You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone…

Alan muses on missing most of the golden age of video game collecting

 

This is the story of my brief venture into video game collecting, how my obsessive nature took it over and how I was perhaps saved by the dawning realisation that I had boarded the train too late and had missed many of the best stops. 

 

Late to the party

Have you ever turned up to a jumping party only to find it winding down thirty minutes later? There is perhaps nothing worse than arriving on a happening scene belatedly (Ed – “Being hit by a truck is perhaps a bit worse?”)  (Grapes – “Mm ok – I’ll give you that, but I was speaking metaphorically!”). Regardless, that is what happened to me. I had decided that I wanted to revisit those games and systems of my youth, and to do so I became a collector. But within just four or five years of starting, it became clear that I had missed the optimal window by 15 or 20 years.

 

Rewind

To explain we need to rewind to 2018. I was at a bit of a loose end. For over 30 years I had been spending my spare time playing in a variety of rock covers and tribute bands but a carpel-tunnel type finger condition necessitated a lengthy enforced lay off. I had to find something new to keep me occupied and it was at this time that I began writing seriously.

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I had always fancied myself as a bit of a wordsmith but I needed focus; specifically something to write about. The natural choice was another love - classic video games. In another life I had so desperately wanted to have been an Amiga Power writer and, even 25 years later, I still held a burning desire to prove (if only to myself) that I had it in me to be at least a tad witty and informative, and maybe a touch edgy and opinionated too.

 

Buy, buy, buy

But there was a problem. If I was going to review classic video games then I needed the means to be able to play them again. All my retro stuff was either packed away or long gone. I started by purchasing an Amiga 600 and recovering all my old systems and games from my loft. I converted a spare room into a man-cave and picked up a Sony Trinitron television on Facebook Marketplace. But having started, I didn’t know when to stop and before long I was buying systems and games almost at random. I even started collecting old mobile phones!

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(Perhaps I should mention that I also bought a record deck and started collecting vinyl. Maybe I was having a full on mid-life crisis? Hmmm, that’s a bit of a worry, I hadn’t considered that. Let’s not go there; if you promise not to tell anyone, then I won’t either…)

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So while I started with those systems that formed the pathway of my gaming journey (the Commodore Amiga, Sony PlayStation and PS2, Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360, Nintendo Gamecube and Wii), I had soon added a SNES, a Nintendo 64, a Sega Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast, a Sony PS3 and even an Atari 2600. Oh, and numerous Nintendo Game Boys, Game Boy Advances, Game Boy Advance SPs, DSs, 3DSs, Sony PSPs and more. Before I knew it I was buying games for them all too.

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When I started out there were bargains aplenty. A few notifications set up on eBay and Facebook Marketplace, along with a periodic tour of charity shops and visits to jumble sales and car boot sales was more than enough to keep the supply of hardware and software flowing.

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(Ed – “For the benefit of our overseas readers, a car boot sale is a ridiculously British way of selling your unwanted stuff. You drive to a muddy field, pay a pitch fee, park your car and then set up a mini stall, usually on a wallpaper paste table (or similar) and sell whatever takes your fancy. This is normally done in the cold and often in the rain, warmed only by the cup of lukewarm, weak tea you have bought from the burger van at a stupidly inflated price. Would-be buyers then pay for the privilege of trudging round in the rain to peruse your wares. The result is a fairly unpleasant morning haggling ten pence up or down on the broken lawnmower or hideous vase you are trying to get rid of.

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But that’s not the worst of it. For some bizarre reason a lot of the British car boot sales start on a Sunday morning at 07:00am. This means that, to get a good spot and to avoid being consigned to the field-corner of entrepreneurial doom furthest from the entrance, sellers need to be onsite by around 6:00am. ON A SUNDAY! Furthermore, there is an unwritten rule that states that once you get bored (normally no later than about 08:00am) you must leave your partner in charge of your own stall and go for a wander round the other sellers, which invariably means that you somehow return home with more goods (and less money) than you went with…”)

 

Bribery and corruption

I made friends with those running some of the more local and friendlier charity shops, I would stop and chat with them and occasionally take them bribes, ahem, doughnuts. On one occasion I raffled a pile of duplicate games on a Facebook gaming page, and gave them the £75 I made as a donation. That buys a lot of goodwill.

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In return they would hold the donated gaming stuff and give me first dibs. It was a nice arrangement and I played fair. I wasn’t trying to rip them off (I was buying purely to collect – I generally wasn’t reselling stuff for profit), if they had something valuable I would let them know and advise them to eBay it. But equally I was filling my shelves rapidly at (the old and very reasonable) charity shop prices.

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Even friends and colleagues, once they knew I was collecting, would turn up with bags of stuff. It was too easy, and with so much available I ran out of space and money very quickly.

 

Why so serious?

I should point out that I wasn’t a serious collector. I wasn’t aiming to complete any sets and I certainly wasn’t spending silly money on any single items; the house wasn’t being remortgaged for a sealed copy of a game that someone has decided that, by placing in a small plastic case with a sticker on, was suddenly worth more than my car. While I was committed and my new hobby took up a significant chunk of my time and money, I was only ever what I would term a casual collector.

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Before we continue, here’s a really important tip for any would-be collectors, serious or casual. Focus and prioritise. Select a few preferred systems and collect for those. Don’t let yourself get sidetracked. Despite the temptations you simply CANNOT collect for everything. Unless you have Elon Musk’s bank account and a home the size of a DIY superstore you will have neither the budget nor the space to service such a task.

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It didn’t take long for me to reach this conclusion. Every shopping trip necessitated a full-on reorganisation of my gaming room, shuffling my games into the ever-decreasing shelving space (God bless IKEA Billy Bookcases and Gnedby shelving units!).

 

Time to thin things out

It was at this point that decisions had to be made. Something had to give, and it was easy to work out what. Those systems that I hadn’t played in my youth were pretty much ornaments. Apart from a brief check that they worked when purchased, I hardly turned them on. I was also spending 95% or more of my time collecting and organising, and 5% or even less actually playing and writing. I started to ask myself what the point was in what I was actually doing. I was buying systems I wasn’t powering up and games that were destined only to gather dust on the shelf.

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After a little reflection it wasn’t a difficult decision to re-channel my efforts into concentrating on those systems that actually meant something to me, and in particular the Sony PlayStation. At this point I had maybe 20 or 30 PlayStation games. I sold off those systems and games for which I had no emotional attachment, and over the next three years of more focussed collecting I took that total up to about 400. All black label and in nice condition - I became very adept at cleaning and swapping cases (tip - invest in some Sticky Stuff Remover!) as I would always take the best cases from unwanted duplicates in bulk buys and swap them for the worst ones in my collection.

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I wasn’t buying the so called heavy hitters (I had no interest in dropping £400 on Cindy’s Fashion World for example) but I made sure that I picked up all those great games I had enjoyed the first time around. Before long the Ridge Racers, Tekkens, Resident Evils, Gran Turismos and the likes of Ape Escape, MGS, Silent Hill, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and many more terrific titles were all present and correct.

 

Where have all the bargains gone?

But over this period it became apparent that the landscape was shifting rapidly. Collecting was becoming less fun and was feeling more like a struggle. As the years passed I would increasingly return from a games hunt empty handed.

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When I started out in 2018 and 2019 I would frequently get lucky. I remember buying a large plastic box containing more than 50 PlayStation games in great condition for less than a pound a game from Facebook Marketplace.

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I recall being told by a charity shop, “We don’t put our gaming stuff out – there’s no call for it” and being taken upstairs to their store room where there were three large metal double-door cabinets, full of games and hardware. It was like an Aladdin’s Palace of gaming goodies; I took as much as I could fit in my car (and that my bank account would allow!).

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On another occasion I scored a mint-in-box-and-bags (although sadly opened!) Sony PS2, for just £5 from Facebook Marketplace. I told the seller it was worth more (my moral compass kicking in again) but he didn’t care – he just wanted it gone! But as time moved on these finds would grow increasingly rare and by 2022 they had all but dried up.

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In 2018 charity shops would offer a decent selection of games for a multitude of systems. You could choose which ones to buy; oblivious to the fact that such a choice would soon become a thing of the past. In particular, PlayStation games (which were my focus) weren’t hard to find. But by 2022 most charity shops hardly carried any games at all and those that did would most likely only offer a selection of FIFA games for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Not only that, but the majority had worked out that they had been under-pricing gaming related goods and had adjusted their policies accordingly. At best their prices would now match CEX without the accompanying two year warrantee (Ed – “For our overseas readers, CEX is a computer and games exchange chain of stores in the UK that buys and sells all manner of systems and games.”) and at worst some had become somewhat overly ambitious and were trying to charge £10 for games like FIFA on the Xbox 360 that you could pick up elsewhere for 50p.

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The Facebook Marketplace bargains were largely absent too. Gone were the days of an ex-gamer selling off a nicely priced bundle. Now listings were predominantly from resellers trying to shift piles of undesirable games in broken cases, with scratched disks and no manuals.

 

The Golden Age

I occasionally look back fondly to the period around 2001 – 2003. This was when the party really started and was ABSOLUTELY the time that I should have begun collecting. Unfortunately I was in my thirties at this time, with a new mortgage and an embarrassingly small disposable income. Each time a new system was launched the purchase had to be funded by selling the previous one along with my collected games library. I never had more than two systems under my TV at any one time. And I don’t think it was just me; this was the way of things, with most people following suit each time a new console hit the stores.

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The net result of this was that every few years the market would be flooded with pre-owned games. I recall one local second-hand games shop at this time that had walls of PlayStation games all for 50 pence each. They couldn’t give them away. Everybody was trading in their PlayStation collections as they were surplus to requirements now the PS2 was in town. No one could have known that, 20 years later, a good proportion of those games would be changing hands for £5 - £10, a fair number would be worth several times that and some would be selling for well into three figures.

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What I wouldn’t give for the future me to go back and tell the 2001 me to spend all my available spare cash filling boxes with pre-owned video games. What an investment that would have been. Over the next twenty years, property gained about 78% in value. Gold went up by 400%. During the same time period a very average second-hand PlayStation game appreciated by approximately 1,900% (working from that 50 pence starting price point). Even original arcade machines could be picked up relatively cheaply, whereas now to afford such a luxury you have to sell a kidney.

 

The end

So, sadly, in 2022 my collecting stopped. I still have my man cave and a good stock of games and systems, but I no longer go out of my way to seek out new ones. If I were to stumble across a bargain then I am sure that the wallet would come out, but unfortunately those golden days of coming home with bags full of unexpected gems have well and truly gone.

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That isn’t to say that video game and system collecting isn’t still very popular. There are many avenues for a collector to find games and systems. Large video gaming fairs are held frequently and are very well attended. Then there are high street stores such as CEX, Cash Converters and other independent specialists along with the likes of eBay. And for those prepared to put in the commitment there remains a small chance of finding a bargain on the online sales and social media sites.

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On the plus side, more modern systems can still be collected for quite cheaply. Because I am so old, my focus was predominantly on the fifth generation and before. But the newer systems and games are more plentiful and are therefore cheaper. PS2 games and hardware for example are far easier to find and plenty of games can be picked up for just a pound or two.

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So there remains a number of viable ways to add to a collection, but unfortunately those bargain finds would appear to be largely consigned to yesteryear. With almost comic timing and despite being a committed gamer my whole life, I managed to almost completely miss the golden era of collecting. How I wish that I had had the power of foresight ten or fifteen years ago. My games room would look rather different than it does today!

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AG March 2023

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Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 10.

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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com

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