To new collectors from an old collector... Don't do this.

[Tempest]

I just think of what these people could have accomplished if they put that time, mental energy and money into something like getting a degree or striving to master an art form.

If it makes you feel any better I earned a Masters degree and played in a community band at the same time I was collecting.

Tempest

[SpaceHarrier]

My brother went through something like this only he went majorly overboard. He read somewhere how most people could/should get their belongings down to 100 items. I am talking about every object he owns(excluding food and drinks).

I couldn't even imagine owning less than 100 games, let alone items in total. I could see letting 100 games go from my collection, but that is some serious, spartan living right there; 100 items total. I think my wardrobe (as neglected as it is for games' sake, still comes in over the mark).

edit: yup, quick count of 112 or so

[tubeway]

I couldn't even imagine owning less than 100 games, let alone items in total. I could see letting 100 games go from my collection, but that is some serious, spartan living right there; 100 items total. I think my wardrobe (as neglected as it is for games' sake, still comes in over the mark).

edit: yup, quick count of 112 or so

90 preorder bonus t-shirts, 10 pre order caps, a pair of sweat pants, two pairs of collectible Halo boxers never taken out of their tin, and nine socks that don't match each other?

Oh wait, sorry. I'm projecting.

[Emperor Megas]

two pairs of collectible Halo boxers never taken out of their tin...

I received a pair of those boxers as a gift a couple years ago; the tin is total crap. The back of it fell out after I took the shorts out.

[ncman071]

i can honestly say that my collecting habit has largely diminished since i became a dad in Oct. 2009. This is mostly due to my focus on my kids/family. I still collect games and systems, but not nearly as frequent. i try to only buy the games that i know i'm going to play. i did recently obtain a master system and an nes toploader...but got them relatively cheap. my game collection sits around 650 games across something like 23 platforms give or take.

but the important thing for me is putting my children first...i know that a $60 game purchase could easily be food/milk/diapers for my children....its basically all about perspective now

[maxlords]

Heh....there's a lot of good knowledge in this thread. Surprised I've missed it for this long! I have to agree...it's easy to let this get out of hand for sure. At my peak I was probably at around 700 or 800 games. It started feeling like it was too much....taking over. I've slowly started to purge stuff now, and I'm getting better about dumping things.

My rule was always "Play it...if you don't like it, get rid of it." Unfortunately I've found that it's a lot easier to acquire games really fast than it is to play them all! I had a 2nd rule as well: "If you like it, don't get rid of it." This one has caused me more problems, as I'm finding that yes I like a lot of games, but I'm unlikely to go back to most of them once I've finished em. Nowadays I buy most stuff very cheap, and even then, it seems like I turn and dump half of it before I've really played it. I just don't have as much time as I used to and there's just too much coming out anymore. I'm finding that I simply CAN'T play all the stuff that might interest me, and even the stuff I do get I'm not playing all of.

I've come to the conclusion that I just have to stop buying a fair amount of stuff at this point and limit myself to the handful of titles I really want to play. And I'm STILL going through my game backlog and dumping stuff that I either don't like or won't ever play because I've had it so long my tastes have actually changed!

I also collect books and comics and I'm doing the same thing for those collections as well as my DVDs and CDs...it's been a long time coming but I've realized that having STUFF (or at least so much of it) is more of a hassle than it's worth in the long run.