I am an avid gamer. Borderline gaming addict, but my real passion? Collecting things. Am I a packrat? Possibly, but it's definitely inherited from a long line of collectors. My grandfather collected bottles and knives. Random? Not really. He dug, bought and traded for years everywhere and had one of the neatest bottle collections I've ever seen.

He loved bottles because they have real history behind them. Who drank from them? What was stored inside? Where did they come from? If they were hand blown (which the majority were), how many did that person make? Of course, he never got an answer to those questions.. but there was something about the mystery of it. In his collection he had some real pieces of history including an Egyptian tear bottle, an amazing privateer captain's bottle, some rum flasks (which I always called pirate bottles... because face it... pirates are awesome), Snake-oil salesmen bottles, as well as many more. There's something about seeing and holding pieces of history.

For me, the option to go in search of those things is a bit unrealistic because this is a different time. I collect more modern things, primarily video games/memorabilia. At one time I collected sports cards, but following the various strikes in the 90s, I refused to spend another dime collecting rare portraits of the overpaid, pretentious and self-righteous. I still have the cards, dating from 1955 -1993 (baseball) and 1996/97 (basketball)... but no longer collect them.

So, occasionally I find amazing deals on video games... so I will occasionally post about my pick-ups. Like today yesterday. Yesterday I picked up a black label [Parasite Eve] for the Playstation 1. It could have been in better shape, but the discs play. Of course, whoever had it no longer had the third disc (vol. 1 demos). You may be asking yourself "whats so special about a single copy of PS1 game in less-than-stellar shape?" [Parasite Eve] was Squaresoft's first entry into games rated mature and a superb roleplaying game and a great title, from a time when Squaresoft's quality wasn't as debatable as it is now. Another reason it is important is because of the upcoming release of The 3rd Birthday.

So where did I manage to find it? A pawn shop for $3! Pawn shops are generally full of dirty, destroyed stuff. I am not the biggest fan of pawn shops, but I'm a huge fan of the occasional deals. So when I was perusing their billion sports games, I was shocked to find a quality RPG that was actually playable and only searching for a good home. It's not the biggest pick-up, but still a good one!

I will be posting the blog over at http://dyeknom.blogspot.com, but thought I would post a few entries here as well.