What are you collecting

Links mentioned in the episode (some links are affiliate links) Covert Nerd Podcast Arcade cabinet link Delayed gratification link Essex county Ninjak vs the Valiant Universe Plume by K Lynn Smith Galactic driftwood podcast Healthy Under Pressure PodcastMake Eternia Great Again Podcast Grawlix PodcastDay Dream Instruction Manual Podcast That One Time I was Abducted by Aliens podcast ----more---- As comic book nerds we buy comics we plan to read, but sometimes we put them in a longbox and forget about them. On the Comic Geek Speak podcast one of the hosts was talking about this very thing. He has over 25K comics in his collection so I can understand how something like this could happen. It made me think about how we collect and the fine line between collecting and hoarding. It’s the comic book collection bug we sometimes get. We collect and then sometimes we purge and sell everything off. Then we collect and purge and the cycle continues. Some of us like me rarely purge, but I also don’t spend $100’s each month on comics each month, my budget won’t allow it. If I did have the money I could see myself getting to 25K quickly. Let’s do the math 25K/35=714/365=1.95 per day. I’m not knocking it, because if you can afford it and it doesn’t cause you to be late on your obligations by all means do it. Carl Eddie and Jeff over at the MEGA podcast which is a MOTU podcast talk about mini collections. I am pretty sure Carl came up with the idea of the mini collection. They like MOTU, but aren’t trying to get every figure ever made. They are looking for their favorites only. And if their collection gets too big then they downsize it to keep it in the “mini” category. I’m not exactly sure what number “mini” is and it probably varies for each person over at the MEGA podcast, but the idea is keeping it small. I was talking with a local guy who makes custom copies of old arcade machines. He does a fantastic job Lee Bokma bought a machine from him. I will put a link to his website in the show notes. I think I will bring him on the show sometime in the future. He talks about the fact he can make a machine that has 100’s of old games on it so that a person doesn’t have to spend hours of time and lots of money collecting old video games. For me and video games that’s fine however some people like the thrill of the hunt. They get joy from hunting for those one or two figures or issues you want to add to their collection. For example On the Rad years podcast one of the hosts “squeezer” collected old NES carts. He could easily over pay by going on e-bay and find most of what he’s looking for, but he enjoys hunting at garage sales, auctions and flea markets for the carts he loved as a kid. With comics I’m similar, when I buy I tend to be looking for old issues I lost when a couple of long boxes got ruined by water in our basement. It’s more nostalgia and I didn’t have a big collection to start with around 600. It’s fun going through long boxes and coming across an issue I am missing. All of sudden I can remember the storyline and what was going on in my life when I was reading it. You probably have a similar reaction when you are hunting for what you collect. Especially if it’s something you did when you were younger. I buy a few new here and there because I think it good to have a mix of the old and new. On the flip side of nerdy collecting I am part of a Heroquest Facebook group. Heroquest is a basic RPG board game. With 4 hero’s who go through several quests to defeat villian’s and collect gold and other items along the way. The game came out in 1989, for more you can listen to episode 2 where I go into more detail. The game is hard to find for under $120 and the rare expansion with go as high as $800. There was a guy who posted a picture of the number of games he had been collection over the years. He had 9 main sets and 4-5 of each expansion. Many people blasted him for hoarding so many sets, I’m not one to criticize much, b