Anyone ever get bored of collecting?

I'm basically coming to the point where I am realizing I am hoarding and not collecting.

The amount of things I acquire would take more time then available in a human life span to use for its intended purposes.Now I don't want to come to the point when I have to sell out of desperation either.

I think I will start focusing more on reselling rather then adding to the collection.

I am 26 and single with no kids. I don't want to get stuck in a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle having to rent and live day by day. My dad owns his house fully paid off since he is like 40. I want the same.

I would like to be able to have a hefty down payment on a home by the time I am 30 and in order to do so I need to let my bank account grow and not my collection.

I own a 2014 car fully paid off so now is my chance to set priorities straight. I have a chance to save and I don't have kids or a gf or anything that ties me down. It seems I should be taking advantage of this.

I'm also starting to use more of these things. I get more angry with myself as I question there intended uses and what will become of them in the future. Like will they make me happy still having them, will something bad happen to them etc. I question all the factors.

My priorities don't seem to be priorities. I am always more worried about going out and hunting games and the finds. And I been like that for like the last 4 years of collecting.

At the same time I think I have realized something and have took action into making some changes.

My worry now is career and stability in the future so I can still do these things I enjoy 20 years from now. 

I don't need a CIB earthbound or a stadium events or rare prototype of a game or a $1,000 dollar comic book. I need a house that is solely in my name.

Sounds like you just had an epiphany. Sleep on it for a week..anytime all this emotion hits at once you should pump the brakes a little before making a rash decision.

But with that said..Sustanance for yourself has to be priority #1. The collecting game for me has to be fun..when yard sailing feels like a job, I quit for a while.

And also..look up Dave Ramsey's teachings on money. We teach the class in my church. Sounds like your dad already has being out of debt with a paid for house by 40.

Why are driven to spend money on games? Don't you have any self control?

I remember a year ago, i was kind of like you, buy unnecessary things, what got me out is my own common sense. One day i was sitting in my room i was just looking at everything in my room, and i asked myself, "what the do i have all this for? " And like poof!!!!!! NO MORE STUPID BUYING

Like, really, who cares if you own this collector version of X game, or  own this thing. Who are you truly trying impress at the end day, yourself or some moron over the internet. Its not like your showing off you have money. 

Word of advice: stop watching youtuber and their stupid pick-up video. 

Can't help it. I still want to order some comics now and will still probably hunt for video games this weekend. I'm like toxie addicted to crack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4pIvV3zBS4

I wouldn't agonize too much as long as you're making picks like Suikoden 2 for $35 If it ever seems like you're getting in too deep, just take a Saturday off and use that time to list some things for sale. I'm getting like that after spending years on collecting; trying to use my time more wisely instead of chasing down every single lead in order to save $5.

I just bought a car so I'm limiting my collecting now.

Indigo_Streetlight said:

I wouldn't agonize too much as long as you're making picks like Suikoden 2 for $35 If it ever seems like you're getting in too deep, just take a Saturday off and use that time to list some things for sale. I'm getting like that after spending years on collecting; trying to use my time more wisely instead of chasing down every single lead in order to save $5.

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I got suikoden 2 disc only with manual for $5 all those games were $35 together. $5 a piece expect lunar was four discs so the guy wanted $10.

That was very small peas compared to my sega haul last month.

Problem for me isn't needing to sell its the spending. Because every time I get profit I technically have no profit because its used to fund more things. Basically instead of seeing more profits I keep taking that money and buying other things. So money never goes to a surplus while materialistic collectibles do.

My collection is growing and not my bank account. To the point if I'm not on a mortgage but renting I need to question whether I want a collection worth $20,000 dollars and keep renting or that is a down payment.

Or alternative is stop spending money on wants over the next few years like 2-3 years and rather then doubling my collection again from where its at today use those funds to get a nice way into a down payment on a place.

needler420 said:

I got suikoden 2 disc only with manual for $5 all those games were $35 together. $5 a piece expect lunar was four discs so the guy wanted $10.

That was very small peas compared to my sega haul last month.


Problem for me isn't needing to sell its the spending. Because every time I get profit I technically have no profit because its used to fund more things. Basically instead of seeing more profits I keep taking that money and buying other things. So money never goes to a surplus while materialistic collectibles do.

My collection is growing and not my bank account. To the point if I'm not on a mortgage but renting I need to question whether I want a collection worth $20,000 dollars and keep renting or that is a down payment.

Or alternative is stop spending money on wants over the next few years like 2-3 years and rather then doubling my collection again from where its at today use those funds to get a nice way into a down payment on a place.

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I resigned myself to only collecting for two consoles (Dreamcast and Saturn). I have games for the other systems but they're games I bought in the past and played at release. Early on when I started reselling games I was keeping every interesting game I found for my collection. I realized after a year or so that I wasn't playing them and really didn't need them.

Now my problem is I don't list stuff fast enough and am probably sitting on $20k of stuff. It's hard to justify selling things now when prices have bottomed out until the Winter.

If you happen to build up a big inventory like I have, I'd strongly recommend looking into any anime conventions in your area and getting a dealer booth. I sell yearly at NC's Animazement con. Booths are only $400 and I made something like $13k in a single weekend. It's WAY better than dealing with eBay.

I wouldn't say I'm bored of collecting - it is just hard to find anything I don't have. My favorites to collect for are the NES and SNES and after collecting for so long I maybe find a handful of games I don't have or complete version of them instead of my cart only.

To get really excited I'd have to find a Bubble Bobble 2, Flintstones or something like that. Because of that most of it ends up being sold off.

Doomstink said:

I resigned myself to only collecting for two consoles (Dreamcast and Saturn). I have games for the other systems but they're games I bought in the past and played at release. Early on when I started reselling games I was keeping every interesting game I found for my collection. I realized after a year or so that I wasn't playing them and really didn't need them.

Now my problem is I don't list stuff fast enough and am probably sitting on $20k of stuff. It's hard to justify selling things now when prices have bottomed out until the Winter.

If you happen to build up a big inventory like I have, I'd strongly recommend looking into any anime conventions in your area and getting a dealer booth. I sell yearly at NC's Animazement con. Booths are only $400 and I made something like $13k in a single weekend. It's WAY better than dealing with eBay.

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I can't imagine pulling that much from a booth. I've done some free comic shows, but I only made about $300 a day. What are you selling at the con? I'm sitting on well over $100,000 retail/amazon value of stuff, but waiting for online sales has caused a space issue.

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OP. Get rid of the stuff while you still can. I am trying to go through one type of item at a time and decide if they are worth listing, if they are for a local sale, or donate. It has been working for me to dig out of my hole. I started with vhs and I am working on books right now. My social life and career have been sidelined for years. The simple solution is to stop buying, but it is the thing I enjoy, so I am trying to be more selective and consider how much space an item takes up or how quickly it will sell.

I've been on ebay since the mid 90s and I make enough to live off of, but it has gotten to the point where a real job is much better, not just for a steady income, but for the social aspects. I've been a prisoner to my stuff for the last 10 years.

I will say that I am debt free and I own my home, but I have always been good with money. If I had a real job in the last 10 years, I would easily have over $300,000 in the bank or a bigger home with an average salary.

i figured if i started today, and i played one game a week and didn't buy any more games it would take me 11 years to beat them all.    i am going to just collect series now.     this makes it more of a hobby then an obsession.

slowdive21 said:

I can't imagine pulling that much from a booth. I've done some free comic shows, but I only made about $300 a day. What are you selling at the con?

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Games, consoles, accessories, DVDs (anime, sci-fi, fantasy, or animated stuff only), and strategy guides. The key is pricing fairly - don't try to pull in convention markup or things won't sell. I mark everything at 10 - 15% less than the online average (passing my savings on fees to my customers at the con).

To make things really easy, I price everything to the nearest $5 increment and I don't charge tax. That way I only need a big stack of $5 bills for change. Make sure you have a square reader to accept credit/debit cards. I use a sharpee and blue painters tape to price things (very easy to peel off). For my booth, I have two collapsable tables and some cheapo media shelves from walmart. I use those shelves plus a bunch of free boxes from Costco to display my inventory.

My booth always looks crazy unprofessional but I always do well. I've doubled my profit every year since I started doing it in 2010. Many people now make my booth their first stop at the con!

Make sure to target anime cons if you have one in your area (most states have at least one). There's a wider overlap between anime culture and gaming than with comic culture and gaming. I'd say 90% of anime fans are into gaming in some capacity whereas that number would be much lower for comic collectors.

Personally, I've scaled way back in what I'm buying. At one point I was buying just about any non-sports title I was finding at thrift stores because they usually only run $1.99. I still hit up thrift shops but now I'm only buying stuff that I'll try to get around to playing at some point.

Even still, I kind of feel like I'm at a point where I want to sell off some of my collection. I mean, I'm only probably in the neighborhood of 500 titles or so but even that is something I'll never get around to playing everything.

Doomstink said:

Make sure to target anime cons if you have one in your area (most states have at least one). There's a wider overlap between anime culture and gaming than with comic culture and gaming. I'd say 90% of anime fans are into gaming in some capacity whereas that number would be much lower for comic collectors.

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Thanks for the tips! What would you say sells best? I understand diversity is a good thing, but is there a product that moves more than others?

I've thought about going to Anime Central for years, but they are probably the most strict of the conventions around here. $750 booth fee minimum (still cheaper than C2E2 or Wizard World) and they have a lot of restrictions. Maybe I'll try one of the smaller Anime conventions in Chicago.

slowdive21 said:

Thanks for the tips! What would you say sells best? I understand diversity is a good thing, but is there a product that moves more than others?

I've thought about going to Anime Central for years, but they are probably the most strict of the conventions around here. $750 booth fee minimum (still cheaper than C2E2 or Wizard World) and they have a lot of restrictions. Maybe I'll try one of the smaller Anime conventions in Chicago.

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You might want to weigh the cost of the booth versus the average expected attendance. Here in Baltimore we have Otakon which might be up 20,000 - 30,000 attendees. I can tell you I checked out the dealer room about two years ago and there was barely standing room within the molasses of potential customers.

I'm sure with the cost to get in, people there weren't adverse to dropping money... though Doomstink gives great advice about pricing. I remember seeing tons of DVDs and manga that were easily available online without the mark-up; and because of this, my personal spending was pushed towards the art room for more unique items.

ACEN pulls about 30,000 unique attendees annually. I can't figure out what the others pull though.

So you guys are saying people try to sell DVDs for retail or over retail price at anime cons? At comic conventions you pay a fraction for comics. Most are $1-$2 on avg if they are 2.99-4.99 cover price. trade paperbacks are usually around 30-50% off MSRP.

At the comic conventions I tried to sell sealed DVDs and DVD sets for $5 each and open DVDs for $2. I didn't sell any. T-shirts and hats I sold for $15 each and they moved pretty well.  I've never brought any video game stuff because they values fluctuate, plus there are 'variants' I should research before I dump stuff.

needler420 said:

I got suikoden 2 disc only with manual for $5 all those games were $35 together. $5 a piece expect lunar was four discs so the guy wanted $10.

That was very small peas compared to my sega haul last month.

Problem for me isn't needing to sell its the spending. Because every time I get profit I technically have no profit because its used to fund more things. Basically instead of seeing more profits I keep taking that money and buying other things. So money never goes to a surplus while materialistic collectibles do.

My collection is growing and not my bank account. To the point if I'm not on a mortgage but renting I need to question whether I want a collection worth $20,000 dollars and keep renting or that is a down payment.

Or alternative is stop spending money on wants over the next few years like 2-3 years and rather then doubling my collection again from where its at today use those funds to get a nice way into a down payment on a place.

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Some questions to ask yourself might be how big of a collection do you want to have, and how many games "to play" do you want to saddle yourself with? Lately I've been trying to pace myself a little better, usually sticking to a single game to finish while sampling one or two others to put on the sale pile. Just today I did that with Fatal Frame 3, deciding that it was stupid to hold on that game when I haven't even played Fatal Frame 2! It's easy to get into traps like that, buying up an entire series instead of playing a single game to satisfy the urge that way.

Currently my collection is about in the area of 130+ games, with 30 to 40 on backlog. Used to be that the collection size was at 250, but now my goal is to trim it down to 100. However you do it, the best thing is to set a limit for yourself; don't make a collection that will hurt you by being unmanageable, but one that you can be truly happy with.

slowdive21 said:

ACEN pulls about 30,000 unique attendees annually. I can't figure out what the others pull though.

So you guys are saying people try to sell DVDs for retail or over retail price at anime cons? At comic conventions you pay a fraction for comics. Most are $1-$2 on avg if they are 2.99-4.99 cover price. trade paperbacks are usually around 30-50% off MSRP.

At the comic conventions I tried to sell sealed DVDs and DVD sets for $5 each and open DVDs for $2. I didn't sell any. T-shirts and hats I sold for $15 each and they moved pretty well. I've never brought any video game stuff because they values fluctuate, plus there are 'variants' I should research before I dump stuff.

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I don't know about elsewhere, but at Otakon they'd put a mark-up on anime S.A.V.E.R. sets of all things! Maybe not as bad as Suncoast's 2x mark-up, but still pretty bad. What else was a good example of Otakon insanity...ah, Metal Gear Solid for the ps2. Only $15 XD

I can imagine DVDs are going to be slow-sellers no matter where you take them; it's like CDs where only a portion of the population values them at any given time, whereas everyone else rips them. Currently I've got a couple out-of-print DVDs on ebay and it's probably going to be months before I realize their $20-30 shipped prices.

Not gonna lie, I kinda feel like you do. It's not that I'm tired of collecting, I love going through my stuff and picking up random games and playing them but it's clear that unless I win the lottery, I need to stop (and I'm running out of space). I'm currently house/condo shopping b/c it sucks paying rent and not getting any equity out of it.

needler420 said:

I am 26 and single with no kids. I don't want to get stuck in a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle having to rent and live day by day. My dad owns his house fully paid off since he is like 40. I want the same.

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Just some advice but don't let things like this get you down. What your dad had by the time he was 40 is not the best way to gauge where you are in life these days. Things have gotten substantially worse since his days. I don't know a single person who can say that they were better of than their parents when their parents were their age. Most of these issues are due to student debt and not being able to find a job, even though they picked what were once good careers...

Doomstink said:

I resigned myself to only collecting for two consoles (Dreamcast and Saturn). I have games for the other systems but they're games I bought in the past and played at release. Early on when I started reselling games I was keeping every interesting game I found for my collection. I realized after a year or so that I wasn't playing them and really didn't need them.

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This is honestly the best advice, to limit your collecting in some way. I'm collecting over numerous systems but I only focus on a handful of games for most of them... the only consoles I have a substantial number of games for are those that I built up while the consoles were still the current gen models. For me to go back and buy up SNES and SAT games now would cost way too much. Really wish I got more Dreamcast games back in the day though...

slowdive21 said:

Thanks for the tips! What would you say sells best? I understand diversity is a good thing, but is there a product that moves more than others?

I've thought about going to Anime Central for years, but they are probably the most strict of the conventions around here. $750 booth fee minimum (still cheaper than C2E2 or Wizard World) and they have a lot of restrictions. Maybe I'll try one of the smaller Anime conventions in Chicago.

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If Anime Central draws 30k, $700 is a bargain if you have enough inventory. Animazement only gets around 12k in attendance. I'd guess with 30k people, I could have easily made $18 - $20k.

When I sell at small events I typically struggle to break $3k, so not sure if you should waste your time with anything that has a lower attendance than 5k.

Games sell best, hands down - in specific PS1/PS2 games sell phenomenally. Also, anything Nintendo that is older than the Wii. What I would recommend is if you get a booth put as much stuff in it as you can fit while keeping it easy to browse. You never know what will sell. I had five seasons of Andromeda that I almost didn't bring to Animazement because I doubted they would sell. They actually sold in under 3 hours on the first day for about $200 total. If it's something nerdy, it stands a chance to sell.

Focus on games and media, though. Price fairly and you'll move inventory fast.

As for your question about convention markup - most game dealers at cons will mark games up 20 - 30 percent above retail. They do this because they need to maintain an inventory and can afford to sit on their stock. I mark 10 - 15 percent below retail because I only sell at one con and I want to move as much as possible while still making the same as I would if I sold online.