Mystaros
First Post
I've gone through far too many purges over the years, mostly due to moving.
The first one, unfortunately and foolishly, was voluntary. There was a brief time in my sophomore year of high school when I decided that D&D "wasn't cool" anymore, and wanted to go out and have a "real" social life. I sold off most of my stuff, and the stuff I kept I had because everyone else had it all already... DMG, PHB, MM, a few modules, dice, and so forth.
Less than six months later I wised up went back to D&D, and to my friends, and fortunately most of them were willing to re-sell me my stuff at the rate I'd sold it to them. However, in that time Judges Guild went under, and I was not able to recover my original Judges Guild books... the good stuff was already nigh impossible to find in stores... and I'd had almost a complete collection! It took the better part of two decades to rebuild that collection, at many times the original cost.
After that, though, I didn't really have a purge for many years. My collection grew to be quite prodigious, from 1984 to 1995, and included RPGs, board games, card games, and all sorts of other games, until it filled 12 shelving units each six-feet tall, plus an additional closet's worth of board games. And that didn't include the CCGs!
Unfortunately, in late 1995, I needed to move from Seattle to Indiana, and I was dead broke. So I ended up selling off half of the collection to finance the shipping of the other half! That purged away a lot of the non-D&D/AD&D fantasy stuff at the time, a lot of which is impossible to get today. Frankly, save from a collector's point of view, I don't really miss that stuff any more, as I hadn't played much of it in years, anyway.
So the rebuilding began again, until by 2002, the next big move (ironically, again from Seattle back to Indiana), I ended up with a similar situation, though this time I had merely eight shelving units rather than 12. Fortunately, I didn't need to sell off as much of the collection, but unfortunately, the collection was much, much tighter, so rather than fat, I ended up cutting a lot of meat and sometimes bone. I ended up selling off pretty much my entire AD&D 2E collection, my near-complete West End Games Star Wars collection, Mutant Chronicles, all my World of Darkness, Cyberpunk, GURPs (back to 1st Edition)... oh, the list goes on and on. I still dream of that collection...
After that move, financially, things kept getting worse, and I ended up regularly selling off pieces of the remaining collections piecemeal, $100 here, $500 there, until it got down to about $10,000 replacement value.
The upshot if it is that, if I had everything I'd ever owned games-wise in one location at once, it would have been a collection worth ~$60,000 replacement value. At most at once, it was worth ~$50,000. I've since bounced back; I'm not sure where my collection stands today, value wise, but I'd estimate at around ~$30,000 maybe. Today it includes 1E AD&D; most of the best 2E AD&D products (recovered over the years); almost the entire B/X, BECMI, and Cyclopedia D&D lines; Original D&D; Judges Guild; Mystara; Greyhawk; Spelljammer; a smattering of miscellaneous other TSR AD&D settings; a slew of the other old TSR RPGs, from Conan and MSH to Boot Hill and Star Frontiers, plus everything from all five TSR/WotC Gamma World editions; HackMaster; Castles & Crusades; WHFRP; Unisystem; Lejendary Adventure; Dangerous Journeys; RuneQuest 2E and 3E; Powers & Perils; Role Aids and a whole shelf of early third party "D&D" products; Dragon mag complete back to #42; two shelves of various non-d20 RPGs, almost all just the "core" books; and a veritable ton of 3.0 and 3.5 D&D and d20/OGL products, including a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and most Necromancer Games, Green Ronin, and Conan RPG products. That's not including board games, card games, CCGs, and CMGs, and I'm sure, a bunch of individual RPGs I've forgotten to list.
I've considered a purge, recently, as I have a TON of stuff in storage now. Those CMGs and board games especially take up a TON of space... the thing is I almost always regret it in the end. Ah well...
The first one, unfortunately and foolishly, was voluntary. There was a brief time in my sophomore year of high school when I decided that D&D "wasn't cool" anymore, and wanted to go out and have a "real" social life. I sold off most of my stuff, and the stuff I kept I had because everyone else had it all already... DMG, PHB, MM, a few modules, dice, and so forth.
Less than six months later I wised up went back to D&D, and to my friends, and fortunately most of them were willing to re-sell me my stuff at the rate I'd sold it to them. However, in that time Judges Guild went under, and I was not able to recover my original Judges Guild books... the good stuff was already nigh impossible to find in stores... and I'd had almost a complete collection! It took the better part of two decades to rebuild that collection, at many times the original cost.
After that, though, I didn't really have a purge for many years. My collection grew to be quite prodigious, from 1984 to 1995, and included RPGs, board games, card games, and all sorts of other games, until it filled 12 shelving units each six-feet tall, plus an additional closet's worth of board games. And that didn't include the CCGs!
Unfortunately, in late 1995, I needed to move from Seattle to Indiana, and I was dead broke. So I ended up selling off half of the collection to finance the shipping of the other half! That purged away a lot of the non-D&D/AD&D fantasy stuff at the time, a lot of which is impossible to get today. Frankly, save from a collector's point of view, I don't really miss that stuff any more, as I hadn't played much of it in years, anyway.
So the rebuilding began again, until by 2002, the next big move (ironically, again from Seattle back to Indiana), I ended up with a similar situation, though this time I had merely eight shelving units rather than 12. Fortunately, I didn't need to sell off as much of the collection, but unfortunately, the collection was much, much tighter, so rather than fat, I ended up cutting a lot of meat and sometimes bone. I ended up selling off pretty much my entire AD&D 2E collection, my near-complete West End Games Star Wars collection, Mutant Chronicles, all my World of Darkness, Cyberpunk, GURPs (back to 1st Edition)... oh, the list goes on and on. I still dream of that collection...
After that move, financially, things kept getting worse, and I ended up regularly selling off pieces of the remaining collections piecemeal, $100 here, $500 there, until it got down to about $10,000 replacement value.
The upshot if it is that, if I had everything I'd ever owned games-wise in one location at once, it would have been a collection worth ~$60,000 replacement value. At most at once, it was worth ~$50,000. I've since bounced back; I'm not sure where my collection stands today, value wise, but I'd estimate at around ~$30,000 maybe. Today it includes 1E AD&D; most of the best 2E AD&D products (recovered over the years); almost the entire B/X, BECMI, and Cyclopedia D&D lines; Original D&D; Judges Guild; Mystara; Greyhawk; Spelljammer; a smattering of miscellaneous other TSR AD&D settings; a slew of the other old TSR RPGs, from Conan and MSH to Boot Hill and Star Frontiers, plus everything from all five TSR/WotC Gamma World editions; HackMaster; Castles & Crusades; WHFRP; Unisystem; Lejendary Adventure; Dangerous Journeys; RuneQuest 2E and 3E; Powers & Perils; Role Aids and a whole shelf of early third party "D&D" products; Dragon mag complete back to #42; two shelves of various non-d20 RPGs, almost all just the "core" books; and a veritable ton of 3.0 and 3.5 D&D and d20/OGL products, including a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and most Necromancer Games, Green Ronin, and Conan RPG products. That's not including board games, card games, CCGs, and CMGs, and I'm sure, a bunch of individual RPGs I've forgotten to list.
I've considered a purge, recently, as I have a TON of stuff in storage now. Those CMGs and board games especially take up a TON of space... the thing is I almost always regret it in the end. Ah well...
Thanks Mycanid! 
