Originally Posted by
Tanooki
I do? Huh, guess I have around 60 worthless games. No, I find supporting the scalper market worthless because the prices are just abusively high on anything on the upper end of the quality scale and anything (good or bad) perceived as so called rare (along with legit rares.) That's why I stopped caring and gave up buying the stuff online and off as well outside of super rare exceptions of fair pre-scam pricing and same with SNES too. Like you said, you have been able to find some cheap. Recently I bought NES games (and system) for the first time in over two years and it had two games in the $50-100 club, tried them, didn't like them, but I had them and what I paid for that lot wasn't awful by any means. And yes, prices despite online annoyances can be local as can availability. I could find heaps of games out west, but in this area very few and those that do are influenced by half price books asking the highest paid BIN price possible so it's pointless.
You're not out of touch. You're just smarter than the average person that has been brought up with disposable culture and cheap every few years if that replaceable items. Some people who are in their 20s and under are part of this club, but a lot of them into gaming/music/movies have been brought up in a mind controlled type way by the industry to not care if you actually have something in hand, and to not even realize you don't own something when you pay for it. They'd rather push convenience, cheaper pricing, and the ability to have a heap of stuff in one little device that could be shared among others. Few will realize or get mad when they find an old game vanished due to time, device/os changes and all that, or they just don't care and move along due to disposable culture leanings. Some though will realize they're getting screwed. Maybe they own a Nintendo console, had it broken or stolen, couldn't get it repaired, and find out that 100s or 1000s of dollars in games were stuck on it bound to the device and they're shit out of luck. Or they'll be a victim of a licensing agreement expiring or going sour, much like Ubisoft getting Turtles and it getting wiped off Wii-Ware/VC, or over on Kindle when there was a battle over Orwells 1984 (irony!) and Amazon reached out over Wifi and manually erased it off every paying customers device and their site (which they got sued hardcore for and lost as it was stealing.) I once had a Loco Roco game on my T-Mobile phone like a decade ago, Sony didn't want to host it anymore, and it got erased from me and I lost my purchase. Had I physically owned it like my Loco Roco UMD I had then they couldn't do that.
So no, you just respect your ability to pay for something and control it within the confines of the medium -- cart, tape, cd, dvd, blu ray, memory card, whatever. I use MP3s, but I buy CDs and make them because I won't trust Apple or someone might piss off a studio and lose those tracks just as I have ripped 3 blu-rays of mine and put them on mobiles too instead of just paying for a streaming/download. I don't feel out of date, I still use the modern tech but I find creative ways to control it still just as I'll buy any game on GOG.com over Steam given a choice as I get a physical keeper copy vs the DRM/front end saddled copies they have.
I don't much like calling what I have a collection too due to the modern idea of it with gaming, but it is one. I did collect them, but they're not amiibo desk toys, I use them. Just like I have a small Lego collection, I collected them but I enjoy building, displaying, then tearing down and doing it again later.