I have had a good run collecting and enjoying it. After a few years of searching, buying and over all actively adding to my collection the fun is starting to run out. Not because of the gaming itself. The hidden costs of collecting are starting to show their ugly faces.

For example. When  I started to collect the average post in the marketplace here was much different than it is now. There would be a large list of items with prices and you could message a member and buy the games you wanted from that list. This doesn't seem to happen as much anymore with the games I look to buy. Now it seems there are many more lots and super high end items. I would love to own the higher end items in the collecting world at some point however I can't afford to buy everything for the AES all at one time. When I see Lynx items I want to buy them, I would love to expand my Lynx collection, but I'm not buying everything ever made for it all at once. I don't want a complete collection, I can't afford to pay for all of it at once if I wanted to, and it takes a lot of the fun out of collecting.

So, if I want to keep collecting the best way is buying lots, taking what I need from them, and looking to sell or trade the rest to people that need the parts I don't. I did this for a good while with success. The problems here started slow, but have grown to the main reason for my want to get back to my roots so to speak. There are tons of members here I never saw anything out of until I started posting things for sale. When I did I started getting PMs from people wanting to pay half my asking price. I'm willing to deal, but I'm willing to deal within reason, and more than that I'm willing to deal with people I know I can trust. No feed back, no post, and a member since 2009 wanting to pay half what I'm asking with free shipping just sounds odd to me. I was really shocked to find there were people like that here.

There is also a special something that I feel makes the spot I'm in extra interesting. I have people that give me lots they find and buy. Sounds sweet right? It was for a little while. At that point I'm not buying anything, and I'm collecting for free. The only downside is that I have the extra to move again, and the people that are bringing me these things would like their money back from what I don't keep. For the cost of my time to sell the extra I can collect all I want. Not all of this was stuff people paid for. Some of it was stuff they had from childhood and are willing to let me keep some to sell the rest for them. Now I have a new issue. I have to catalog what they bring me and keep up with what money goes where when the sales are finally final. Add that to the normal collecting, cataloging, testing, storing, and general keeping up with we all do with our collections and you can see where things are getting out of hand.

Now to the goal. I'm going to move all this extra from my house. I'm selling it and that is that. I'll list the rest here as soon as I can make myself get back into it, I'll trade or sell what I can here and the rest is going on feeBay with a starting price of $1 and will sell for what it sells for, I hate selling on eBay, but I can't stand not loving this hobby anymore. Everytime I clean my car and collection up someone comes to me with another box of gaming related items and I have a hard time telling them no, but the time has come.

I just had to get that out I guess. I fell better about it already actually. I never would have guessed this would be as big a part of collecting as it is when I starting collecting for real. It is all fun in games when you are buying the few things you can find locally, but when you really hit the scene and start looking to get more than you could find locally things start to get much more confusing and like work. Time to find a way to make collecting fun again.