I’m currently in conversations with a large Internet board game resale site about giving up the vast majority of my board game collection.
Those of you who know me know that I have an enormous set of games. Somewhere north of 2000, if my logging on BoardGameGeek is to be believed. And while there are games in there that I would be loath to give up–my copy of Princes of Florence has genuine sentimental value, for instance–they are few and far between.
I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot over the last year or two, but the facts are:
- my house overfloweth,
- my time at the table has dropped dramatically since retiring, and never really supported the meatier games in my collection, and
- moving this collection to wherever I end up going after North Carolina would be… tricky doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The idea of paring that enormous collection down to less than a hundred or so “essentials” really appeals to me. I love my board game collection, don’t get me wrong, but in the end it’s just stuff, and worse, stuff that isn’t getting used.
I have no idea if this particular stab at reducing my collection will succeed; it requires driving halfway across the country with a truck filled with board games, not to mention getting a good enough price for said games to make the trip worthwhile. There’s an eBay consignment shop in town that I need to talk to as well, but anywhere like that is likely to have a problem with the volume… not to mention the fact that some of the games just wouldn’t sell. If I’m shedding my collection, I want to shed it pretty much stem to stern.
Fortunately, I’m not in a rush. I can look at different options and see what will work out best. And, hey: if everything else fails, there’s always bonfires.
That is an impressive collection. I hope it finds an uncombusted home.
Do you catalog books as well? A co-worker turned me on to http://www.librarything.com/ and I’ve been slowly adding books.
It’s like Animal Crossing but in the real world — which is worse because it costs money, not Bells to acquire new items.
Hah. I actually don’t buy very many books any more, maybe ten or so a year. I make very aggressive use of the local library to support my reading habit instead. Before I left Louisiana, I donated a large number of my books to the library there, and I’ve tried to keep some level of control of my collection here.
Donated a bunch of books before each move when I was bouncing around a bit more (read: renting). Stating the obvious: books are heavy and suck to move. Now that I’m settled, I don’t have the semi-regular garbage collection running.
Recently, I’ve been picking up books at “take it or leave it” boxes as folks do spring cleaning around town, trying to be semi-picky.
When I finish a book, if I wouldn’t recommend it or have no reason to reference it, I usually find a coffee shop book shelf to leave it on.
I like to keep my collection at right around 100 games. I’m slightly over that number at the moment, though, and I just ordered another one (Azul).
I think that flexibility is important. A slavish “100 in, 100 out” is a good way to miss out on a really good deal or a really great new game. The challenge is to not let the collection overgrow.
How do you get rid of your excess games?
I guess I’ve never increased the size of my collection quickly enough for it to be an issue. I have given some away in the past, and a certain natural disaster “helped” as well. I have recently been attempting to play a few that are candidates for removal. I think I’m down to just 2-3 that I own but have never played at all, now that I’ve finally played Reef Encounter (and I’m keeping that one).