Most people’s game collections don’t consist simply of games.
You may have read that sentence and thought that is obvious, those col- lections include things like consoles and controllers too, but that’s also not what I was to.
Instead, I’m referring to the trinkets, figures, books, cards, blankets, wall art, and many other things that we often use to decorate the space where us collec- tors keep our games.
There has been an explosion of col- lectibles in the past few years pertain- ing to retro gaming. Stores like Target, Walmart and Gamestop now have areas nearly as large as their video game selection dedicated to trinkets that celebrate arcade and console games of the past. Super Mario Bros and Zelda still have a modern gaming footprint, so celebrating their heritage seems like a natural extension of their popular- ity today, but it is nearly as easy to find things celebrating games like Asteroids, Q*Bert, Centipede and Dig Dug.
Of course, the point of Game & Market Watch isn’t just to discuss what you can find, but to think critically about what might happen with the market for these items in the future. To that end, I expect that the answer is for the most part, not much.
Besides video games, I have been carefully curating my own action figure collection since I was young. The first figure I remember getting was a Peter Venkman from the Real Ghostbusters series. I truly remember debating what todowithit.DoIopenittoplaywithit, or do I keep it sealed in its box?
I blame (or credit) my thoughts at that age on my father, who had started a Star Wars collection in the early 80s. The majority of my father’s collection when I was young was not sealed, and was found at neighborhood rummage sales. I would often tag along with him
looking for Atari 2600 cartridges, and he would look for Star Wars toys. Later, I added Ghostbusters figures to what I was hunting, but for now I’m just going to focus on Star Wars toys.
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