From Player to Collector

Building a video game collection has been quite an adventure. I’ve been at it for 14 years now, starting with NES, SNES, and Genesis… before course-correcting to other consoles later on, like the original PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, and the original Xbox.

14 years ago at this time, I was turning 40 and preparing to re-enter college after years of retail and entertainment work. I was at a low point in my professional life, and money was tight. As a result of being disappointed with then-modern console video games, I traded a considerable number of games in and used the store credit to begin building a library. I went on to a career in education in 2016, and was able to expand my collection as money came in.

I’ve gone from living in a relatively small bedroom, to a small apartment in 2020, to buying a house in 2025. My collection has gone from being a few dozen games in the fall of 2012 to more than 3,500 games in 2026. I’ve also gone from being a college student in 2012 to a 50-hour full-time salaried job in 2026… and free time, as it often does when you’re an adult, has dried up. Not that I’m always running, but it’s more about dividing what time there is among the different things I need and want to do.

Having “too many games” is absolutely a great problem to have. I’m certainly proud of the collection I’ve built. But time to play them? There’s a reality that I denied for a long time up until recently: I have a ton of games I may never get around to playing… and I wound up transitioning from video game player to video game collector.

I resisted that classification for years, as my collection grew. I kept telling myself that I was going to at least try each game I bought. And, for the first few years, I did just that. Some games would get more play than others, but they all got played a little bit. Then dozens of games became hundreds, and hundreds became thousands– and I was unable to keep up with playing them all. Collecting took precedence, as I was finding deals and finding games in bulk. I was also getting games for my Unsealed series on YouTube, sealed games that I opened but rarely got around to playing.

I’ve finally accepted that I am a video game collector first — at least for now. Sure, I still spend a few hours a week playing video games, an hour after work here and a couple of hours on a Sunday while catching up on laundry… but I spend a fair amount of time cruising into video game stores and seeing what might be new to their inventories that I don’t yet have. I peruse eBay. I look at a few online video game stores. The chase is still fun after all of these years, and I’ve even been thinking about (re?) adding a new platform or two to collect for this year.

Assuredly, the chase will slow down at some point. Even with the new house, space to store and display games is finite. There will come a time when I start catching up on playing the games I own. I’ll move back to player mode. In either case, I’m enjoying my free time and it’s video game-centric, just like I’ve always wanted it to be.