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Collecting - The Disease
An anonymous reader writes "Gamers With Jobs has an interesting piece this morning on the nature of collectibility in games. While primarily a personal account of one man's journey into the hell that is Magic: the Gathering, it raises interesting questions about the difference between real-world and virtual-world collecting, and the economic motivations behind both." From the article: "I sit down. I play. I get schooled by a 12-year-old for two hours as he teaches me the ropes with a condescension reserved for teenagers with grownups by the throat. Each game is a bet — loser gives the winner the top card off his deck: Ante. I leave a dozen cards short. I had discovered a great game, and people to play it against. But that's not why the night sits burned into my brain with razor sharp clarity. No, it's because that Tuesday night in San Francisco, I became a collector."
I just love playing games with stakes other than just for the fun of it. I must admit to playing Magic in the distant past. We used to cut the Deck for the ante cards prior to playing. You certainly don't give up as easily if a valuable card is drawn for your ante.
one of the wonderful things about magic is that its not as fast changing as other card games. cards stay "powerful" or "usefull" for longer, especially when you compare it to other games such as say... yugioh.
And, what did I get out of it in the end?
The friends I made playing casually weren't interested in much else, and subsequently, I found that I wasn't much interested in them. Tournaments and pre-releases are filled with trash-talking, cheating, and rules-lawyering, making them decidedly unfun. And the money I spent on cards could have been better spent on something that's more fun, more social, and just as fitting to my geeky lifestyle (like, say, video games.)
In other words, I got nothing beneficial from it, aside from the occasional interesting friend, triumphant tourney moment, or excellent deal on old cards. Consequently, this summer I made the decision to sell my entire $2500 collection via CardShark. Now, I'm raking in a load of cash, which I'll probably re-invest in music or games (i.e. things that are actually fun), all for a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
And that's not even getting into my whole rant about how Wizards hasn't given a damn about the gamers since the Ice Age block. But that would be getting off-topic.
So, if you take one thing from this post, let it be that, if you're on the fence about quitting and selling your collection, do it. Your life and your pocketbook will be all the better for it.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
You see, I once used to collect innocent things...Star Trek figures, Star Wars figures...I even had a few CCGs...Star Wars, Overpower and M:tG come to mind. None of these really broke my bank. I worked a steady job in high school and since I was really only paying for gas and insurance, I had loads of money to spend. I actually had somewhere near $2000 saved up before college, so I didn't have to work in order to eat out and have fun doing things my parents weren't paying for (which was just school and books, and that nasty meal plan).
Well, now my new "toys" are computers and electronics. When I spend money, it is a lot less frequent, but the items I am buying are much more expensive. I guess it comes with my more grown up interests. I have tons of DVDs and buy many used CDs now. The real disaster comes from my electronics though. I am about to purchase another computer. (Well, build it myself, but you know...) I own a Dell Inspiron 8600 and recently got a G3 iBook (nice and white, 800MHz, DVD/CD-RW, etc.) on ebay for $300. I also have a lot of electronics, HDTV, media player, and audio-phile 5.1 system.
My other interest include guns, which are not cheap by any definition of the word either. I have managed to curb some of my PC/console gaming, though I really think I am just stashing up until it comes time for the Wii. Actually the new PC is mostly for Oblivion and maybe the next UT. The fact is, even these are typically 10x or more expensive then my old habits and I am not really making 10x as much as in high school. Well actually I am, but I now have real bills...like electricity, water, gas...oh and that pesky rent...
The point is, any hobby or habit can get really expensive. I guess it just eventually comes down to what kind of money you are willing to spend and what you find interesting.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I thought he was talking about collecting real games! I've got well over 2000 cartridge/disc games for various console game systems, some that most slashdotters haven't even heard of. (Arcadia 2001, anyone?)
Yeah, sure, I got some of those stupid cardboard things, but I get stacks of 'em at a nearby thrift salvage store. If I find a card I don't have, cool. When I'm tired of it, I'll sell 'em.
What's the difference? Those cardboard things were made to be collected, with intentional artifical rarities. The video games weren't. A rare card is often highly desirable when playing a CCG; a rare video game is usually rare because it's a total stinker.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Magic is really big at my high school (well, I just graduated, but still). There's a regular club that meets every Thursday, and there's easily over 70 members who play. However, the club is divided into two (not disjoint) groups: those who play with real decks, and those who play with proxies. Basically, the half of us who enjoy the game, but aren't willing to pay hundreds of dollars (we're in high school) for the latest and greatest cards, simply design our decks on paper, go on the internet, print out the neccesary card faces, and glue them onto basic land cards. It's no secret, we're not trying to cheat -- you just announce that it's for a proxy deck, and as long as the opponent doesn't have a problem with that (within our school, almost nobody does), you're good to go. You get all of the fun, without the cost. And since it's easy to print off a new deck, there's lots of interesting deck designs since there's no financial commitement involved in trying out a new idea. You would think that this would lead to a whole room full of people playing uber-decks of outrageous cards that they found deck lists for on the internet. But in practice, none of us are dicks, and we all end up having a lot of fun. Of course, we can't enter any tournaments like this, but there's so many of us in the school alone that we can sustain our hobby just fine.
Dr. Phil would say "grow up and give the crap away." The problem is that collectors are often with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That's a treatable problem that has nothing to do with "growing up." The article also touches on the elements of gambling addiction. If you have a problem collecting too many things, a therapist can easily determine if you're OCD and to what degree.