sorry to dias apoint you but ive payed D&D 1st and 2nd and have come to like 3.- it gives a chacter definition that we didn't have in the old days. we usually ended up using the other tables to round out chacters the skill point system is a way to make chacters unique although there are some who as always just look for the best skills not trying to develop a personality for there chacter. my dwarf that i run dosen't always do the best thing for himself but her stays in chacter.

fred

Some of us publish 3.x, so we're not all 100% against it  (That said, yes, I still prefere AD&D too...).

I have been a loooong time lurker of the Acaeum indexes and forums but have been a fraidy cat about posting.  For me, this site has been a combination of the Seven Heavens (look at all this cool stuff I didn't know about...) and the Nine Hells (...and look what it has been selling for).  

I cut my teeth on an Erol Otus Basic Set.  Looking at my original set again recently, it appears I discovered highlighters at about the same time.  Many pages literally have more items highlighted than not.  I never had a large enough group to really role play during that first decade and a half or so, but we had tons of fun "roll playing" (and in my opinion, having fun really is the point).  The closest we came to role playing was outside.  Instead of cowboys & indians or war, we played D&D.  We had wooden swords and daggers, a morning star (a stick with a tennis ball attached by string), a crossbow with elastic draw string, bows with twine draw strings and imaginary magic spells (augmented with fire crackers around Independence Day).  We used colored glass as treasure.  This attracted a few more neighborhood kids but I still couldn't get them hooked on the pencil and paper aspect of the game.  Unfortunately, I haven't played for years and I sorely miss it.  

I received my first collecting Purple Heart (and realized I might have a collecting obsession) seven or eight years ago.  I placed an order with a Canadian RPG seller (can't remember which one).  Several hours after I placed my online order, the owner called me to verify I wasn't some punk kid who stole his parent's credit card.  He said I placed the largest order he'd ever processed.  I managed to pull this feat off again at my FLSG after going most of the summer without purchasing a single RPG item.  Apparently I tried to make up for it in one trip.  The shop owner said he sold me more that day (a Saturday) than he usually sells on any given weekday (M-F).  Ouch!  

During this dark period where I was collecting at all costs, I ran up quite a credit card balance.  In early 2001, I took a self imposed exile from collecting to get my debt in order; hence the gap from March 2001 to July 2004 with only 1 purchase on my Ebay feedback profile.  I have had an on again off again relationship collecting RPGs on Ebay since that time but now I don't allow myself any long term Ebay debt (i.e. typically no more than can be paid when my credit card bill arrives every month; though I have been pushing the limits pretty hard the last couple of months).  

I really want to be a high end collector.  The only thing two things standing in my way are money and money.  I thought I was going to dive into the deep end of the pool this past winter by bidding on a PotVQ (5th I think) around Christmas.  Using the Acaeum values as a loose guideline, I bid about $425 (almost $100 more than the NM "value" and far more than I had ever bid on any other auction before).  The item ended up in the $625-$630 range. I knew then I was going to be in the shallow end of the pool for the foreseeable future.  But hey, it beats the suspiciously warm kiddy pool.

To me, collecting is more about ownership than an investment.  I love having a physical copy of an item.  It is nice to just flip through the stuff.  Heck, just holding some of the items I originally owned as a pre-teen and some of the (relatively) rare items in my collection give me goose bumps. Today, I enjoy rifling through old items and seeing the evolution of the game (fighting men to fighters to rangers to paladins to cavaliers & barbarians).  Plus, unlike a novel that needs to be read from beginning to end, I can read something that piques my interest at a given moment (say the entry on Demogorgon from the original AD&D monster manual).

As for what I collect, I love most things TSR.  ODD, DD, ADD1, ADD2 and even the dreaded D&D 3.x.  I am not a print run junky (yet!) but I would like to have a copy of every item where notable changes occurred (like one "idol" player's handbook and one "magic user" player's handbook, for example).  My collection also includes several other TSR non-D&D RPGs I played as a kid (Gamma World, Top Secret and Star Frontiers).  Recently, I picked up most of the Boot Hill and Amazing Engine product lines.  Gangbusters will probably be my next TSR non-D&D obsession since there were not many products released for it.  Strangely enough, comic books were never part of my youth so TSR's Marvel Super Heroes line was never appealing (and still is not).

There are fewer and fewer "common" D&D items I am still looking for (i.e. 1's, 2's and some 3's).  Since I am priced out of most of the rares (5's), I have been making the occasional attempt to snag an "upper mid level" item (4's and some 3's).  There are still a few 2nd edition items I am missing that don't seem to come up very often.  Plus a couple of items in my collection are thrashed and I am looking for a copy in better condition (it's funny that "thrashed" was never used in any of the item's descriptions).  I also occasionally pick up items that are usually prefaced by "for the completest…" on this site.

There are a few (about 50?) non-TSR D&D items in my collection but I haven't done any research to see how "collectible" they are.  I picked most of them up used before Al Gore invented the internet.  I keep meaning to hop over to the non-TSR D&D part of the site to see exactly what I have.  

Unfortunately for my checkbook, fantasy games are not the only RPGs I collect.  I collect Deadlands (though I haven't picked up Deadlands Reloaded yet), Star Wars (d6 & d20), Babylon 5 (Agents of Gaming, Chameleon Eclectic and Mongoose), Gamma World (Sword & Sorcery), Stargate, Serenity and James Bond among others.  

Well, I have made my first Acaeum post (and first internet message board post of any kind) a long one.  Sorry about that.  I did want to sneak in a quick couple of questions (hopefully without hijacking this thread).

1.  Do "WANTED" items in the classifieds yield results?  And depends are adult diapers, not an answer to the question    
2.  I used the TSR Stock list on this site to help me create some of my collecting wish lists plus straightened out several incorrect entries I had in my inventory collection spreadsheet.  However, I found one or two items on this list that seem to have incorrect stock numbers or descriptions.  It doesn't look like the TSR Stock list is still being maintained (last updated 2/8/05).  Is there anyone who could update this wonderful list?  It is a superb resource.

Welcome, Avurax  

You made your first post a good one.  

For those of us in the suspiciously warm kiddy pool, it's fun to watch the big dogs bid and snipe.

"Wanted" posts do work...just about any item you want is sitting in someone's trove.  Sellers here are ultra-reliable, and you get what you pay for.

It's a great time to collect Judges Guild, by the way....you ought to add that to your list of obsessions.  

Mark  

Welcome Itty Bitty!

Not much to be stuffy about here.  Don't worry about being foolish.  

Mark

Avurax wrote:
I received my first collecting Purple Heart (and realized I might have a collecting obsession) seven or eight years ago.  I placed an order with a Canadian RPG seller (can't remember which one).  Several hours after I placed my online order, the owner called me to verify I wasn't some punk kid who stole his parent's credit card.  He said I placed the largest order he'd ever processed.  I managed to pull this feat off again at my FLSG after going most of the summer without purchasing a single RPG item.  Apparently I tried to make up for it in one trip.  The shop owner said he sold me more that day (a Saturday) than he usually sells on any given weekday (M-F).  Ouch!  

.

Welcome!  Post more often, I love to hear stories like this. Several years ago I happened upon a Half Price Books store in Dallas right when they put out a huge wargame collection.  I ended up buying about $700 worth of games that day, the manager was ecstatic. I came back the next day and bought another $800 worth (after checking prices on Ebay).  He was beside himself. He confided to me that he had gone out on a limb and paid a couple hundred dollars for the wargame collection (there must have been about a 100 games in all) and almost regretted paying that much but that I had made everything right...seems it was his first week as manager and he was really scared he'd gone over his budget buying the games.  I didnt' know whether to be happy getting some nice games at a good price or sad because of the ridiculous markup I had to pay (most of the games had been priced at $20-$30 each).  Oh well.
  At least we won't feel responsible for sending you hopelessly into debt since you've already been there!

Mike B.

Welcome aboard John:  you're not the only tech geek here, by any means  (I work for Juniper Networks, and several others have commented that they're in high tech too).  How old are your kids?  

The gaming group I play in (to which I'll be heading off to around 9:30 this morning for a 12-ish hour head-to-head two-team tourney-format playtest of an AD&D adventure for GenCon) regularly has 10-20 people show up to play, and several of the guys' kids play---ranging in age from 6 to 18 or so.  It's fun to see the kids playing too, they really have a blast

grodog wrote:Welcome aboard John:  you're not the only tech geek here, by any means  (I work for Juniper Networks, and several others have commented that they're in high tech too).  How old are your kids?  

The gaming group I play in (to which I'll be heading off to around 9:30 this morning for a 12-ish hour head-to-head two-team tourney-format playtest of an AD&D adventure for GenCon) regularly has 10-20 people show up to play, and several of the guys' kids play---ranging in age from 6 to 18 or so.  It's fun to see the kids playing too, they really have a blast

My son is 3 and my daughter is 1.  My wife is expressing interest in doing a family adventure when the kids get older, so I am right now spending my free time developing a 1st Edition campaign for them.
I know they are too young, but when the time comes I think it would be a great family activity.

A copy of Dark Tower sold in ebay last week for $54.  

When I first went after Dark Tower I was shocked by other peoples' winning bids of $20+ and then $30+.  I figured I'd never win one, and I seriously considered buying a copy with a detached cover that I found online.

Then, I bought a copy on Amazon for $9.95.

Then I won another Dark Tower with a $5 EBay bid....no one else even bothered to bid.  Go figure.   It happens.

I have been in bidding wars for other stuff that, presently, no one is bidding on or seems to care about.

Mark