Leading into summer, I decided to sell off a signficant chunk of my games collection. Since childhood (but really since college), I wanted to build a library of games. I wanted to have shelves of all the best games for each of my favorite platforms and prominently face my favorites. I even had dreams of opening my own game store at one point.
A lot of folks of my generation had the same feelings and you can see images of their libraries show up on all kinds of social media. However, these days, building such a collection seems totally unnecessary. One of my original goals for building a collection was access.
I wanted to always be able to play these games in the future. But games preservation is incredible these days. All consoles from the mid 90s and before can be replicated with near perfect accuracy using FPGA software. For consoles of the Playstation 2 era, mods exist to give you immediate access to hundreds of games from the greats to the goofy. I don't need the originals anymore.
Additionally, I moved overseas over 12 years ago now. Even though I own the original games, I don't have access to them as they're back in the US, half a world away. Also, even if I was able to bring all those games here, I don't have room for them. All of my stuff has been burning space away in my mother's basement, and each time I go home, I am reminded of it (not be her).
So, with far greater access to these games through FPGA and modded consoles, I decided to go deep on getting rid of them. It was time to make some heavy cuts. And ultimately I would sell HALF of my physical collection. I sold a total of 264 games.
The main cuts of my collection came from Playstation and Sega Saturn.
I bought so many Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 games while I was in college and the years after. I often went on raids to rural department stores and used stores. I would mark all these places on maps and hit every single one on weekends driving out of town.
Then I did the same when I studied abroad in Japan and the subsequent trips after. In 2006, I was coming back from Book Off and Geo with bags full of Saturn games and accessories, and other unique Playstation games that never came to the US.
I had a pretty amazing collection, but it all sat dormant in my Mom's basement. If I wanted to play any of these games, I already had access to them in my home in Japan. Holding on to all these games really served no purpose other than nostalgia. And I had so many games that I bought and never played that my nostalgia wasn't really all that strong for the majority of them. (That being said, there were several games I did not sell because of nostalgia.)
While I always try to sell things on eBay, it's fucking terrible now. eBays takes about 40% of the money you make for all sales. Plus, if you sell more than $600, you need to claim it as income unless you prove you aren't making a profit by submitting receipts. The alternative is Facebook Marketplace, but I have never used it before and had no luck with my meager postings.
One of my friends mentioned a used games store in Madison WI that had knowledgable staff and offered fair current prices for games. I had always balked at the idea of selling to a store because you will never get a fair price. They are buying your inventory to sell and they must make a profit. But, my friend vouched for them. This was Quick Save Games.
I made a detailed list of the games I wanted to get rid of, and I sent them an email asking what they thought. They replied and after going through each individual game, they sent me a quote. Ultimately, this was far easier and faster than creating individual entries on eBay. Plus, I didn't have to mess with shipping and all that. Obviously, I wasn't getting 100% of the current price, but I was never going to get that through eBay.
After the first quote, I created a second list with further cuts into my collection, and (as mentioned above) my eventual total was 264 games. Also, I was able to get rid of all my extra Amiibos, game soundtracks, and artbooks.
I collected all of my games into six bins, packed the bins into my Mom's car, and drove the 5 hours from Minneapolis down to Madison. They opened at Noon, so I stopped at a few places along the way.
I thought it would be a pretty quick drop off and I'd have time to go to the bank, but it took them 5 hours to verify and price everything. That's not really a slight, though. They had to go through around 350 pieces of merchandise nonstop over 5 hours on their work day, all with me waiting on him so I could go back to Minneapolis. Even with prep work from the list I gave, they still had to do inventory, verification, and I also added some more stuff that I shoved in there at the last minute.
It was a signficant amount of work, and they went through things far more meticulously than any part-time folk at a lesser reselling store. I'm not sure what site they were using for prices (I think it could've been PriceCharting?), but it was very thorough and I was able to get an excellent return on all my games immediately.
Quick Save Games is a pretty amazing store. They have a signficant amount variety from all eras of gaming. They had Atari games, Genesis games, Nintendo, Playstation, Sega CD, Saturn, Xbox 360, and several Japanese games, too. They had some esoteric US releases, but nothing crazy esoteric, like a PC FX or an arcade board. It reminded me a lot of the stores I would visit 20 years ago. :)
One thing they really complained about was their space. I was really surprised at how little space they had. Some of my items were refused because they "didn't have space," but that was not just an excuse to refuse buying my Kickstarter copy of Wasteland on PC. Where would they put it here?
Also, despite being on the edge of town in Fitchburg, they got a lot of traffic. I haven't lived in Madison for over a decade, but there's not really much down there, right? I dunno. I must be wrong because they had a bunch of folks come through while I was there.
If you're down in Madison, I would absolutely recommend taking a look. It only opened in the last 2 years, and it seems like they often get new inventory.
So, I went from 503 physical games down to 277. That math doesn't work out. Even though I sold 264 games, there were many games that were in my collection, but not on my Video Game Collection page. Also, I bought a couple more games since then.
There were some games that I could not part with just yet. Some of these were from a nostalgia point of view, like all of my Dance Dance Revolution games on Playstation. I don't have a complete collection, but I have all the best ones and my favorites, even though I also have them all on my modded PS2. I couldn't get rid of any Zelda games or mainline Final Fantasy games, either.
Also, I kept my most expensive games, too. Panzer Dragoon Saga for the American Saturn remains as my most expensive game. I also have The Misadventures of Tron Bonne complete with the Megaman 2 demo disk, all in excellent condition. And, I have my childhood Zelda Ocarina of Time gold cart. Plus all of the Zelda releases for Gamecube, many of which are sealed. My collection still has quite a bit of value. :)
While it does hurt to get rid of so much of what I built for myself, it felt really good to take a chunk out of my mountain of stuff that had been weighing me down for so long. And I still have so many books, magazines, movies, CD, action figures, and other crap. The schlock store shall open again whenever I get back to the states. I will really feel good when I get rid of the magazines and actions figures.
