How to Start a Collection?

[Beak]

Do you guys live in bigger towns/cities? I live in a town of 10,000 and when I go to these places it's usually like one copy of a crappy sports game with stickers all over it. I feel like bigger places would have more lucrative yard sales.

[Hobie-wan]

Yeah a 10K town is going to limit your local ability to find things quite a bit. Even where my parents live is a few 30K towns all next to each other and I'd have a hard time finding much if I was still in that area. Do you have a larger city area that you can make day trips to? Maybe looking on Craigslist you could find some lots of things and work out with the sellers to have a look on a weekend or something. Other than that, trading on here or Ebay is probably going to be your best bet.

[brycester]

The buy sell trade forum here has been excellent to me in filling out my collection of 400 plus games. I started out getting a lot of my rare stuff from EBay and looking back I recommend against it. Too expensive. As was suggested previous a big city is the way to go. My city is 80000 strong and it is tough to get anything for a good deal as the one major used store in town that deals in retro games gouges. So I'd start picking up stuff from the Racket Boy community and keep hitting garage sales etc.

[isaacsquared]

Most of my stuff has come from Craigslist or garage sales. I've never had particularly good luck at thrift stores, and the game stores around me make it hard to start a collection without shelling out more money than eBay would take. A lot of the semi-rare games I have I've traded for or bought here, or a few that I really wanted have come from eBay. As far as getting a collection started, my recommendation would be to hunt at garage sales and Craigslist. It's not hard to get a good genesis lot for $10-$20, and a decent NES or SNES lot for about $30-$40. The fantastic deals don't show up too often, so don't get too down if you can't get a steal right away, but if you keep looking you'll find them eventually.

[shallowgamer]

My advice would be to set parameters for yourself:

1. Am I going to only collect games I have an interest in, or am I willing to pick up some bulk titles that I won't necessarily play?

2. Am I only going to pick up complete titles (box, manual, etc), or is loose good enough?

3. Am I REALLY willing to take the time to buy in bulk and unload what I don't want on eBay? Be careful with this one. After ebay fees, shipping losses, and paypal fees, this approach isn't as lucrative as you may think.

4. Am I willing to hit 50 garage sales to find 1 that has something I need? Personally, I haven't scored at a garage sale in years. There are too many collectors and flea market sellers out there competing with me.

Instant collections can be obtained on the cheap through eBay, especially for the Genesis. I've taken the long route and collected slowly over the last 25 years. Just make sure to set up a plan and stick with it. And have fun.

[executioner]

Best thing get started is buying a system which includes a couple of games bundled. I started collecting seriously probably when I arrived here on racketboy more than 3 years ago. Since I live in a country where its difficult to obtain anything older than a N64 or anything not pirated I have to resort on importing everything mostly ebay first then later moved to forums and smaller ebay like site like gamegavel.

From the start I wasn't very interested in the games themselves just the consoles, kinda inspired on this picture on the now defunct site videogame.net. As I approached a decent amount of consoles and change my mind about pirating everything or playing roms, I developed a great interest in buying specific games that I would enjoy, partially influenced by this forums and seeing fellow member's collections. But to do that having so many systems, had to focus on specific one to build up, one at a time. A good advice would be to not spend more than $30 for a game until you are very serious about you're collecting.

So your goals will probably start to change as time goes by. There's much discussion about collecting the games and actually playing them but you will find that many collectors, including myself, tend to not spend so much time playing the actual games but reading about them and their story and discussing them, that for me brings as much joy as playing. What drove me to collecting? For me it was just a casual thing, one of my best friends had all of his consoles from his childhood and it came back to me that I always read video game magazines and always wanted so many consoles and games and that it was not late to fulfill my dreams as I never stopped enjoying or loving video games.

[Dakinggamer87]

I started becoming a serious collector when I joined racketboy about a year or so ago. I built up my collection by not selling/trading any games and going to yard sales, flea markets, etc. I buy the games I enjoy and usually buy in bulk and sell what I don't like.

[Alpinex2]

Move to la and spend 6 months combing thrift stores, pawn shops, and craigs list and you will have a collection that your mother would be proud of.

[Erik_Twice]

I recommend the creation of a list that includes those videogames you want and those that you would want but only if they are really cheap (mark them so as to differentiate)

This way not only you save money but maximize your time because you are playing less mediocre games and more good games. You WILL Collect faster than you play so this is pretty important.

You prevent impulse buys that do nothing but taint your collection or take space on your shelf.

[gradualmeltdown]

Like everyone else here I got my stuff in a large variety of ways. I base my collection on themes and collecting series or games by specific publishers. It gives you a direction to go in and things to search for. More importantly I say buy games you know you'll want to play. The only console I break this rule on is the Genesis, because damn those boxes look good when there are lots of them!