My ex-wife used to think I’d completely lost it. There I was, 43 years old, sitting in my truck at 5:30 in the morning with a lukewarm cup of gas station coffee, mapping out a route that would hit six garage sales and three estate sales before most people were even awake. “You know these games are all online now, right?” she’d say, shaking her head as I counted out small bills and checked my phone for addresses. I’d mumble something about the hunt being half the fun, but honestly, I couldn’t really explain it back then. Still can’t, not completely.
See, I came to this whole collecting thing backwards. Never had an NES as a kid – we were too broke for that kind of luxury in rural Wyoming. But when my daughter got me playing Super Metroid around 2010, something clicked. Not just with the game, but with the idea that this little plastic cartridge contained something special. Something worth preserving. Fast forward twelve years, and I’ve got a game room that looks like a museum exhibit, complete with UV-protective cases and climate control. My buddies from work think I’ve gone soft, but whatever. They collect fishing lures and hunting rifles. I collect games.
The prices, though… Jesus. Games I passed on for forty bucks in 2012 are selling for hundreds now. There was this complete Earthbound at a gaming store in Colorado Springs – had the big box, the scratch-and-sniff cards, everything. Guy wanted $150 for it, and I thought he was nuts. That same set would cost me two grand today, easy. My collection has somehow become one of my most valuable assets, which is both thrilling and kind of disturbing. I mean, I’m sitting on cartridges I bought for five dollars that are worth more than my monthly truck payment.
This price explosion has changed everything. What used to be a hobby for regular folks like me has turned into this weird world where rich collectors battle over sealed games like they’re buying stocks. I’m caught in the middle – not wealthy enough to chase the truly rare stuff, but sitting on enough valuable games that I feel guilty selling them to fund new purchases. It’s a strange position to be in, you know? Being accidentally successful at something you started just for fun.
The fake game problem keeps getting worse too. I’ve developed this whole inspection routine that probably makes me look paranoid. Got a security bit screwdriver set, UV light, magnifying glass… the works. Last month at a flea market in Fort Collins, some guy was selling what looked like rare SNES games for suspiciously low prices. One look at the cartridge screws told me everything – wrong type, wrong placement. When I mentioned it to him, he packed up and disappeared faster than free beer at a construction site.
Learning to spot fakes became essential after I got burned on a $275 Harvest Moon cartridge that turned out to be counterfeit. The label looked right at first glance, but under better lighting, you could see the colors were slightly off. The plastic felt different too – too smooth, missing that slight texture authentic SNES carts have. Now I trust my hands-on inspection over any online photos. Can’t fake the feel of thirty-year-old plastic or the specific way authentic labels catch light.
Storage became this whole obsession I never saw coming. These games weren’t designed to last fifty years, but here we are, treating them like historical artifacts. Which, I guess, they kind of are. I built custom shelving with LED strips that don’t emit UV, bought acid-free boxes, even installed a dehumidifier in the game room. My brother visited last year, took one look at my setup, and asked if I’d considered therapy. Maybe he has a point, but there’s something satisfying about seeing these games displayed properly, protected from time and stupidity.
The crown jewel is this illuminated cabinet I built for my boxed SNES RPGs. Tempered glass, adjustable lighting, humidity control… it cost more than some of the games inside it. But seeing those Squaresoft boxes lined up, their artwork still vibrant after thirty years, makes the investment worthwhile. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m updating my collection spreadsheet and realizing how much money I’ve spent on plastic rectangles.
This whole grading and sealing thing really gets under my skin. Companies that lock games in plastic cases with arbitrary number ratings have turned collecting into some kind of stock market simulation. I watched a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. – the most common NES game ever made – sell for thousands just because some company gave it a high grade. It’s insane. These are games, meant to be played, not investments trapped behind plastic forever.
Got into an argument about this at a convention last year with a collector who’d never actually played most of his sealed games. “They’re investments,” he said. “Not entertainment.” That attitude bothers me more than it probably should. I collect games because I love games – their history, their design, the experience of playing them on original hardware. Locking them away unplayed feels like preserving books you’ll never read. But the market rewards that approach, so what do I know?
My hunting spots have become closely guarded secrets. There’s this monthly flea market off Highway 85 where one vendor consistently underprices anything with Japanese text because he “doesn’t understand the foreign ones.” Found incredible deals there on import games that would cost me ten times as much online. The church sale in Boulder that happens every spring when students move out. A specific Goodwill location that somehow gets better donations than the others. I’ve mapped these places like a prospector marking gold claims.
The best find of my collecting career happened at a rural estate sale two summers ago. In a dusty basement corner, someone had left a cardboard box containing a complete TurboGrafx-16 system with eleven games. Eleven! Including some expensive ones like Neutopia II and Military Madness. The family had priced the whole box at twenty-five dollars. I paid without argument, but I did suggest they might want to research some of the other items they were selling. That kind of discovery – it’s like finding a winning lottery ticket someone threw away.
I had to focus my collecting eventually. Storage space is finite, and money… well, it’s not infinite either, despite what my credit card statements might suggest. Early on, I was grabbing anything I could find cheap, which left me with partial collections across dozens of systems. Now I focus mainly on complete-in-box SNES RPGs and loose N64 cartridges, with some PS1 survival horror thrown in. Having a focus helps me make smarter purchasing decisions and actually complete collections rather than just accumulating random games.
The online marketplace is a minefield. Photos can lie, sellers can be dishonest, and sophisticated fakes are everywhere. I’ve learned to request specific additional photos for expensive purchases – circuit board shots, multiple angles, sometimes even video of the game running. For anything over a couple hundred dollars, I prefer meeting in person if possible. Trust is huge in this hobby, and it’s hard to build through eBay messages.
Documentation became crucial after a collector friend lost everything in a house fire and discovered his insurance company needed detailed records for replacement values. I maintain a comprehensive spreadsheet now – purchase dates, prices paid, current market values, condition notes, photos of everything. It’s tedious as hell, updating it quarterly, but necessary. My insurance agent was so impressed she asked if she could use my system as an example for other collectors.
The value difference between loose cartridges and complete-in-box copies keeps growing. A loose Chrono Trigger might run $150, but the complete version costs $800 or more. Sealed copies? Don’t even ask. This creates tough decisions about where to spend limited funds. I go complete-in-box for my SNES RPGs but accept loose carts for N64 games, since those boxes were basically designed to self-destruct.
The hardest decision I faced was what to do with a factory-sealed Final Fantasy III I found at a garage sale for five dollars about twelve years ago. Elderly woman selling it said her grandson never got around to playing it before leaving for college. That sealed copy would be worth thousands now, but I opened it. Carefully preserved everything, but I opened it and played it. Some collectors think I’m crazy, but experiencing that game with its original map and manual was worth more to me than the money I could’ve made.
The community aspect keeps this hobby from being purely materialistic. Monthly meetups at a local brewery introduced me to collectors who became real friends. We trade games, share hunting tips, help authenticate questionable items. Dave, who collects PC big box games, once drove three hours to help me verify a Neo Geo cartridge before I bought it. That’s not something you can replicate in online communities.
There’s a preservation element to this that’s become more important as digital storefronts close and companies abandon older titles. When Sony tried to shut down the PS3 store, it highlighted how fragile digital ownership really is. Physical games, with proper care, will outlast servers and authentication systems. My thirty-year-old cartridges still work perfectly while mobile games from five years ago are permanently lost.
My nephew visited last month and was fascinated by the collection – not as display pieces, but as working games. Watching him play Super Mario World for the first time on original hardware, seeing his face light up the same way mine did when I first discovered these games… that validated every early morning garage sale run. We’re preserving experiences, not just collecting plastic.
The future worries me sometimes. Physical media is disappearing from new releases, and existing copies are slowly deteriorating. Will today’s digital games ever be collectible the same way? What happens when the last working copy of a rare game finally dies? These questions keep me up at night, probably more than they should.
Last weekend, I found myself examining a beat-up copy of Link’s Awakening for the original Game Boy, turning it over in my hands while thinking about its journey. Factory to store to some kid’s bedroom to who knows how many other owners before ending up in my collection. There are fingerprints on the label – not mine. Rental store stickers that tell their own story. Initials written in permanent marker by some cautious kid at summer camp, probably.
Each physical game carries its own history alongside the data it contains. That’s something digital files can’t replicate, no matter how convenient they are. Maybe that’s why I’ll be setting my alarm for another ridiculous Saturday morning hunt next weekend, thermos full of coffee, hunting for pieces of plastic that somehow contain both games and memories. My daughter thinks I’m nuts, but she’s the one who got me into this hobby in the first place. She created a monster, and now she has to live with the consequences.
The logical part of my brain knows this is all slightly ridiculous. I’m a 52-year-old construction foreman who spends weekends hunting for toys from the 1980s, competing with teenagers and investment speculators for increasingly expensive pieces of plastic. But the emotional part – the part that remembers the wonder of discovering these games for the first time in my forties – that part understands completely. These aren’t just collectibles. They’re time machines, pieces of interactive history, windows into worlds that shaped an entire generation of creators and players. And if that means getting up before dawn to dig through strangers’ garage sales, well… I’ve had worse hobbies.
Timothy discovered retro gaming at forty and never looked back. A construction foreman by day and collector by night, he writes from a fresh, nostalgia-free angle—exploring classic games with adult curiosity, honest takes, and zero childhood bias.
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