I'm beginning to collect foreign tsr items but may give up if they prove too hard    However, I have a big expert and collector of foreign items giving me  a hand so it might not be a problem.  I also collect non tsr items big TIME! Anything old, cheesy, weird, etc!  I also collect tolkien boardgames <--I got caught up in the tolkien movie craze    Happy to say that I have some of the "holy grails" in tolkien boardgames and have more knowledge on them than some of the old tolkien/wargame collectors who are grumpy, fat, and mean guys who never share knowledge   Not interested in D&D, AD&D, or 3rd ed. Thats why I'm selling and trading off my collection. I'll stick with foreign tsr and non tsr for now.

My focus is generally 1st Edition stuff.  I am however, a Greyhawk lover, and try to pickup anything within this setting.  I find myself a 'slave to the shrink' and will sometimes go out of my way (usually with poor financial judgement) to acquire something of this nature.  Does anyone else find themselves doing this?

I would never let my itchy ebay trigger finger escape my better financial judgement.

 That's my problem...Especially with an item that has taken a long time to show itself on the market...

I enjoy reading through the material and daydreaming about a time gone by.

 Couldn't have said it better     I collect all the D&D AD&D modules of my youth. I also collect early dungeon & dragon magazines. I really enjoy my collection of AD&D (ral partha) miniatures.     I try not to get an itchy trigger finger, but some items you don't see to often and when you do lookout    I pride myself on picking up bargains, nothing like grabbing that nice D&D module for a $1 or that miniature for $2. If it takes 10 years to build my collection that would be great, since part of the fun is the hunt itself.  

Lets add something to this topic, DOES anyone here care about the condition of the items in their collection?

 Call me vain, Mike....Condition is everything!   I just can't get the same satisfaction from something that looks like it was run through a shredder.  

If it takes 10 years to build my collection that would be great, since part of the fun is the hunt itself.

 I totally agree.  I am very patient and have quite some time before I (hopefully) hand my collection down to my son.

Hey all,  I would add early convention handbooks to my items of interest. I have amassed quite a few of them from GenCon, MichiCon, WinterCon, etc dating back to '77. It is really fun to find out info on various TSR and gaming community personalities, as well as, see what dungeons they actually ran and what personalities GM the campaigns. Latest tidbit I unearthed is they actually ran Deep Dwarven Delve at GenCon in '79 many years prior to printing it with the 25th anniversary collectors set. Len Lakofka actually GM this dungeon at the tournament.  Adam

Mkman wrote:Also Brett, tell me about the Crown of the Summerlands tournament module you have that is supposedly ran at a convention in Detroit in the late 70s.

 Coolness, I had begun to think Crown of the Summerlands was a home brewed module.  I had asked on the newsgroup a couple times, but no one recognized it.  My copy has a comb binding, a plian beige cover.  The author is Shawn Williams and there is no copyright date. I bought it from someone in the Mid-West so Detroit makes sense.  I collect anything that catches my eye, just so long as I do not have to pay more than $5 for it.    The Internet has allowed me to purchase quite a few items from the author.  Whenever I do this, I ask the author to sign it.

The TSR folks did show up and run tournaments themselves at the early Origins.  I got killed by a giant tick at Origins I.  At Origins II, Tim Kask (Dragon editor at one time) GM'd our group.  We won the tournament and I got a subscription to The Dragon (ended up being issues 2-7).  I also remember Gygax's kid (Ernie I believe) was kind of a pill.

[quote="Adam Shultz"]I would add early convention handbooks to my items of interest. Adam[/quote]  At the moment I'm mainly interested in gaming magazines and, if chance occurs, D&D British items (they are pricey, but they are really few: so far I have the B1 D&D module Games Workshop edition, the Northern Sages' Star Stone campaign, the Integrated Games' Complete Dungeon Master series third box...). I attempted to build a 'proper' D&D collection and I went far with it, but one day I realized that all these books (all this money ) were sitting on my shelves and I had no use for them. So I kept the various D&D sets, the AD&D rulebooks, some titles who I really loved (such as the Creature Catalog and the Temple of Elemental Evil) and I sold the rest.   Being interested in TSR as a company, I actively search for catalogs, flyers, company newsletters and so on. I have quite a good number of them, but I need more.   And I have this interest for D&D in Italian. Well, I have everything that has been offically published by Editrice Giochi (and a lot of doubles if anyone is interested) and many, many titles 'compatible' or explicitely defined as 'D&D adventures' in the '80s, when EG was not very aggressive and TSR simply never ever heard of them. One titles keeps eluding me, but before or after... )