Old-School Game Collection - A Buyer's Guide (maybe-kinda-sorta) Part 1

Yo, what up hip cats?! So I be hearin' you wantz to START a collection of da best gamez. We bee helpin' u know what ya best be lookin' fer dawgz!!!!! -- Kieran

and i will be here to add comments and keep this from going to  memes -- Graeme

Graeme's a liar. He'll be the first one of us to start posting memes, but I digress. So let's dive in shall we? -- Kieran

ya lez do it home skillet--Graeme

That sounds awful. Scissor me timbers? -- Lacey

Now, the interested among you are probably wondering, "How do I go about building a collection? Where do I start?" Honestly, there is no set place to start from. The first step is to pick your console of choice (be it the NES, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, etc.), pick a few games along with it - the "essentials" if you will - and you can build from there. -- Kieran

If you are considering starting a collection you probably already have a console that's just lying around and I would say that this would be the place to start as it will be low cost but if your heart set on an old console i would start with an n64-- Graeme

Another aspect you may want to consider is to ask yourself, "For what purpose am I collecting?" Are you after owning? Playing? Reselling? This factor will help you to determine in what condition the products you buy should be in. For example, if you just want to play the damn game, you're probably not gonna shell out $150 for a copy of 'Secret of Mana' in it's original packaging. Bargain bins and flea market shopping are often a cheap way to make some fun discoveries and acquire those beloved gems of your collection. -- Kieran

To add to that topic do you need to have your games rated if so be prepared to shell out big bucks for those cases-- Graeme

A valid point, once you get a game graded, be prepared to NEVER PLAY IT EVER. Grading is pretty much a pointless process to send away for, since there are dozens of guides on the wide world of the internet on how to assess a game's condition yourself (ie. http://www.vgquality.com/grade.asp). As a collector in my own right, I feel that the grading process is unimportant and that a game's value should be in the experience of the game itself. -- Kieran

I like trains. -- Lacey

wow really Lacey  anyway as someone who actually owns graded games I can say that buying a graded game is almost useless, but it helps the resale of the game to those how only buy graded games -- Graeme

Graeme no can grammar/punctuation. Anyway we'll continue this in a future post so stay tuned friends! -- Kieran

TO BE CONTINUED...