I decided, for reasons of space and finances, to cull the collection a bit. I eventually marked 140 (including expansions) for sale, and sent the list off to a used game dealer. I know I'd get more if I sold them individually, but my time is not entirely valueless.
Some bad games are in the seven piles in my apartment, as are some very good ones. Aaaand then there are the mediocre ones. I used a few criteria to judge whether a game stayed or went away.
If I really liked the game, it obviously stayed. Also obvious: Selling off the games I hate. There weren't many of the latter. The real challenges were the ones I'd never played, or played a few times and thought "eh."
If I thought I'd never play it, and had it basically as an objet d'art, it went. See: This Hallowed Ground, the extremely huge and fairly complex game on a battle (Chickamauga) that doesn't excite me. But it's really huge! I can say to my buddies "Behold my huge game! This gives me many advantages in male dominance rituals!" It's gone.
A lot of games that other people like, but I think are...good, but a bit much, are on the pile. Most notably, Race for the Galaxy. I like it OK, but it doesn't do much for me. Why I bought the expansion, then, I'm not sure. They're both on the pile.
(I guess with Race, it pushes all the buttons that San Juan does, but with added bells and whistles that distract me, and reduce the number of players I can play it with. I can teach anyone San Juan, but Race comes with fairly intense charts and whatnot. No thanks. Go and Chess are my limit for reading strategy guides.)
Games that I think are good...but I have a lot of good games. When the heck was I going to play Antiquity? Nobody's ever asked, and I've never suggested it. Why would I, when I have a great many great games that I'd rather play/explain to people. Masons is...fine, I suppose. But why not a quick game of Thurn und Taxis?
Games I own for "academic purposes." At one point I decided that it was important that I own every single darned game on the Civil War. So I could write an article, I guess? My dirty little ACW secret is that I find vast stretches of the military side of the war totally uninteresting; WWI, WWII, and Ancients are my military history bag. (Bags?) This knocked out a number of games, most notably War Between the States. It's huge, I disagree fundamentally with its assumptions, and there are no fewer than seven ACW grand strategy games I'd rather play, because I actually like them. Plus it might get me some $. Easy call.
A less easy call: PitchCar. It's a good game. I like dexterity games, and racing games. There were two things working against it. First, it's not my favorite dex game--or my favorite racing game! (It is, however, my favorite combination of the two...) Second, and more important: I suck at it. If it's a game I congenitally suck at, it's gone.
Duplicates, and near-duplicates. I'm not sure why I have two copies of Lancashire Railways; soon enough I'll have one. Then there are the two games I call "Meet the New Boss; Worse than the Old Boss:" Domaine and Entdecker: New Horizons. Well, "worse" may be a stretch, but I can't see much improvement and Löwenherz and Entdecker 1.0 were formative gaming experiences...so I'll keep those versions.
A few things saved games that might otherwise go.
Small games tended to survive. First, they might not get noticed. I have basically no idea what's in my three shelves of "small games." Also, and this is really its own category...
Worthless games live in a sort of liminal state. Anybody up for some mediocre S&Ts from the early nineties without magazines? Anybody? They're worth about $3 on the open market, which means I might get $1 if I'm lucky. I could probably get $1 of value out of it. That said: I still put Tripoley on the pile, so I was willing to stretch this rule. I didn't think I'd get $1 out of it, I didn't want to donate it, and it pains me to throw games away...
I can't wait to see the eyes of the UPS Store people when I drive up with these. They know me as the "game guy," but nothing's prepared them for this.
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