The Collector's Quest

We're just talking about cutting back on mindlessly hunting auctions and opening those packages for 5 seconds of dopamine and talking about how to enjoy collecting more... without just buying endless amounts of more stuff.

Straight from the metaverse of clickable episode titles, we're ranking some of the most collectible consoles based on the quality of their libraries, price of games, value proposition, and how cool they are to collect. What's the best console to collect? The one you like and want to of course. But what's REALLY the best console to collect?? The ones WE say are!

Guys, it's finally happening. The bubble is bursting! By that, we mean average prices across the board are at all time highs BUT there are some games that have seen significant decreases this year. We're talking about the market and making our trademark incorrect guesses for the future.

Me and Johnny are both big Sega CD fans and collectors so we're talking about the US Sega CD set! All the fancy hardware, the most expensive and interesting games, and of course Working Designs: the expensive little pink badge games you're required to own because people tell you to.

We're talking about the games the prevent people from completing their sets or even the games that prevent people from trying to collect a set to begin with. From bona fide checklist-ruiners like Stadium Events to fuzzier games in other sets, we're determining what's worth complaining about and what isn't.

what.

We're talking about games that are hard to emulate, an aspect that makes something both a challenge to preserve and more valuable to physically own in your collection. It's everything from strange controls like a 720° arcade cabinet to peripherals like Steel Battalion to super modern consoles like PS5.

We're talking about different archetypes of game collectors from investors to hoarders to plain old nostalgia gamers. Make sure to slot yourself into a single group and argue about details in the comments! I'm just kidding, we don't really have comments to argue in.

We're looking back at some of the earliest games we could find that were called special editions, collector's editions, or limited editions to see when games stopped being media to deliver joy and started being junk to put on shelves. The earliest collector's edition is actually an ill researched and hard to define thing, so we're focusing on the older stuff in this episode!

Game collecting is rough. We're all quitting! Not really, but we're spending the episode talking about some of the challenges or just bad aspects of the hobby, like I don't know, how it can take over your entire life, your finances, and all your space.