You know you’re a Board Gamer when you start buying games. Not the occasional one at Christmas or a Birthday mind you, but I’m talking about that stage where you are looking at Thrift stores for lost gems, checking Ebay for deals, and looking at BoardGameGeek.com every day to see what auctions are up. There are people with over a thousand games in their collections, and I often see them bidding on a lot of things in auctions still. This brings me to my question for today:
How many is TOO many? I ask myself this all the time. How many games is a reasonable collection? I think each person has their own determination and there are a couple different ways to figure it out. I’m going to look at a few things I’ve noticed about collections and talk about how to keep your numbers at a reasonable level.
Space Restrictions: This might very well be the largest factor to consider. Do you have a big basement with rows of salvaged library shelves? If so, I guess a thousand isn’t too many. Do you live on a houseboat? Then maybe 5-10 is the right number. I live in an apartment in Arizona. The nice thing about Arizona apartments is that they have a coat closet right by the door. a COAT closet in Arizona, the least place in the world to wear a coat. Usually one closet gets designated for games and I try not to overflow it. If I can’t store them in the closet in an organized fashion, it’s too many.
Frequency of play: If you play every day, then you might need a ton of variety. If you play once a month, you might be able to got 3-4 games in during that evening, so having a collection of 40-50 games would give you a full year without repeats. And that’s assuming that you never play a game twice, which we know doesn’t happen. I game on average 5-6 times a month, not including the occasional game my wife and I will play together. Which brings me to my next point…..
Spousal support: does your SO play games with you? Do they think it’s a dumb hobby? If this is the case, I can almost guarantee that your collection is a little smaller than someone who has a partner that plays with them all the time. I’m lucky. My wife plays all the time with me and loves the hobby too. Even the In-Laws always have me bring games over; so I don’t get that weird look all the time that is usually associated with someone that has a ton of games.
Alright, that’s the gist of what I have. After all that my collection total is…….118. I just recently traded, sold and gave away a bunch of less played titles, and this is where I am. This also includes any expansions or add-ons for base games, so my real total for games is right around 100. This is a good number for me and I generally try to keep it right in this range. I continually get rid of titles that don’t get any play, or that my good friends have copies of. I recently got rid of all the “basics” like Monopoly, Clue, Sorry! Life and the like. Not because I think they’re bad (well, not most of them) but because why should I fill up my space with them if three other people I game with all the time have the exact games as well. They can bring over their copy if we really feel like playing. And, if sometime in the future, I really want to play Clue. There’s a Goodwill Store across the road that I’m sure has a copy for 1.99 right now.
I’m not really sure how useful or interesting this article was, but I think it’s a good question to ask yourself, and it’s good to evaluate which games are being played and which are merely taking up space that a new truly amazing game could have instead.
