Managing your collection

by Caroline Black

Moving house made me acutely aware I had too many possession. And that included, of course, having too many board games. Possessions weigh you down. They need storing. Looking after. Dusting. You have to keep them dry and secure. You probably insure them. And if you move it’s expensive to transport them. You might even worry about what will happen to them when you die.

During our lives we collect more and more possessions. We start off with nothing but slowly build a bedroom full whilst we are children. This then increases as we buy or rent our own place. If you then move on to a bigger place your possessions will multiply to fill up the extra space.

I’m an expert in moving. I did it several times as a child including moving from the U.K. to Singapore and back. We sent our stuff in a shipping container which arrived six weeks after we did. Inevitably things got broken.



Board games are a nightmare to move and store. They’re bulky. They are quite delicate. They are full of air. I decanted all my expansions into my games to make the move easier. I’ve read stories of people transporting their games themselves, in the car, rather than trusting them to removal men. I think I was pretty lucky that my collection escaped unscathed.



With this in mind I have continued to sell stuff on Facebook sales. I’ve sold practically everything I intended to sell except one chair. This remains in the outhouse and is in fact, at the moment, useful as I haven’t bought chairs for my table yet. I did have to dump a couple of bar stools. But otherwise I have donated or sold everything. Not that it’s been an easy process. For every item I’ve sold I replied to dozens of time wasting messages. Still at least it’s free although most stuff has sold for a fraction of its value.

I’ve moved on to selling stuff that might conceivably be useful one day. I listed Tigger’s carrying crate today. Poor old Tigger. Run over just before his third birthday but living on as my avatar. I thinking a selling my “spare” mower. It’s too big for this garden. I might sell my Dad’s tools.



I’ve sold or given away 106 board games. I started off on eBay but most of the recent sales have been on BGG. I sold three at Handycon at the weekend. Most possessions loose most of their value as soon as you buy them. Clothes, unless they are designer, retain very little of their value. I’ve been buying pre-owned Blu-rays for a little as 50p.



As some of you might know I am an Insolvency adviser. It never ceases to amaze me how people in debt have very little to show for it. New cars in particular lose a lot of their value as soon as you dive them out the show room. Default of the payments a few months later and you will have a shortfall debt.

Board games are difficult to value. Out of print games can go for a lot. My out of print copy of Ginkgopolis was probably worth a bit before they reprinted it. Kickstarter’s have to be sold quickly whist they are still fulfilling.



I’ve not seen board game cafes offering to buy games in return for store credits like they do in America. It makes you wonder how you would get rid of games in bulk? Selling on BGG and eBay is very time consuming. Like Facebook sales, most geek mail messages amount to nothing. I bet there are a lot of wives and partners wondering what on earth they will do with their other half’s board game collection when they die.

Once of my most thumbed posts is the one about the Dragon’s hoard. A massive collection of mainly new in shrink games and Kickstarters that was sold by the collector’s widow to the Dice Tower.

Dragon’s Horde

Jez and I vaguely discussed buying up deceased collections and then selling them piece meal. On the face of it, it’s seems to make good business sense. Buy the games for a few quid and then sell them for double or triple. But the problem is, there are some games you can’t even give away. As usual storage is a problem. But then I have a dry and well insulated out house we could store them in. Still it seems like a lot of faff. Checking all those games, pricing them, listing them and then packaging them up if they sell. I think it would suck the fun out of the hobby pretty quickly. Nevertheless I read on Board Game Trading and Chat this morning that someone’s set up a business buying up collections and doing just that. I hope it takes off. Sometimes gamers will need to sell up quickly and this could provide a good service.

Luckily Board games do keep some of their value. Interestingly Lego can massively increase in value, although again, if sets are reprinted they fall in value overnight. Unmatched: Bruce Lee is an example of a game that will only keep increasing due to publisher losing the rights to the IP.



I think some people are more collectors than players. It’s interesting because now you can collecting things digitally. You can have a collection of thousands of music tracks on your phone. And these won’t take up any room in your house. But there is still something really satisfying about owning physical things, that you can pick up and touch. The tactile nature of games is very important to me. Some games, like the Unmatched series, do seem to have been designed with collectors in mind. The obvious one being Magic: The Gathering.

For me, I think with any collection, if you can’t display it elegantly, then it’s too big. Once it’s hidden away in boxes and never sees the light, then it becomes a bit pointless.


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