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.
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.