Game Hoard

There are many reasons why someone's board game collection is...

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These days I think a lot about my collection! In the early days of my gaming group I had most of the games and I bought more indiscriminately with the idea of "we'll eventually play it". Then as the group grew everybody started bringing their own favorites and collections and my collection started to not get played.

After I moved to another area, my collection mostly got played by my family and close friends. I still bought new games based on that same logic "we'll eventually play it". And in most cases, we didn't.

Now I don't buy anything unless I have a clear idea who I'm going to play it with. I've passed up on Kickstarters that I'd insta-back in the old days because I can't see who I'd play it with or when.

I also spent a lot of time and effort weeding this collection down. I got it from 400+ games down to just 100 at one point. I then made a rule for myself of 1 in 1 out. I was able to maintain this for a few years! However, in the last couple of years I've gotten that number down to around 40 games. I'm not as strict about 1 in 1 out but I've very picky about what I do buy. Also, with the pandemic, the games in the collection are getting a lot of plays with just my family. I'm going deeper into these games and really getting to know them and I like that a lot.

windrant wrote: These days I think a lot about my collection! In the early days of my gaming group I had most of the games and I bought more indiscriminately with the idea of "we'll eventually play it". Then as the group grew everybody started bringing their own favorites and collections and my collection started to not get played.

After I moved to another area, my collection mostly got played by my family and close friends. I still bought new games based on that same logic "we'll eventually play it". And in most cases, we didn't.

Now I don't buy anything unless I have a clear idea who I'm going to play it with. I've passed up on Kickstarters that I'd insta-back in the old days because I can't see who I'd play it with or when.

I also spent a lot of time and effort weeding this collection down. I got it from 400+ games down to just 100 at one point. I then made a rule for myself of 1 in 1 out. I was able to maintain this for a few years! However, in the last couple of years I've gotten that number down to around 40 games. I'm not as strict about 1 in 1 out but I've very picky about what I do buy. Also, with the pandemic, the games in the collection are getting a lot of plays with just my family. I'm going deeper into these games and really getting to know them and I like that a lot.

Who let the voice of reason into the room?

My "collection" is such a mess that I can't even properly assess what I have anymore. As often as not when someone asks to borrow something I have to make sure I still have it before answering the request. Ten years back I had the list in my BGG profile, but I've just let that languish without updating since. I pull out a bucket and discover that I have a game I didn't know about and wonder how it got in there.

It's a pretty solid metaphor for the rest of my life now that I think about it.

windrant wrote: ... I'm going deeper into these games and really getting to know them and I like that a lot.

QFT

Over the Christmas break my son complained that we had stopped playing the games that we love due to the distraction of newer titles that were always proving to be less exciting than those we had passed over. I am normally quite uncompromising with thinning the herd but the pile of boxes has become quite flabby of late and he was completely correct. So a few days ago I took a hatchet to my 'collection,' pulled everything off onto the floor and for every box asked myself "is this enjoyable to play? Is there another game that I would normally rather be playing instead?"

Thirty one games are now on the eBay pile and I have only around a dozen left on the shelf. Straight away we started playing our favourites again and we are happy. I am definitely an advocate of cutting the crap in both the literal and figurative sense.

Whether or not I play something is kind of dependent on the whims of my family. That said, I got Arkham Horror the card game for Christmas a year ago and haven't played it. That's on me.

I think there is a natural cycle for any hobby collection to expand somewhat uncontrollably for a while and then go through a contracting "refinement" phase. I certainly went through it, buying any game i enjoyed a few plays of, then any expansion to a game i already had, then any game with a novel mechanic, then any game whose THEME i liked regardless if i played it yet (GMT got a lot of my business because of this).

Pair that acquisition disorder with how HARD it is to sell off games, they are physically difficult and expensive to ship and are TERRIBLE at holding value (aside from rare [and unpredictable] examples) making keeping them very easy versus just dumping them at a con or garage sale.

Fortunately for me a couple of major moves in the past few years broke me of a lot of hoarding compulsions so i am shedding "hobby weight" quite a bit. Sucks to see some stuff go but it must be done!

I never went through a period of rapid acquisition, and tend to be fairly picky about what I buy. But even just getting an average of 3 games per year has built up to an excessively large collection. I definitely find it difficult to let go of games. Partly because there was something that appealed to me enough to buy a game and continue to hope that I will play it again at some point. And I agree that shipping can be a hassle, especially find a suitable box and packing the game in there safely for transport. I have a long commute for work and sometimes work on Sundays, so Saturday is likely the only day I can be sure of getting to the post office.

I disagree that board games (physical entities) don't hold value, they do it much better than their digital cousins. And then when you do want to sell and you have got 10-20 (conservative value maybe) hours fun out of it then how much monetary value do you assign to that before you do the final spreadsheet balance when you sell it ? Is it similar to going to concerts, or going to sports games, or to the cinema - all other forms of fun entertainment that we are happy to spend reasonable large one-off payments for but have nothing tangible left afterwards apart from good memories.

I keep games that, at some time in the future, I know I'll want to play again for a particular fun feeling. And when that thought has gone then I will get rid of it, usually for cash or another game - not too many entertainment forms or hobbies you can do that with.