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.
Running Linux used to be a hobby of mine. But nowadays it’s so easy and problem-free, it’s just my OS.
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.
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”
Magic: The Gathering.
As soon as they made a rule that you can’t have a deck of 30 Black Lotused and 30 Fireballs, I just gave up. What’s the point if I can’t have fun?
And now they expect you to shower as well
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”
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.
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
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 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.
