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Monday, November 21, 2011

The Demise of My Original Collection

At one time I had a massive collection of RPG and gaming material in general.  It all started with the Holmes Basic D&D that my uncle David gave to me in 1980.  He had been out of gaming for quite some time but wanted to give his books to someone that would use them.  After I established my interest he also gave me all of his AD&D hardbacks - PHB, DMG, DMG, and DDG with the Cthulhu & Elric gods in it.  That turned out to be just the start of my collection.

I started buying up new games and editions with my allowance, birthday, and Christmas money that I received during my teenage years.  The list of items that I added to my collection included:

AD&D

  •  1st edition PHB, DMG, & MM with the new covers.
  • Oriental Adventures
  • Unearthed Arcana
  • Monster Manual II
  • several modules
  • character sheets
  • DM screen
Basic D&D (all forms)

  • Orange Box 
  • BECMI
  • D&D Rules Cyclopedia
  • character sheets
  • DM screen
Steve Jackson Games


  • GURPS 1st edition box
  • Man to Man
  • GURPS Fantasy
  • GURPS Cyberpunk
  • GURPS Supers
  • Car Wars
  • Car Wars Truck Stop
  • Ogre
  • GEV
  • Shockwave
  • Deluxe Ogre
  • Illuminati
  • Illuminati expansion 1
  • One Page Bulge
  • Necromancer
Assorted Stuff

  • Star Frontiers
  • Robotech
  • Palladium Fantasy (original black book)
  • Marvel Basic
  • Marvel Advanced
  • Gamma World 1st edition
  • Gamma World 3rd edition
  • Fifth Cycle
  • V&V 2nd edition
  • several V&V modules, Most Wanted, etc.
  • Champions 3rd edition
  • Champions 4th edition
  • several Champions supplements such as enemies, enemies 2, etc.
  • Traveller starter set
  • Talislanta 2nd edition
  • Talislanta 3rd edition
  • Middle Earth Role Playing
  • DC Heroes 1st edition
  • Super Squadron
  • The Arduin Adventure
That's all I can honestly remember at the moment.  The point is that it was quite a collection for a teenager. We did actually play all of this at one time or another.  Of course, some items got more use than others.

So, what happened to all of this stuff?  That's a good question.  I know some of it was left in the care of one of the other players so the campaigns for those games could continue.  The rest was left at my parents house.  The best I have been able to determine is that many of these items were either "loaned out" or "borrowed" never to be returned again.  I do miss some of this stuff quite a bit and I would definitely like to re-acquire it.  I'm sure most of it is either too pricey or people are unwilling to part with their copy.  The items I would really want are the AD&D hardbacks, Palladium Fantasy black book, Champions 4th, and the Arduin Adventure.

My collection is pretty lean these days.  If I don't use it, I generally get rid of it.  I know there are retroclones of the D&D/AD&D stuff but I would like to have the originals.  Oh well, lesson learned.



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3 comments:

  1. NecropraxisNovember 21, 2011 at 3:57 PM

    The AD&D hardbacks are surprisingly cheap on Ebay right now. I also used to have a pretty large collection as a teenager, though it was during the 90s so was dominantly 2nd edition books (though I had quite a few AD&D books too). I think I sold most of them before I went to university, and have been slowly reacquiring the really good ones since I got back into the hobby recently.

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  2. Charlie WarrenNovember 21, 2011 at 4:02 PM

    That's cool. I admit that I haven't check Ebay in quite some time. The last time I checked the AD&D hardbacks were a little more than I wanted to pay. I figured they would have shot up in price since the passing of Gary. The good thing about reacquiring them now with full hindsight is the ability to truly discern the good from the bad.

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  3. Timothy S. BrannanApril 2, 2012 at 2:06 PM

    I lost a lot of my 1st Ed and Basic collection much the same way.

    I have spent the last few years rebuilding it all.

    ReplyDelete