KingOfPain wrote:

Prufrock wrote:I started collecting (ebay) in Jan 05. My first purchase was a L3 for $128.00 . Then I found this website and educated myself. Began collecting in earnest. I've spent around $2500 and have around 500 items.

So my question is: How do you handle the times when your really not all that excited about collecting?

Martin

You started collecting in Jan. 05 and you already have 500 items? Maybe that is part of the problem.  I didnt really start collecting until 2000 and since then I have probably acquired around 500 role-playing items (if that). I pick up a few items a month on Ebay and sometimes will find some items at Half-Price Books or Badmike will have a few items that I will buy from him. But for me to stay interested in collecting I have to pace myself. For one I dont have a large cashflow (just bought a house) and the other reason is that I collect so many things. Kind of difficult for me to afford a woodgrain or set of RPGA modules when I just spent $50 dollars on comics and won an auction for an Intellivision. I guess I am just not in any hurry to complete any of my collections because then I am afraid I wont have the collecting bug anymore.

Just please think about what you want before doing what one guy I know did. He spent thousands of dollars on his D&D collection which included an almost NM woodgrain, set of shrinkwrapped R and RPGA modules, 1st print Chainmail, a SW orange B3, and every printing of rulebook ever and tons of box sets and modules. He ended up selling everything with the exception of the woodgrain and the orange B3. I know he got his money back but regrets not having the collection now.

If I hadn't played D&D in the early days, I don't think I'd collect it.  In my employment various gaming systems come through my hands, for example right now I'm selling off a bunch of Traveller stuff.  It has absolutely no sentimental value and I have no attachment to it because I never played it and their are no memories attached to it.  The act of using the items themselves is what leads me to collecing them...that's why I'm not interested in many of the rares, if I can't see myself using it somehow I'm not that interested in owning it.
   Collecting D&D is like a huge link to my past, each and every 1st edition module has an entire epic story behind it from when I first ran it for my group.  I don't think I could become a collector of any genre that didn't have this memory connection (my other two collecting loves, comics and music, have the same sort of links to my past).  
   I think also that collecting used to be such an arduous task, now Ebay has made the idea of an instant collection a doable idea.  Literally, if money was no problem, you could own everything ever printed for D&D including the super rares in about a year.  Speaking of Aneoth, who you referenced (and I was the beneficiary of that sale I admit), if his new business succeeds I think he could replace almost everything he sold me in a sort period of time, he accumulated everything in about that year time frame, and to top it off he kept the most valuable and hard to find items anyway. Maybe this ability to have an instant collection leads to quick disinterest, since it was gained in almost no time.  I have certain items on my Music Want list that I have been looking for literally decades (out of print items that never made it to CD), when I get lucky and find one it's a huge lift, like I finally climbed a mountain, and I really get excited finally listening to the album.  I guess with Ebay now that surge and thrill is gone because hey, if youdon't win that Jade Hare this time another will be along in a month or so, it's not like it used to be where you were scared if you didnt' get the item right then you might not see it again.

Mike B.