Sounds like Bruce and I have a similar approach. It’s funny you mention the bed thing, but there’s another quotation I stick by that comes from a young Romanian doctor I used to know:
“There are 4 things in life which should always be comfortable: Your feet, your back, your money, and your genitals”.
He was very frugal in almost all aspects of his life, but then he would spend big on his socks, his bed, his wallet, and his underwear. I now do the same and I think he was onto something.
Someone apparently gets a hell of a lot more sleep than I do.
Well, his exact words were “You live in the damn thing! Money is no object!” because he’s a crochety American futurist, but yeah.
I went with his logic on the bed (and on a real chair) and think it’s a genuinely important thing to do. I then completely ignored his logic on other objects, because (as we’ve said) clearing out 80% of your house only really works if you’re a writer who lives alone and travels a lot. But the bed thing is real.
I am dreadful with GAS (gear acquisition syndrome in photography circles, works just as well as game acquisition syndrome as well). My ever growing volume of RPGs is vast… boardgames much less so… and I think that I might try and adopt the one in and one out approach now I have built a Kallax stack… ha ha, we’ll see.
We have a very good boardgames selection at the city library, and my approach is going to be to borrow a game, play the game, check if anyone I know owns the game, and then review… I can always borrow them again from library.
I’m up to about 75 games according to BG Stats. I think I’m going to have to start getting rid of games once I near 100, which seems like an easy-on-the-brain limitation, in a year or two. I feel like I’ve built up a fairly stable collection which I’m not too keen on culling but there are a handful that should go at some point. Marie Kondo’s “does it bring joy” is a fine benchmark for me, there are a few games that I just don’t care about. Any largish boxes are first to go, I’m far kinder to games that take up less space.
A lot of responses to Gaming Goals for 2021 involved buying fewer games, or in my case not buying any at all. That has come about from a lockdown inspired splurge last year and from wanting to know my own tastes better.
The game I am not buying at the moment is Beyond The Sun . Oh my this has got rave reviews from SUSD, SVWAG and Board Game Barrage. A lot of talk is that it has similarities to Innovation , which I am a big fan of.
There is no online implementation unfortunately.
The reasons I’m giving myself for not pre ordering are a) I’m not buying new games b) I’ve disagreed with all of those reviewers before c) I’ve not played anywhere near enough Innovation yet and d) it’s published by Rio Grande and a reprint, plus the first expansion is being discussed.
I’m hoping I will get a chance to play this, either with an official TTS mod, or in person post Covid. I’m hoping that Rio Grande will keep the print runs large enough that if I love it, I’ll be able to get hold of it next year.
Or I can ask for it for my birthday 
Seriously, on that last bit - I’m still going to ask for games for gifts, but if I’m only going to get 4 games this year I’d better make sure they are the right ones.
I am of the “buy less” variety.
I make lists.
And I’ll just have to do my very best to not do impulse “bad day” buys.
I have all the best intentions of trying to play games before I buy them. 2020 was bad for that and I do badly teaching myself things on TTS… but after a 2 (one and a half) year game buying spree I need to slow down and one way to make sure that games I buy are at least no terrible surprises is to learn them before I buy them. Rules are usually always on BGG and even if there is no TTS mod reading those may help convince me not to buy something.
And in general I am starting to trade away or donate about ~50 games from my collection…
There’s not a lot I want, and everything I want I’ve preordered.
I’m not buying Red Dust Rebellion. It’s looking to be a 2022 release and I’m not sure where I sit on the whole COIN genre, still. Some sort of hard Sci Fi Mars territory control game is appealing though.
Two things slowing my buying down in 2021:
I’m not going to have people to play with reliably while the UK is a mess, and looking at unused games on the shelf is no fun.
I am absolutely not buying any game that hasn’t been reviewed extensively. No kickstarters, unless I can see a lot of gameplay and some detailed thoughts. I’m just not spending the money blind on anything over £30.
So my method for curating is: only games that have been on my list for nearly a year already and are widely acknowledged as great, and solo games.
Anyone got good strategies?
I find my own niche and keep it at that: I’m still a sucker for area control/area majority and economic games. Even here, it’s a difficult sell if it’s a first printing with no reviews. Designer/publisher is also a big factor - the only bit that would make me get a game brand new. Checking my watchlist for 2021, I’m glad I kept it within the criteria I’ve set.
Although, I am very tolerant on small box games due to their size, cost, and how easy to convince people to play it with me. Easy to boot out if I don’t want it.
No need for all the excuses. You couldn’t buy it if you wanted to! One of the most in demand/lowest distributed games around right now.
You have heard of a thing called “preorder”?
preorder this, so it doesn’t fall into my 2021 restrictions. Oops.
Find a store offering a preorder
Vic’s back with a long one (and a part 1, for Pete’s sake!). TL;DR: boardgames.
I can’t believe I never actually posted to this thread. I’ve gone through a few collection “refreshes” now, once back in about 2013, and now twice since 2018. 
…lessons were learned.
When I first started getting into more regular boardgaming I had a fairly small, fairly mundane, but very beloved collection of games. Catan, Ticket, San Juan, Lost Cities, Pandemic, etc. It wasn’t a flashy collection, but filled with what are now bonafide classics. When I decided to flip/refresh this collection (with games amassed since around '99) starting around 2012-2013, it was because I had gotten my fill.
Starting around 2018 I was ready to do it again, but for entirely different reasons. My partner and I had started to game more frequently and were still developing our tastes as a duo; I was in a different province with different friends who had (wildly) different priorities with respect to spending leisure time, and up to this point I had made no effort to expand my gaming circle. As a result I had amassed a (larger than before, smaller than today) collection of exciting boxes… sitting idle. Oh and I rebought Ticket.
Cull 1: Lesson #1 - you sure about that one buddy?
Cull 2: Lesson #1 - who you gonna play with, fool?
I had put a pretty good chunk of coin into the new stuff, so rather than culling the dead weight, I finally started to branch out and look for gaming groups online. This got my games played! …Once. Always once. If I was lucky enough to play a game more than once, it just meant I was teaching it again.
Cull 2: Lesson #2 - Cult of the New is real, and it is strong.
Now, I love teaching games I’m enthusiastic about. But when your weekly game is an endless rotation of new players, you aren’t gaming anymore, you’re an instructor. This literally became a role I (willingly) took on at my main meetup group, so you might wonder where the problem was. Well, simple: I wasn’t seeing any difference at my second (non-instructory) table. When you want to sit down and play a competent, focused game of Root, that guy that sits down to take a poke at the cute game is really draining.
Worth noting is that by this point I was actively buying hot titles because I knew I could table them at least once and then flip if needed. And yes, this meant that by this point I was tuned into the great hype machine that is BGG and Youtube. Gross. Now, I’ll still never turn down a request (opportunity) to teach an enthusiastic person a game, but there was a lesson here, and lessons get line breaks and bold treatment.
Cull 2: Lesson #3 & 4 - play for yourself & find your group(s).
Then I ran out of space.
Cull 2: Lesson #5 - A.B.C. Always be culling.
Then I finally let myself fall down the Kickstarter rabbit hole.
Cull 2: Lessons #6-8 (ongoing) - Time is a loop; My imagination will destroy me; Time is a loop.
Then lo, did the pandemic hit and entertainment expenses did disappear, and said Kickstarters did delay, and tremendous overlap did occur.
Cull 2: Lesson #9 - Cull 3 started, like, a year ago you dufus.
I’ll post separately with my (current) “state of the collection” and my (current) philosophy about where I want it to be, but for now hopefully serves as a (massively condensed, seriously) little spiral into mania.
Cull 3: Lesson #1 - Tune in next time.
I did the whole Marie Kondo thing. It worked. Amazing! But to make it better, I modified the question to: if I lost/sold my entire collection, which ones will I buy again 100%? (And which ones will be below 100%?)
It is intriguing when some games in my collection went <100%. Some are 90% where it is I’m not buying this first but it’ll be nice to purchase it once I have this, this, and this. Nice to know that I can sell these when the time comes.
Have you tried it? Look at your shelf and see which ones you’ll “buy again no question about it”. WIth the assumption that you can get it again through different ways.
I think I’m holding onto a lot of games because I’m not playing them. Quite a few I think I would want to play 5-10 times then I’ve probably had my fill. Until then, they can sit there doing no harm. Fingers crossed we can blitz some once all returns.
I sometimes go all Plato with hypothetical fires or the “what if I dated someone who hated boardgames?”. Could easily get down from 120 to 15-20 games I reckon.
I reckon 20. Plus a few that I would 100% buy something slightly different (Sagrada instead of Azul, Orleans instead of Altiplano)
Edit: of course, my husband would immediately replace a completely different set of games!
I’ve bought a good portion of my collection knowing that I wouldn’t get around to playing it in the near-term. That said, a good portion of my collection is unplayed and, as a result, an unknown value.
So when I look at my collection, I’m basically looking at a FLGS shelf with pricetags of $0 let’s just ignore the fact that the reason they are $0 is because I’ve already paid for them.
Fire sale, probably about 15 big boxes and 15 small ones. Problem is the ones I’d sell are the ones the small ones play with me.
So I tentatively tagged my “Kondo Keepers” on geekgroup and arrived at 54 games instead of nearly 200. Among those 54 are
I am not sure if that would make for a rounded collection and for some games I am definitely unable to make an informed decision and yet see that last bullet point, I feel like I can decide for a few games after just studying the rules or playing a few turns or a trial game.
Some games didn’t make it because friends have them (7 Wonders, I’d rebuy Duel though) and others didn’t make it because my partner actively dislikes them (very sad about Innovation).
Some are in there for nostalgia more than anything else (I can’t not own Robo Rally) others are my personal classics/favorites (Spirit Island, Terra Mystica).
I am glad though I do not have to shrink down the collection that much but it is a very useful thought experiment 