How Long Have You Been Collecting
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Post Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2005 10:53 pm 
 

I am new to this discussion forum.  I notice that most of the postings are fairly new.  (As opposed to some forums which have messages as old as 2000)

    What I wonder is....

    How long have all of you been:

A)  On this forum

B)  Collecting Judges Guild products?

    I just got the jones to collect Judges Guild within the last month or so. Since then, I have gone kind of nuts...scooping them up across the web like a hungry spider.

    If my guess is correct, most of you are also fairly new to this forum and have started collecting Judges Guild within the last six months to one year.  Am I right?

    If I am right, then what made you start collecting Judges Guild?

I am curious.

MShipley    :?


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:41 am 
 

i have been on this forum since about january, but have lurked here for what seems like many moons,.

JG items specifically, some i have had for many years (only 2 or 3), and the rest i have been getting my hands on for about the last 12-18 months.

i get hold of them cos i like their originality and they feel different to anything else thats out there and because of their age, when you get something, you really feel like you have a cool collectible item in your collection, not just some additional extra.

thats how i see it anyway :)

Al


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:55 am 
 

What made you start "getting your hands on them?"


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 1:57 am 
 

MShipley88 wrote:What made you start "getting your hands on them?"


a. because i tend to like them more than the TSR items and,

b. if i was selling them, not as many people sell them, so i would have much more of a market to sell to in the UK. ie. coug hasnt cornered the market :)

Al


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:38 am 
 

I still really want to hear the story behind that huge load of boxes in your home.

  What did you buy?

:)


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:05 am 
 

MShipley88 wrote:I still really want to hear the story behind that huge load of boxes in your home.

 What did you buy?

:)


lol :)

i just wanted to buy part of someones stock, so that i could do some biz too....thats all there was to it really. me and a mate bought 135 boxes of stuff, some 21,000 books in all i think (rough guesstimate).

Al

ps. i will be keeping some of it for a very rainy day.


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:46 pm 
 

MShipley88 wrote:I am new to this discussion forum. I notice that most of the postings are fairly new. (As opposed to some forums which have messages as old as 2000)

  What I wonder is....

  How long have all of you been:

A) On this forum

B) Collecting Judges Guild products?

  I just got the jones to collect Judges Guild within the last month or so. Since then, I have gone kind of nuts...scooping them up across the web like a hungry spider.

  If my guess is correct, most of you are also fairly new to this forum and have started collecting Judges Guild within the last six months to one year. Am I right?

  If I am right, then what made you start collecting Judges Guild?

I am curious.

MShipley  :?


I've been registered on the forums since February, but I've had Acaeum (the listing catalog) saved as a favorite for quite a long time. At least a year or two.

I never considered myself a collector, really. I used to do spot purchases of stuff. Back a long time ago, while moving, I lost pretty much ALL of my gaming stuff acquired from '79 through '86. That's a LOT of stuff. I've reacquired some of it bit by bit.

Recently (like right around when I joined these forums), in a fit of nostagic mania (and also, to find the stuff that I lost those years ago), I started searching around for old JG stuff. I wanted, mostly, to pick up CSWO cuz that was my favorite JG item. But I got the "bug" and started getting other stuff as well. Stuff that I never actually owned.

  

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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 2:42 pm 
 

Interesting,

    How long ago would you say you first caught the JG bug?

    Was there a particular inciting incident?


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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:02 pm 
 

MShipley88 wrote:I am new to this discussion forum. I notice that most of the postings are fairly new. (As opposed to some forums which have messages as old as 2000)

  What I wonder is....

  How long have all of you been:

A) On this forum

B) Collecting Judges Guild products?

  I just got the jones to collect Judges Guild within the last month or so. Since then, I have gone kind of nuts...scooping them up across the web like a hungry spider.

  If my guess is correct, most of you are also fairly new to this forum and have started collecting Judges Guild within the last six months to one year. Am I right?

  If I am right, then what made you start collecting Judges Guild?

I am curious.

MShipley  :?


A) Nov 2002, though only this year did I actually post.

B) Hum, 6-8 years ago I got the Firsy Fantasy campaign (as I was grabbing all things Blackmoor at the time) and got a few other things from the keltic site when they were actually selling stuff around that time too (1999-62 revised CSIO, Storm Giants Castle, Thieves of Fort Badabaskor, think some other things). Then maybe a year or so later aquired a good portion including the sci fi stuff (bought a lot from Tony Zilz: owned a NY warehouse of JG stuff). Then it was really around the time 2 years ago that I played in a d20 Tegel Manor game at GenCon that I got the bug and have bought the more expensive items and sought to complete my collection.

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Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:05 pm 
 

MShipley88 wrote:Interesting,

  How long ago would you say you first caught the JG bug?

  Was there a particular inciting incident?


Actually, the inciting incident, as it were, was just a mere curiosity over remembering a JG product that listed gaming stats for Cerebus the Aardvark. I couldn't remember what it was that had those stats in it, so I posted a thread here entitled "Old '80s Judges Guild stuff" (which has unaccountably hung around; you can see it). The guys here (who are all so very, very knowledgeable) reminded me that the Cerebus stats were listed in an issue of Dungeoneer, which *really* set me off on a nostalgia kick, cuz I remembered buying quite a few issues of that magazine back in the day.

That's really what kicked it off for me. Which reminds me, I still have to buy more issues of Dungeoneer. Soon's I get the cash.

  

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Post Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:10 am 
 

It took a little while for the bug to catch me good.  

   I was working at GenCon in 2001 (in those last, free days of easy airport travel) and I passed a booth with Judges Guild materials sticking out of boxes.  "Oh, I have those!" I said to myself.

   The guy in the booth (I do not know which one it was) told me that his company was re-printing Judges Guild items.  I asked about Dark Tower, which was a module I knew only from legend.  He said that a new consignment was coming into the booth the next day...Price $27.00.

    I remembered that my total discretionary funds at that moment amounted to just over $20.00.  I thanked him and left...heading toward the FASA booth to loot yet more free copies of the original Shadowrun cover poster...which FASA had discovered in their warehouse.

    But I made a mental note....Judges Guild....yes.  So, when I found Judges Guild alive again online a couple of months ago, I began seeking the old publications.  I bought Dark Tower off of DrivethruRPG for $3.00, and the hook was firmly in my mouth.


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Post Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:55 pm 
 

When I first started gaming in the late 70s, for some reason in my area (Dallas Fort Worth) JG items were very scare.  I rarely saw them, and the few items I picked up (Tegel Manor, City State of World Emperor, Skulls and Scrapfaggot Green are ones I remember) I was not very impressed with.  In the mid 80's I managed to locate a few useful items that I used like Restormel, Frontier Forts, Caverns Thracia, but still wasn't really that interested in finding more, as I thought most TSR stuff was much superior in quality and without a lot of the typos and mistakes the JG stuff had that made it close to unusable in my book (I was a busy college student and had a job, so I didn't make up my own dungeons, merely took published items and reworked them, so I needed something pretty much ready to run and JG stuff required too much reworking).  
   In the early 90's I first got online and at one point got into a huge argument with a guy on the old AOL TSR RPG boards.  He went on and on how all JG items were superior to all TSR published adventures in every single way.  I disputed this, and realized I didn't really have a very large selection of JG items so it was hard to argue the point (although I later beat him into the ground with proof once I got ahold of dreck like Storm Giant's Castle and Sword of Hope, which I still think are two of the all time worst adventures of all time!).  I started picking up a lot of stuff then, and decided to just get it all since I found a distributor that had bought the stock of Zocchi's games and had tons of old JG items.   So at that time I got everything published by JG except the rares, still have most of them.  
   I've read through them all at one time or another, and although I enjoy the low production values and such (it really gets you into an old school frame of mind) for the most part I can't think of more than a handful of JG adventures or supplements I'd use today in a campaign. They are still fun to read through though, as they are a snapshot of a certain time and place in the RPG timeline that will never return.  I actually think the D20 reprints are really cool though, I might give Caverns of Thracia a run through one day if I get time to convert it back to 2nd edition AD&D!

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Post Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:53 pm 
 

Badmike wrote:I actually think the D20 reprints are really cool though, I might give Caverns of Thracia a run through one day if I get time to convert it back to 2nd edition AD&D!


I actually ran some friends through the original Caverns of Thracia using the new Castles and Crusades ruleset (which is a very streamlined, old-school feeling version of D20, I recommend it).

We had great fun, and I didn't have to do *any* conversion, short of flipping the AC.

  

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Post Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:22 pm 
 

I wonder if most Judges Guild collectors fall within an age group of 35 to 45?  That would place them as first-time D&D players roughly around 1977 to 1983.


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Post Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:26 pm 
 

MShipley88 wrote:I wonder if most Judges Guild collectors fall within an age group of 35 to 45? That would place them as first-time D&D players roughly around 1977 to 1983.


*raises hand*

43. Started playing in '79.

  

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Post Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:32 pm 
 

El Diablo Robotico wrote:
Badmike wrote:I actually think the D20 reprints are really cool though, I might give Caverns of Thracia a run through one day if I get time to convert it back to 2nd edition AD&D!


I actually ran some friends through the original Caverns of Thracia using the new Castles and Crusades ruleset (which is a very streamlined, old-school feeling version of D20, I recommend it).

We had great fun, and I didn't have to do *any* conversion, short of flipping the AC.


I've been wanting to pick up C&C, this is as good as excuse as any, I'm going to buy the set I"ve had my eye on at the local gameshop....

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Post Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 11:57 pm 
 

I started playing in 1978, when the only rules we knew were in a boxed set along with some low-impact dice (incredibly cool at the time) and the module, "In Search of Adventure."


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Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:33 am 
 

I think it is like collecting old cars.  Guys who could not afford a 1972 Impala back in 1980 go out and get one now.

    I have the cash I did not have then...as do a lot of guys.  That, probably as much as anything else, is what is fueling the rise in prices on Ebay. :)


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