Tuesday, August 24, 2010

I'm A Wealthy, Wealthy Man ...


If the Troll And Toad webstore is to be believed, that is. According to the prices on their website, my metagaming and microgame collection is worth several thousand dollars.

To wit:

Ogre ... $70
Chitin:I ... $40
Melee ... $80
Warp War ... $20
Rivets ... $35
Wizard ... $55
Olympica ... $20
G.E.V. ... $30

And on and on and on it goes. Based on the prices Troll And Toad is quoting for those metagaming titles, i've made anywhere from a 5 to 10% annualized return on each of the items in my microgame collection over the last 30 years. Not a bad little investment!

Sadly, after checking out eBay, I've discovered that a punched version of Ogre went for only $16 at auction, rather than the $70 that Troll And Toad is asking. There go my dreams of selling my microgame collection, buying one of the Thousand Islands, and retiring in style.

17 comments:

The_Myth said...

And a store's buy price is often less than half of their sale price.

That's why ebay is often a better way to sell.

Padre said...

Great post, do you own Trojan War? I have some fond memories of playing that micro-game in high school

Daddy Grognard said...

Spare a copper piece, guv'nor?

Aaron E. Steele said...

@The_Myth: i'm unlikely to sell, as these have far more nostalgia value than dollar value, plus, it's fun to take these gmaes out for a whirl now and then.

@Padre: I'm missing several games (Hitlers War, Trojan War, and several others) that were (1) too expensive for me, back in the day, and (2) were outside of my interests of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Was Trojan War a good game?

Aaron E. Steele said...

@Daddy: considering that my retirement plan has suddenly come crashing down around my ears, would you settle for an iron piece?

Jim said...

Drool...

Aaron E. Steele said...

It is a nice collection. I broke it out about a year ago, and have played several games with my kids.

christian said...

My brother in law is a vet in the Thousand Islands!

Love that pic. You have an awesome collection!

ze bulette said...

I don't suppose I just bid against you on Hitler's War by any chance? :)

Aaron E. Steele said...

@Christian: On one of the islands, or just the general area?

@ZeBulette: Nope. I have my eye on a copy at my FLGS, I don't do much trade with eBay, what with all the BuyItNow and resellers nonsense.

Sean Robson said...

Drool... You may not be a wealthy, wealthy man, but you are a lucky, lucky man. I love Metagaming's microgames and I jealously covet your collection. I used to have a lot of those, but not as many as you.

Aaron E. Steele said...

I love the whole microgame ethic ... you've got to pack a lot of gaming goodness into a small package.

This may be why I love the retroclones, its the same philosophy.

It's a great collection. Sadly, I never collected the dwarfstar games, which had a very high production standard. Many of them were too complicated, mind you, but the games themselves were the gold standard for production values.

Scallop Skulled Skald said...

It's like that old joke:

Potentially, you're sitting on a grand.

Actually, you've got some really sweet bundles of cardboard and paper.

Aaron E. Steele said...

Too true.

Anonymous said...

Nice collection!

If Noble Knight is to be believed, I'm sitting on thousands of dollars of minis. Dealer's prices are not appraisals, sadly.

Aaron E. Steele said...

:D

Question is, are people really paying the princes resellers are quoting?

Skydyr said...

I've noticed that every time I've gone looking for something, it's been relatively easy to find a copy for half or less of the asking price of places like Troll and Toad. Often more like a fifth of the price.