I think for me it’s retro games, specifically. I used to have been in the used video games market for 5 years from 2008 to 2012. My goal was to construct a personal video game collection, physical copies of games I personally enjoyed growing up.
I was registered on a game trading site which served as the base of my business, I’ve made rounds of thrift store hopping and any used games market I could find locally. I’ve struck amazingly good deals and I might’ve had luck on my side a few times (for example, a guy on that game trading site gave me a free copy of Super Metroid that I got to choose for a minor mistake he felt he needed to honor.)
And I felt like I was incredibly close to completing my personal collection until 2012, I ran into some dumb drama with my sister and ex girlfriend back then. They racked up the cable bill in my name that I was trying to cancel and they wouldn’t let me cancel it until I turned in all equipment. And I was jobless at the time too, having lost my job. So I needed to sell some things and sure enough, had to sacrifice my entire collection at the time that I spent 5 long years building.
I never recovered since and this was during the golden period where it was still fairly fun to collect and everybody wasn’t pretending to be a pawn shop.
I would try continuing what collection of games I’ve tried to build, through Steam but it wasn’t the same. Nowadays, the used video games market has turned into just a platform full of resellers, pawn brokers and stingy greedy collectors.
I find it very cheapening that people treat games like they’re just tools of trade. They mean nothing and they’re treated like nothing except to make a quick buck, however possible.
It’s only worsened thanks to Goodwill and similar thrift stores, getting in on it where everyone pays too much attention as to what the prices go for on EBay and VGPC.
And we have WATA involved that hasn’t made things better. Thanks for shitting on an honest hobby, assholes.
Collectibles always turn into a money making / investment opportunity for people. Like with Magic the gathering and the whole reprint vs reserved list debacle. That was solely created to “protect those who were investing”
Magic has been awful since around the time they started doing master collection things. I don’t even know what it’s called. Masterpiece artifacts was the first one. If I had to point to a specific turning point. I don’t even play anymore but holy hell there’s like a billion forms of every card in each set now. It used to just be a normal a foil (premium). Now it feels like there are 8 forms of each card.
It kind of sounds like OP morphed from hobbyist to investor, then lost interest when his investment lost value.
There’s a lot of hobbies that offer a path to professional, and I’ve watched friends go down that path. It’s rarely a good experience - there’s all kind of things you have to do as a professional to make a living that you can blow off as a hobbyist/volunteer. There’s a lot more stress when success or failure is tied to whether you eat or not. You lose a lot of freedom to tell dickheads to fuck off.
Never been into collectibles, myself, but the investment pressure seems insidious. Like, it’s one thing to trade cards among friends because you got doubles of something your buddy’s missing, but buying a rare card because it’s “underpriced” to hold until its price recovers is very different. The money is pressure to change from looking at your collection as good, fun, or complete and to looking at its presumptive cash value. Then you’ve stopped being a collector and started being a businessman.
You should take a look at game prices for anything older than PS2/GameCube (and even some games from that era are obscenely expensive). For a long time, LSD: Dream Emulator was one of the most expensive games you could get at around $200 for a pristine copy. Nowadays, there are a ton of games that are >$200 for a junk, beat-up copy. The price skyrocketed thanks to WATA/Heritage Auctions doing a lot of suspected pump and dumping that, as a couple examples, got an LoZ copy sold for nearly $900,000 and a copy of Super Mario Bros sold for nearly $700,000. Afaik the only known copy Chu-Teng didn’t sell for that much, and that was considered to be lost media.
Even if all you want is to have a copy of Banjo-Kazooie then have fun forking over $20ish for a loose cartridge or >$100 if you want the box and manual. That’s not how it used to be. Used to be that you could get a loose cartridge for like, $2 in a bundle of 10 of them.
Fuck WATA.
Edit: this also applies to old computers. Remember when you could get a beige CRT by the side of the road for free? Have fun paying >$50 for a shitty CRT, >$200 for a decent one, and >$1000 for a good one. It’s not just CRTs either; basically anything to do with old PCs is becoming obscenely expensive as well.
For the CRTs at least that makes sense, because they used to be mass manufactured, everybody had one, and then new tech came out so nobody wanted them anymore. They threw them out or sold them for cheap. Now that that glut of CRTs has cleared out, they’re probably relatively rare, and people aren’t manufacturing much of them anymore.
I think that probably applies to lots of things.
The same thing applies to game cartridges that the OP was collecting. As time goes on and the pool of interest rises and the number of items are reduced, prices will skyrocket because of supply and demand.
I didn’t know making a personal collection constituted as being an ‘investor’. Learn something new everyday. /s
I mean it’s in the word - personal. When you’re making personal collections, you aren’t in it for the money or what ways you can flip what you get for an investment.
Making huge leaps of assumption, you are. Christ.
It kind of sounds like you didnt hother reading the post
Also games and console collecting for me. Just not fun with today’s prices. I guess on the upside my collection is now worth way more than what I paid for it. Not that I’m planning to sell.
Everyone’s collections is suddenly worth way more because of the devious amounts of pumping and dumping by heritage auctions and people operating on a pawn broker mindset. That’s who ruined an honest hobby.
I wanted my collection so that I can have things to turn to and play, but have physical copies of. There were very few times I got games so I could flip them, but only if it meant more money to have on the bargaining table to get what I truly wanted. I’ve gotten a copy of Pokemon Stadium 2 sealed in 2010. I tried selling it for $95, but not sure what the final price of it really went for. Might’ve been a tad lower.
I mean, that’s just how you did business if it means getting what you want. These days, everyone is constantly flipping and skyrocketing values to unrealistic levels “for fun” or profit than just caring about what they’ve got at all.
Try to remember that price and value are not the same thing and that people value things differently.
Also, markets will exploit and commodify anything they can. It’s hard to have a passion which is completely unpolluted by this, unless you can find one so niche that it goes unnoticed.
Anything ‘collectible’ has become a no-go for me. Simply put, anything that is collectible has turned into a business, with more or less artificially created scarcity and with entire businesses thriving on people gullibility, FOMO and with their obsession with making a quick and easy buck. There is no way I want to participate in that scam.
On a more personal note and experience:
I was a book and comics collector for many decades myself. I started as a book-lover teen and and then as a student, selling used books and comics as a way to earn money and then pay for College. It was a lot of fun, back then. Like really. And exciting too.
Then, as a young adult earning more than a decent living, I started spending serious money in rare and original editions, this time without any idea to make money out of it. It was just my hobby and I earned enough to not worry, and it was still fun and exciting too. At least, it was fun in the beginning.
Still, a couple decades ago I donated my entire library (3k+ books) to a charity because… Well… Money was king everywhere. And what I used to love was now making me feel so sad.
Sure, I should be happy as I had accumulated a small fortune on my shelves but I did not enjoy it the slightest. People (like myself) were not giving a crap anymore about content or the authors they once genuinely admired, they only worried about the books value. Realizing I was that kind of person myself made me feel very ashamed of myself. I wanted to get back to what really matter, the content, the text, the art. and not their fucking retail value as collectibles.
Getting rid of my entire library (save for very few books, not even rare) was liberating and, so many years later, still feels like the best decision ever. I don’t care the slightest about those books potential resale value anymore. I barely own any books myself nowadays, I read most of them from the public library, and I’ve rediscovered the unadulterated and incomparable pleasure of enjoying reading.
This is partially why I started collecting vinyl. Nothing I buy will ever have a major resale value, it’s there to be enjoyed, because I admire the artist, or found the album to be a masterpiece. They remind me of times in my life I want to revisit, and putting on a record can take me there.
If I’m honest, video games and computers in general. The community has some to do with it, I guess, but more because the people making them just seem to not care about the customers at all anymore.
If I had to put my feeling into words, its that they try to make things at the smallest possible cost with the highest return possible, including throwing ads into everything (making for a poorer experience for the users), while simultaneously making everything bland so they can appeal to everyone.
Ten years ago, I loved video games, and now the only “next-gen” console I have is a Switch and a Steam Deck. I used to be a huge Windows fan, but Noe I can hardly stomach Windows 11, and run Linux exclusively as much as possible.
Big tech ruined tech. Big video games ruined video games.
I feel this. I grew up in the '90s so tech was totally my thing. I couldn’t find work in my chosen field (journalism, graduated in 2008… yeah) so I reschooled myself to sysadmin. At the start I was so excited to learn all the tech stacks and possibilities.
Nowadays, it’s just an endless queue of tickets with Microsoft Azure, AWS or Fujitsu. You don’t actually own any of your infrastructure, and in case of serious disaster your hands are practically tied. Every “new” feature that comes out is more hassle and problems than it ever solves, and every single fucking security update breaks something, somewhere.
All in all, I’m ready to turn in my cellphone, pc and laptop and go live in a forest, happy if I never have to touch anything electronic ever again.
journalism, graduated in 2008… yeah.
I went to college for cell animation when computers started taking over. I feel your pain.
I enjoy video games, but it’s maybe two or three games a year I really enjoy and play the hell out of. Days Gone and BG3 are the only ones I’ve enjoyed since Jedi: Survivor. I’ve played the hell out of DG because when I didn’t have anything else to do I’d just replay it again. I thought the writing and acting was really good and it’s almost like rewatching a favorite movie.
I did finally pick up GTA5 (I often buy older games that were well received but I didn’t have interest in paying full price when they came out) and it’s good, but it hasn’t gripped me and I’ve just kinda stopped playing. Currently I just spend that time scrolling my phone. I don’t think there are any games on my radar I’m interested in buying in the future. But that’s fine I don’t want to anticipate a game and be disappointed.
There’s some new Star Wars game coming out and I fucking love Star Wars, but they said the word DLC and I’m already not interested. If a game requires PS+, I already know I won’t like it—a lesson leaned from Diablo 4, which I really wanted to love but really don’t.
I also only have Linux. My last windows system got left out in the rain on my deck and that was that. But that’s okay because I love to tinker and play with stuff and Linux is great for personal dev projects.
I’m getting back into games after a long time off and I have zero interest in AAA games. Why do single player or local co-op games have the rootkits? I’ll just enjoy smaller indie titles, there are a lot of great options out there.
The opposite. I’ve given up hobbies because I couldn’t afford them anymore. I started collecting ancient coins at the start of the pandemic. The same coins that sold for 50-100 bucks back then now routinely fetch 500-600. The supply hasn’t changed, but demand has skyrocketed. I’m at a point where I’m ready to give it up completely.
A friend / former band mate of mine trades a lot of music gear, mostly guitar stuff. He’s always on the hunt for something newer / better / different. So he buys and sells a lot of used stuff. It used to be a fun hobby. He says now everybody is just out to screw you over. When he sells an item now, he has to go through this elaborate ritual of photographing and logging and carefully packaging everything. Weighing everything, etc. It’s insane. It has sucked all the joy out of it, so he does far less of it. Consumers have been trained by our corporate overlords to behave like this. Everyone is “I drink your milkshake” all the time.
I enjoy some hobbies but I avoid collecting stuff. I prefer creating my own stuff.
You use the word “hobby”, but I think this is a unique problem to hobbies involving collections. Personally I stay away from collection hobbies because they inevitably devolve into a binder full of stuff you don’t use or enjoy because you already own it, and a rat race to obtain stuff you don’t have. That’s not my idea of a good time.
Granted, most hobbies are money pits or conversely time sinks, but that’s kinda the point. As long as it brings you joy or personal fulfillment.
Granted, most hobbies are money pits or conversely time sinks,
Or both! I build guitars for fun and, while I’ve made a few bucks selling some, I’ll never break even and I’ve spent countless hours doing it. Same with working on motorcycles except I have never made a dime doing it.
I guess the bright side is that at least I don’t own a boat.
Agree. I like 40k minis but the industry has the same issue. Totally dropped the mainline tournaments and such.
I got around this by focusing on small form custom games, rpg buildups, and the actual art of painting and customizing the minis.
Changes it from “shiny new” to “my lil dudes”
No, not because of cheapening. I’ve left hobbies because of the crowds associated with it (anime) or because I couldn’t afford pay to win (magic the gathering). My current hobbies are one that benefit from community but don’t need it: homebrewing, baking, 3d printing, food preservation, etc.
I’m at the point where I no longer actively engage with hobby communities, I might join one and lurk (search for my answers without engaging the community). Unfortunately, they always seem to be cliquish, judgemental, and overly toxic, with moderation/admin who’s are either complicit or actively adding to the bad barrel.
Once in a while I find a gem worth engaging with, and it can turn a passing glance of an interest into something worth lifting up.
Unfortunately, they always seem to be cliquish, judgemental, and overly toxic, with moderation/admin who’s are either complicit or actively adding to the bad barrel.
Agreed. Been in some like that. I try to be the change I want to see, but I’m can’t spend massive amounts of energy on it.
This has happened a lot to me. Or I just be a fan in silence.
There’s a great line from the band Sloan about this that comes up whenever I hear this.
“It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans”
I resonate the same way with Anime fans. I used to have seen many people identify themselves back in the 2000s as ‘Otakus’ and some even wearing the shirts to say so. It got off-putting for a good long while. There are even fans who uncomfortably reveal their favorite characters that all look suggestively underaged or too dolled up which makes associating with them in casual conversation a problem because of the mental gymnastics they’ll go through defending them.
The anime fandom has a poor track record of just keeping these weirdos out which doesn’t make it good to indulge on the hobby.
Why do people need to perform mental gymnastics for liking a character from an anime, whatever age it is?
If anything, the sphere of anime fans has become more normal but i guess you are on a “everything is becoming shit”-trip. I guess that happens with some people while becoming old.
I don’t even watch Doctor Who anymore because of the fucking fans. I grew up with the old series and thoroughly enjoyed the new stuff up until the fan base got so worked up about some stupid shit or other. After that I just couldn’t get any joy from watching.
I should have just tuned them out, but it’s too late. I got a bad taste in my mouth and it won’t go away.
The Doctor can’t be a woman! Canonically the Doctor is a white male!
Well actually, the Doctor is a fictional character who’s race, gender, religion was never a defining characteristic. Also the whole fact that Doctor regenerates into a new doctor.*
*= This is the only time well actually is socially acceptable is when putting shit heads in their place.
I think plants are a little less cool now that cloning is so easy and prevalent. It’s great you can get anything for cheap now, but it does make things feel less special to me. More trivial.
One more for “avoids collecting hobbies”. I can’t think of a single collectible thing that has held my interest my entire life, I have no reason to think anything out there would hold it going forward for the rest of my life.
I drop hobbies when they stop being fun, for whatever reason. Sometimes I get bored with it, sometimes my goal was only ever to dabble in it to try it out, sometimes it’s closely associated with certain people and those people are no longer involved, sometimes I move and a previous hobby doesn’t work as well in my new location.
I collect bottle openers from breweries I’ve been to. It’s less about the thing and more about the going places. The collection is nice, but it could disappear in an instant and I wouldn’t really care since I still got to go to all those places and try their beer.
I’m more of a T-shirt/sticker person. If I like the brewery I’ll get a shirt (so long as they’re not grossly overpriced) but will always try to get a sticker…again of they’re not grossly overpriced. The only place that charged for the $2 for a sticker has terrible beer.
My big cooler is almost completely covered and it almost seems like half my shirts are from breweries.
Nice! I have a weird mental block to using stickers. “If I use it, then I won’t have it when I want to put it somewhere else.”
I like the paddle bottle openers. They are easy and quick to use and don’t take up much space at all by the bar.
I was always kinda the same way with those stickers. I’ve always had a worry in the back of my head that if I like the sticker I’d be mad if it didn’t stick or whatever I put it on I’d have to throw away.
I would try continuing what collection of games I’ve tried to build, through Steam but it wasn’t the same. Nowadays, the used video games market has turned into just a platform full of resellers, pawn brokers and stingy greedy collectors.
Yeah…
It’s a “hobby” which is buying things that aren’t made anymore.
How was it going to end any other way?
Lots of people wants to buy a few old things. The people who pay the most get it, and they won’t sell for less than they bought, so prices keep going up until there’s no supply and rich bored people just keep trading back and forth as investment.
I used to be really into computers 30 years ago…
back when you could dumpster dive behind that office or school that was upgrading their computers and snag a whole bunch of Macintosh and Apple parts that you could bodge together into working machines. if you got really lucky, they were throwing away video games on diskette as well
Explain? I’ve seen folks doing some very cool stuff with old hardware
It wasn’t retro at the time. Retrocomputing is an entirely different interest, you’re not looking at it through the right perspective.
Are you saying you liked modern computers, but only around 1995-1999 when they were contemporary?
I’m saying that I have had a hobby in computing continuously since the 80s but in recent decades it has fucking sucked.
I was pretty into Magic the Gathering for awhile. I dropped it eventually after I realized that they could never actually stop releasing new editions, new mechanics, new cards that did the same thing as other cards, etc etc. While I sometimes appreciated the creativity and freshness side of it, it started to feel like an endless treadmill that had gotten … cheapened.
Since then I’ve bought a couple booster packs over the years, just for that nostalgia hit, and I’d still occasionally play with the old decks when I got an opportunity. But my heart definitely wasn’t in it anymore.
I played in high school, and most of my cards are 4th edition, Ice Age, & Homelands era. I taught a buddy how to play and he wanted to get his own cards, and bought a brand new pre build deck. Which didn’t exist when I played. I think it was an elf deck with nothing but elves that buffed elves. It was way more refined than anything I could build with my motley collection, and it felt so cheap. We even went to a little tournament at the local shop. I watched my first opponent peel the cellophane off the deck he had JUST bought and stomp me with it.
Never cared about Magic after that. If a ten year old can spend $20 and win with a deck he’s never seen before, that’s not a game for me.
