Topic of the Week: Player or Collector?

Boardgames
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This is a thought that has struck me a number of times. Most recently looking at the “Show off your collection” thread and just noting how much time, money, and effort many of us go to to remodel and organize our rooms. It’s remarkable, and the results are so satisfying.

A second time, I was complaining about my lack of time for non-essential project (like finishing my book…) and my wife suggested I could find a lot of time if I put all my games on hold - the solo on the table and the BGA turns. I added it up and it really wasn’t that much time a week. I might take a full week to finish a 30-40 minute solo, just a few turns at a time. But I did realize in the process just how much time I spent reading reviews, tracking prices, making decisions, etc. It dwarfed the time I spent actually playing.

And third, I was speaking to a sports card collector. Now he has things you can’t play with. But just the process of learning, finding, valuing, preserving, was a joy to him. Worth thousands and thousands of dollars and filling up a room in his house he could no longer use.

So what about you? Are you here to play or collect, in what proportion? What aspects of collecting give you the most delight? Or is one a necessary artifact that flows from the other?

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Play, as I well documented in this forum :rofl:

But I still hold items that are collectible. 1st edition Z-Man Arboretum? Yeah. Collectible. Even though Im not super hot about the game.

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For me, a thing designed to be played should be played. If I don’t want to play it any more, I should move it on. (Otherwise I just hoard everything. I do that quite enough with things that don’t take up space.)

That said I do try to curate my collection of games such that it consists of the best games for me, and that’s at least a bit collector-ish.

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Just to be clear, I’m think about collecting as a process, not a mountain of stuff. More a question of where your time goes than what your house is full of.

Research, evaluate, acquire, store, organize, evaluate, sell.

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Sure. This is Roger deep lore rather than a general comment: I know I could easily find myself trying to curate a collection of “all the great games” or something like that, but by restricting myself to “games I actually want to play, representing a broad cross-section of mechanics and themes” I keep it under control.

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I’m just going to mention bags. BAGS. I’m always behind on bags.

A game comes. It may have baggies. It may not. Often it is 4x6 inch bags and the game only needs 3x3. So I get my box of bags, I bag the game, I take the included bags and tuck them away. One size of bags is low. Order more. They don’t fit in the bag box. Then I buy a folded space insert and now I have empty bags that need to be put with the other empty bags of their approximate size.

Writing this, I just now collected all the loose bags next to my desk and on our upstairs credenza and put them on the piano for sorting and storing.

BAGS.

(and down low, 3x3 and 4x5 are the hexagons of plastic bags).

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I certainly have a big collection. I have more games than I can play in a given year. So when I say that in my mind I am a player first and a collector second that may sound weird.

Here are a few of the thoughts I had on this topic:

I‘ve ruthlessly sold on item‘s that would be collector‘s items: City of Chaos, the rare expansion for Arkham Horror 3rd. My copy of Smashup included some rare expansion decks when I sold it. The games weren‘t getting played. So out they went…

On the other hand, I cherish my copy of Tash Kalar that is both signed and has an artist‘s sketch. But Tash Kalar is also one of my favorite games—to play (even if not often). Same with my complete deluxified copy of Spirit Island (not signed)

I spend time curating my collection and trying to find new games I might enjoy but I have largely given up having lists of OOP games, unobtainiums and grail games to hunt. (I still have some historical lists that make me laugh a bit when I see them now)

I tend to complete games with all expansions—because it improves their resell value. Just in case :slight_smile:

Games that don‘t get played land on a big sell pile (with the expansions). The pile has got huge because I haven‘t found the energy to deal with it. But it exists because I just don‘t want to keep too many games that won‘t get played.

I have 18 games that are marked „collector‘s“ because for various reasons I won‘t sell them but I also won‘t play them. The German history games Weimar, Die Macher, Wir sind das Volk. Thurn und Taxis the only game that has my hometown on the map. 18DO—still hope to play but keeping because my dad likes trains and DO is his hometown. Etc. 18 out of shelves containing 350-400 (depending on the style of counting)

That said I enjoy curating my collection. Sorting it (virtually. I never touch the physical shelves to sort anything, it was difficult enough to fit in everything when we moved in), checking that all the possible occasions are covered… and that there are as few duds in there as possible.

Despite my huge collection my partner didn‘t think long before declaring that I buy games to play them not to own them which makes me less of a collector in his eyes than the size of the collection suggests.

PS: time spend—when I got deeper into the hobby at first I spent more time on the hunting researching acquiring … these days, mostly what would take time is the selling and as stated I am not getting that done. Right now I also have very little time for playing but I am still playing my BGA rounds at least…

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If I could play more I definitely would, but as long as I‘m not able to play, I spend the time around games.

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Ruthless collector-culler

I but games I think I’d like, play them and sell them whilst packing them away. I have a reputation in my games group for it.

Space is the limitation on my collection

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I definitely buy games to play them, even if they are more of a hope for the future sometimes. As such, I think I have more unplayed games than played games. And I don’t really like the idea of culling games I have not yet played, since I’d hate to think I moved one on which I might really like. So, I have a pretty large collection because of this.

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Mix of both. I mostly buy to play (and unless it’s solo they means other people have to be likely to play it) but there are also a few I bought just to own.

I have Dune and Fortune and Glory because they were out of print before the recent reprints, and I want a copy in case they go again. I want Pax Pamir 2nd because there is absolutely ZERO chance any of my friends would play it but if it goes out of print I’d be mad at myself for not getting it.

But all my recent purchases are "is this filler game light enough for people to enjoy in the pub?’ so it’s definitely mostly the play side of things.

Except yes, I never had 4x6 Bags on a quick re-order until the last few years.

Marvel Champions is the only one that feels more like collecting. Going to eBay for card sleeves, dividers, storage boxes, tracking down the hard to get packs online.

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I used to be an even split of both. Life was boring and difficult so games filled a void and were a distraction. So I spent hours reading/watching and thinking about the games I wanted for my collection. I also would play 4-5 times a week and cull games when I was done. So games was just a big part of my life.

These days I’m pleased to say that as my opportunity for gaming has gone down I’ve shed the collector aspect of looking in to games and sifting. I slowed things down a while ago. Unsubscribed to pretty much everything. Only one podcast remained and it was SVWAG. I don’t share much taste cross over so it was safer and I enjoyed hearing them talk more as a para-social thing. Even when I was in collector phase my games stayed under 100, it was only the pandemic times that it spiralled but many of us experienced temporary odd behaviours then.

My only interaction with board game content is here and UK maths trades. Occasionally I will look at a game listed for trade but I more want to sell than trade. Here it’s my only social internet usage really so it’s more for the company than researching games. I haven’t stopped buying games. I recently bought Uchronia and Innovation Ultimate but that was more about realising how much I love Mottainai. So that’s not collector as defined by @Acacia for this topic but it is in the sense of completing my desires for an early Chudyk collection.

I’m hoping I’m done for a few years now until games are back on the menu. Being an older Dad maybe that’s optimistic and it’ll be many years but we live in hope. Still I hope the collector bit stays dead during the drought

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Oh yes, I’ve definitely been more of a collector when the kids were younger.

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I guess I’m a collector, have way too many games. I find them hard to get rid off (without just giving them away).

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But you also play them a lot, don’t you?

Size of collection not necessarily a collector makes.
Pinging @pillbox about his subcollection of a certain Splotter. (sorry somehow this is never getting old)

I have noticed much like @EnterTheWyvern that I am spending less time with reviewers, podcasts in the last … year? I just haven’t found the time. My main game interaction is this place and occasionally looking for interesting threads on the BGG frontpage.

Okay not quite: the SPIEL preview is up. I scrolled through that. But this year found it largely uninteresting. So few games catch my interest now that I have realized that I have all the nu-euros I need. Other styles of games are usually harder to determine my interest in and I often wait until additional triggers occur (tekeli.li mentions, other recommendations, hotness, nominees for prices, BGA…)

I also see a parallel between my game playing and game buying. When I play more games, I buy more games because one game element I like makes me look into getting “more of the same”.

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I’m definitely a player first and foremost, I’ll only buy games I think we’ll play. But there’s some collecting in there too, as I am… hesitant to get rid of games we’ll never play again. Don’t they look nice in there?

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I’ve never bought a game I didn’t intend to play

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I’m keeping up with SU&SD and NPI, but neither of them tend to feature games that I like. Looking over recent titles, the last SU&SD review of a game I now enjoy was Curses and Covens in November. Last NPI, yikes, Railroad Ink Challenge in September 2021. (I’m going only by video titles, so podcasts and group reviews will escape me in this crude analysis.)

Some of that is because my game acquisition is now in the “does it do a thing I want better than the game i already have that does that thing” phase. Some of it is that their tastes are not entirely congruent with mine. Some of it is because I think there’s a tendency to review big games more than small ones, and those also run into the “can I fit it into my shelves” constraint.

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Actually yeah, I’m definitely a player not collector. I wouldn’t buy Lisboa just because I don’t have a heavy Lacerda in my collection. I would never play it, no-one I know locally would ever play it, so I’m not spending the money.

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Yeah, I’ve completely lost touch with SU&SD. I don’t gel with the new guard the way I did with the old. Actualol seems to be putting out interesting videos but I’m not watching them either.

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