RPGs for me are just for enjoyment. I sold my collection back in 2015. My 'collection' now consists of a few items that were worth nothing back in 2015, but were worth keeping.

Minty Red and Blue book.
A select few minty modules.
Mike's rendition of Forbidden City
Raggi's FFV
Maybe Raggi's 1st print RECC (I'd have to look)
Yggsburgh becuase there was no PDF.
CDM4 Feathered Priests (because it needs scanning)
Le Dernier Cercle modules (because I don't know anyone who has them and I haven't scanned them to PDF)
A few Battletech items for the same reason (I used to be big into Battletech too)
Copies of a few tourneys and manuscripts that need scanning
Hopefully Hommlet (I don't know)
Definitely no ToEE (regrettably). The copy I had was mint in shrink courtesy of Virgin Games BitD, and the read copy I had died during the campaign, it was that old. I'd like to have had a NM copy for posterity, but I'm not in a position to shell out for it any time soon.

I did see very little depreciation (even accounting for packing and shipping etc.) over my collecting and reselling cycle. And most of the losses were down to one or two over eager bids of rares, and my final fire sale on account of time constraints. There was a missing package that DHL destroyed containing many desirable items that was a major blow to myself and the recipients. I will never use DHL again and urge all to use any other courier for international shipping that they can use before resorting to DHL.

But I'd still rather have a product in my possession over a written contract with a third party in a major negative economic downturn, and I can't see how billions of people being given free money in the world in exchange for no value being produced, trillion upon trillions of free money being printed in exchange for no value being produced, and tens of millions (soon to be hundreds of million) of people losing their jobs can have anything other than a once in a millennium negative impact on all of our societies. This has only just begun. It has not even began to gather momentum yet. Very few companies can survive world changing events like this, and even fewer can make a profit in it. I understand the few big names will manage through, but when 20% or more of the people you know have lost their income and their medical insurance, how many will be buying iPads or iPhones? How many of the 'working classes' will put buying Cola over paying their rent. I suspect a huge majority of the western world are going to become a lot slimmer before this thing has finished playing out.

A rebalancing perhaps of some of us living like gluttons off the backs of the starving? Karma?
Let's hope they don't choose to take us to war.

War is the logical conclusion to trade wars and the threat of loss of empire.
It's also something that generates f"ck loads of money for those with money to invest, and it's a really good distraction to keep the stupids in our societies distracted.
I wouldn't want to have kids in their teens ATM if the world goes to war. I'm too old for conscription other than admin work.
Let's just hope we stick to race wars in our own respective countries. Do what our papers and TVs tell us to do, and aren't stupid enough to escalate it to a global conflict.

sauromatian wrote in Record Prices for Collectibles:
I thought that meant something else at first, but I'm sort of afraid to ask.

I wouldn't want children who are of conscription age. I don't have the wealth to buy them our of and potential conscription, 'cos even internal conflicts could require conscription. Youngsters are fit and there's nothing like a bunch of fit kids that aren't your kin to throw into violent conflicts when you need disposable bullet catchers to protect your interests. That's the whole point of conscription anyway. It reduces both the population and the people most likely to challenge authority. All you have to do is point them at whoever, tell them they're trying to kill their parents, and let them go do their thing. Hey presto, dumbass kills dumbass and you end up with less dumbasses. Its free attrition, reduces the burden on society of both potential political dissidents and potential useless eaters, and keeps everyone's attention on their TVs instead of thinking.

Let's hope millennials are more intelligent, but the media would seem to indicate that they are dumber than past generations, less inclined to independent though, and more easily manipulated. You just need to look at all the f"ckwits on both sides of any divide out on the streets.

Wow. This got pretty crazy pretty fast  

sauromatian wrote in Record Prices for Collectibles:
A good summation of the year so far.

Lol.
I should have invested in Zoom.

Tszii wrote in Record Prices for Collectibles:
Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker - YouTube

Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature is excellent reading.  

TheHistorian wrote in Record Prices for Collectibles:
At that level, they're not even really collectibles. Same with high end art. They're tax shelters, and more akin to long term stock positions than our paltry collections.

For some people, yes, for others, no.  Even among D&D collectors, some people like shrinked stuff and others like stuff they actually read and use.  I'm guessing the IRS's definition of a collectible or an insurance company's definition of a collectible is not the way some of us would define a collectible.  Many collectors, including me, don't even care how others define a collectible.

I'm primarily a shrink collector. About 3 years ago, the shrink prices starting climbing and this year it's been a sharp increase. I expect to be completely priced out of shrink collecting in the next year or two.

mbassoc2003 wrote in Record Prices for Collectibles:Over the next two years I expect the value of my collection to go through the roof.

A shrinkwrapped module worth $100 is worth 420,000,000,000,000 Weimar-era Reichsmarks. Yep, through the roof.