Yeah, I agree we who started later are paying more, but that seems a bit too much, even for the condition.  At least for me.  While affording it is possible, I just cannot justify it.

I look at any item over a few 100 dollars as not only a collectible for my overall collection, but for that money, it has to have investment potential.

I am willing to bet most of us buying right now are in that late 30s to early 50s age range, and we are buying back our youth or fond gaming memories.

In 10-15 years, when many of us may think of selling off the collections, will the next generation care?  Most of the buyers then will not have even been born till the 90s, and most will never have played the early games.  While a few really rare items might maintain value just for being rare and no interest in the game will be needed, a large number of these books will likely collapse in value.  Sadly I think the next few years will see the peak of values for many but the rarest items.

I could be wrong, but having collected many kinds of items in my life, I have noticed that markets can crash when the pool of buyers suddenly dries up.  If nobody wants it, then it has no value.  As with anything old, a few will still collect them, and hopefully a few will pass on the interest in these older games to their kids who will either inherit and cherish the collections and maybe seek to complete them, but will it be enough to maintain a market that is now getting almost bubble like.

Guess that for me, I will spend a good sum to have an item, but even if worth it now, I will not go too far on an item as there is a good chance it will not have same value when I seek to retire and possible start downsizing.

Just my 3.14 cents worth.

WyvernLord wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:Yeah, I agree we who started later are paying more, but that seems a bit too much, even for the condition.  At least for me.  While affording it is possible, I just cannot justify it.

I look at any item over a few 100 dollars as not only a collectible for my overall collection, but for that money, it has to have investment potential.

I am willing to bet most of us buying right now are in that late 30s to early 50s age range, and we are buying back our youth or fond gaming memories.

In 10-15 years, when many of us may think of selling off the collections, will the next generation care?  Most of the buyers then will not have even been born till the 90s, and most will never have played the early games.  While a few really rare items might maintain value just for being rare and no interest in the game will be needed, a large number of these books will likely collapse in value.  Sadly I think the next few years will see the peak of values for many but the rarest items.

I could be wrong, but having collected many kinds of items in my life, I have noticed that markets can crash when the pool of buyers suddenly dries up.  If nobody wants it, then it has no value.  As with anything old, a few will still collect them, and hopefully a few will pass on the interest in these older games to their kids who will either inherit and cherish the collections and maybe seek to complete them, but will it be enough to maintain a market that is now getting almost bubble like.

Guess that for me, I will spend a good sum to have an item, but even if worth it now, I will not go too far on an item as there is a good chance it will not have same value when I seek to retire and possible start downsizing.

Just my 3.14 cents worth.

I agree with you entirely.  Personally, I collect D&D not as an investment, but because I love the game and I want to not only remember the "good old days", but I also want to preserve as much from them as possible.  To paraphrase the great Indiana Jones ...

That auction makes me want to put up the 3rd print woodgrain I just picked up and see if the crazies come out again...

Like many others, I had a small collection in my teens, stopped playing for awhile, had kids, then returned to gaming later (I played throughout the lean years but very infrequently).  

When I returned to playing, I wanted to "complete" my collection... little did I know that the "complete" line can be drawn in a million different ways.  So, once I decided what complete was to me, I begin acquiring that which I did not have, first for playing then for collecting.  Once I got past the low end items, I realized I had reached a point where I had to decide to continue (by paying more for rarer items) or call it a day with the collection.  

Well, I decided to continue.  I've purchased items at higher costs because there are fewer available now than when other collectors started getting them 20+ years ago (don't even get me started on OB3s).  I've had to pay more than I should for a handful of pages, but that's the state of the hobby.  Once I made the decision to get "everything" on my list, I went after them until only 1 book remained on the TSR list.  And that's where I currently stand.

Luckily, I have other "secondary" lists (my wife hates hearing about these) with much lower priced items.  So, still a lot of ground to cover but the heavy investment is already sunk (sans one lone item).

~throwi

MadCatUSA wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:

WyvernLord wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I am willing to bet most of us buying right now are in that late 30s to early 50s age range, and we are buying back our youth or fond gaming memories.

GUILTY! Just turned 50 this year. Started an AD&D club in my school when I was a Freshman in High School around 1980-81. Stopped playing for a long while after my son was born (1990) and picked it up again with D&D 3.5e. Started collecting seriously about a year or two ago.

This has been happening in toy, baseball card, etc, collecting for quite some time.  Once people are older and more established (have more disposable income) they begin buying favorite items from their childhood.  I started with AD&D in '84.  I didn't know the back history of TSR or all the cool stuff that came before the current edition I was playing (or how close Lake Geneva was to Milwaukee   ).

So this is a grand adventure.  Learning about the hobby I still love and that there is a lot out there to buy!  I used to dream about finding cases of Mego figures from the '70's.  Now I dream about hand assembled brown boxes, or cases of modules long forgotten!  

ibm_ted wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I have a theory - and I believe this theory could be bolstered by checking to see if the sale *actually* went through successfully or simply fell flat.

I think the auction was a BIN/Best Offer and not a traditional auction with a 5 day duration or something..like the seller's other auctions. But that brings up a good point whether the sale went through or not.

muaddib5 wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I'm interested as to what other members grading would be on this set.  I already have a grading in mind that I would assign it.

I would grade it as POOR and if I were being generous, FAIR. There's a lot of staining on the front label, there is a LOT of shelf wear on the back and sides, the top doesn't appear to be dished in, but hard to tell from the photos, one corner has clearly parted company with it's neighbors, so... Yeah...

MadCatUSA wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:

muaddib5 wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I'm interested as to what other members grading would be on this set.  I already have a grading in mind that I would assign it.

I would grade it as POOR and if I were being generous, FAIR. There's a lot of staining on the front label, there is a LOT of shelf wear on the back and sides, the top doesn't appear to be dished in, but hard to tell from the photos, one corner has clearly parted company with it's neighbors, so... Yeah...

Without seeing the contents, I'd probably go with 'fair' for the box.  The box is intact (albeit, has some splitting on the edges) and the stickers are intact and present (while being discolored, some water staining, and a small bit of peeling).

Edit:  After reading about the booklets, I'd still stick with 'fair' overall.  I typically reserve 'poor' for items that are simply wrecked (i.e. crushed boxes, large tears and/or missing pages, etc...).

ibm_ted wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:Without seeing the contents, I'd probably go with 'fair' for the box.  The box is intact (albeit, has some splitting on the edges) and the stickers are intact and present (while being discolored, some water staining, and a small bit of peeling).  Edit:  After reading about the booklets, I'd still stick with 'fair' overall.  I typically reserve 'poor' for items that are simply wrecked (i.e. crushed boxes, large tears and/or missing pages, etc...).

Good points. I'll use that in the future when looking at grading items. I do tend to be a bit harsh on my grading sometimes.