a year and a half into owning it ) and promptly sold it off for the genesis, I was in heaven cause I have loved 16bit games ever since I got to play them.....I still love them more than anything, then the snes came out and I got that with zelda and ff 2 for xmas, eventualy I got bored of both consoles and sold them off....cause I got a 386 pc and my buddy at the time was plugging pc games to me cause they were free.

I took a major break from video games from around...95 or so.....to around 1998 cause I was engaged and working and fucking this broad alot so games just did not interest me much, then I took a slide in my life and made some terrible choices, money meant nothing to me and people would steal me video games, alcohol and do anything I wanted, so I got some junkies to get me a psx and an n64 and some games and I just started collecting them and they sorta turned my life around believe it or not, I later got a pc and changed my life for the better by becoming a seller on ebay, it was around that point I started to see that there was a bit of a profit to be made in video games and other things, so I used to go around to yard sales every saturday and sell stuff I bought for peanuts for high prices ( you could do this back in the day ) and used alot of that money to fund my growing video game addiction.

The rest is history, I have a growing library of ps2, cube and gba games now and starting getting into the import scene over the last year, it's kinda ironic that video games probably saved me from ending up in jail or alot worse.

[Slate]

I started collecting because I was amazed by the pictures of videogamerdaryll's collection in 2003! :)

[Nate Nanjo]

I started collecting after the flea market I was selling at, slowly died. Well, to the point I went from $200+ a weekend to trying to make $10 a weekend.