my journey with collecting physical media.
Collecting physical media has been a passion of mine for years at this point. I wanted to kinda reflect on my journey with collecting physical media, where I started, where I am now, and how I got there.
from humble beginnings.
For most of my life "collecting physical media" was kinda the default. I come from a period of time pre-netflix, pre-XBOX game pass, etc. If you wanted to play a movie or game, you went to either rent it from blockbuster or you bought it from a dvd/game store. MP3s were in heavy use though thanks to iTunes. So CDs around this time were being slowly phased out. For the most part though, I grew up with VHS,DVD, and CD. I remember my parents and god-parents (who we were living with at the time) having Iron Maiden albums in their glove compartment1.
Collecting physical media as a hobby wasn't really a thing, that would have been like calling having a spotify subscription a hobby. It's just what everyone did out of necessity.
Most of my childhood, I would buy and trade in-games for credit at GameStop. However, some games I always kept because they were my favorites. I've traded in TONS of games, because well I was like ages 6-14. I couldn't get a job to just buy it, and my parent's would only buy a game if it was for Christmas. So, if I wanted Halo: Reach on launch, then I had to trade in some games. These were my dark ages.
This was also around the time buying games digitally was becoming more mainstream thanks to the advent of the XBOX 360 Marketplace. This was mostly for games that DIDN'T have box art.
When I got a bit older, I got into PC gaming, up until my first computer fucking died. So, that meant mostly buying digitally. I was accustomed to buying because of the 360, so I just kept with that. I had quite a few games at this point, and I'm not sure how I ended up buying them, I think it was because of getting Steam gift cards from family. My PC died within about a year, and I had no clue as to why exactly. The last thing I remember was playing Saints Row 3, and I downloaded this save modding tool. I'm pretty sure that's what killed it. So, I went back to just playing on my 360.
I still got physical games around this point, just not as much. I remember getting a brand new XBOX ONE and Halo: The Master Chief Collection from my uncle on Christmas circa 2013. At this point, I was basically exclusively buying games digitally. However, I stopped trading in games at this point. I just kept whatever I got.
This sort of setup was what I had for a while. The only physical games I had were some "gotta-hold-onto" 360 games (primarily my copy of Halo 3 my dad had bought me, and my pre-order copy of Halo: Reach). I think I had a PS3 at this point too? I vaguely remember having it.
There were some games where it was cheaper to buy physically, so that was my go-to. I don't think I dove into the retro stores yet, so my main source for games was GameStop. However, I wasn't consciously collecting, I wasn't buying these games with the intention of collecting them long term.
When I moved to Idaho circa 2019, this was when I started to see these retro gaming channels. I saw their impressive collection of games and thought "hey, I kinda wanna do this!" I was burned out with most modern AAA games, so I thought that maybe retro was the way to go. I started with mostly my childhood games, I would buy them and play them on my PS3 since it was fully backwards compatible with PS1 games. It was slow at first, I had to account for not having much space.
I had gotten back into PC gaming for a time during the Pandemic. I had bought a ton of games for that. Loved it. I started to get really into computers, slowly upgrading it over time.
However, It wasn't until my wife and I got our second apartment in 2021 that game collecting really took off.
the serious collector.
Once my wife and I had moved into our second apartment, granting us much more space. I decided to buy a gamecube, I had really gotten into Metal Gear Solid because of 5 and having beat 3 some time back. I had gotten Animal Crossing and The Twin Snakes. I then bought a PS2 some time after to play some more childhood games. It was a great time and I had a decent amount of disposable income.
I remember for my birthday one year, my wife bought me my favorite console. It was a translucent green, Halo Special Edition, original XBOX. I was ecstatic. I had gotten quite a few games for it: Halo 1 & 2 of course, Fable, and Munch's Oddysee.
I was amassing quite a collection, but I was getting to a point where I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I wasn't making enough money. I fell into the pit of the productivity/hustle bros on Youtube.
the regression.
At this point, I had fallen into a trap. I got ensnared by a certain men's influencer who basically tried to drill into my mind that games were basically for losers. It was that sort of hustle culture shit that I was drawn to in order to make something of myself for my wife.
When I started selling my games, my wife was really puzzled, even tried talking me out of it, but my mind was made up. I said goodbye to my gamecube, and my gamecube games, and my Halo Edition OGXBOX, and it's games. I just kept some 360 games and my 360 for old times sake, and that was it.
I got depressed for a while after this. After some time of being "game free", I felt like the whole thing was pointless. I wasn't any closer to being this hustle bro. I was trying to be really productive as a programmer, and it wasn't really working out.
Yeah I was more "productive", but I wasn't happy. I was happy when I had my collection and was playing amazing games. I was excited to add some new classic to my shelf.
I had gone some time without having touched games, or if I did I kept it to an hour. So, I finally went back to playing for longer. I started to get invested in my games again, loving it.
the return.
I returned to collecting again, but now I had to work back what I had sold off. I felt like such a dunce for selling it, and regard it as one of the many times I should have listened to my wife.
I slowly added back items, bit by bit. I had sold most of my consoles too, so I had to work to get those back. I felt like such an idiot for letting some Youtube douche in a robe talk me out of my favorite pastime.
I was starting to get into the online detox movement around 2023; After YouTube had basically blocked tens of thousands of songs from being listened to because of some licensing dispute and having songs on spotify kept changing/removing songs I decided "fuck this, I'm going offline". So I bought an iPod and my first CD.
from games to music.
I was at a point where I was seeing a lot of videos about iPods, so I had bought 3 in a bundle from some guy on Facebook Marketplace.
Saviors was the first CD I had ever bought for myself. I had mostly been using MP3 downloaders at the time, but I was starting to romanticize in my head the idea of having physical CDs. I had just heard "The American Dream is Killing Me" by Green Day the day it had dropped, which resurged my love for the band. I decided the first CD I was gonna get was going to be Saviors.
I actually remembered not really caring for the album. I think I had expected American Idiot 2.0, but that is an INCREDIBLY high bar to set. Over time though the album grew on me. I then saw green day was going on tour, so my pregnant wife, my mother-in-law, and I all made the plan to see them live.
I had marked 2024 as my personal "Year of Music", in which I would try and experience more new music. I started getting into artists I'd never thought I would have and hearing my new favorite songs. I got more into Green Day, found MF DOOM's discography, much more. I had entered a new golden age for my personal collecting.
I still bought games, but music was becoming a major passion of mine again. I was spending more money on CDs than games at this point. However, now with my wife being pregnant, I had a secondary reason for building up my collection. It was all for my daughter.
I had started to get into Vinyl records at this point too. I bought the American Idiot box set on vinyl, and talked with my audiophile step-dad about a good setup. I had a nice, but modest, setup starting out, but the box set wasn't supposed to come until another couple months. So I went and got my actual first record, MF DOOM's MM.. FOOD 20th anniversary edition. I get nostalgic whenever I put this album on. It was my first afterall. I love the art design on the vinyl sleeve, just oozes charm. I've listened to the C Side more times than I can count ".. Love is war but some chicks are just too hard to wife."2
now.
I don't collect as quickly as I did before my daughter was born. However I do shop more used items for cost reasons. When I do buy something, there's a lot of thought put into it.
I've gotten really into vinyls, and they serve a special bond for me because my little girl loves when I put them on and we dance together. That alone makes these giant discs worth it.
Vinyl is my favorite method for collecting music. It comes with a higher premium and higher maintenance, but I love it. I compare CDs and Vinyl's like this, "CDs are for music, Vinyl is for appreciating art as an experience". CDs are great for lossless quality, convenience, and a little bit of intentional listening, but it doesn't beat vinyl for me. I may have to write an article about why I prefer vinyls, because there's too much to say here in this post.
I have a pattern now for when I delve into what medium. I will generally just download an MP3 to test out new music. If I like the album, I'll buy it on CD. If it's an all-time favorite, I will buy it on vinyl. If I want some novelty, I will get it on cassette.
I also have a small collection of books, I like the physicality of them. I'm not really big on reading digitally. I have a shelf dedicated to my favorite books. Neuromancer, the Road, some philosophy books, the BONE graphic novel, etc. Maybe if I get a cheap kindle or something I will get into it more, but for now I just like reading physical books.
DVDs became a bigger, but lesser-priority, medium for collecting. I have a couple DVDs of my favorite movies, but I mostly will sail the seven seas for blu-ray/4k UHD movies. For me, DVDs have a lot more heart in them, often with added special features or whatever. Some even come with games. I remember playing these DVD games a ton as a child. I've been slowly getting my favorite movies on DVD and watching them on my CRT.
Fun fact: If you get a modern DVD, you CAN play it on a CRT television. It's actually really interesting. The Batman on CRT is a vibe that I can't describe, it's gives the same vibes as watching The Crow.
I've noticed that a lot of the enjoyment I get out of physical media is the romanticization in the process. It's maybe another reason as to why I love vinyls and physical books so much, the analogue nature of it just makes itself naturally romantic in a way.
I've largely slowed on collecting games. While I still do it, and add the one-off here and there, I mostly collect the consoles. I don't like emulation, but found a solid middle ground between the cost effectiveness of emulation and the experience of playing on physical hardware. I would buy a console and then mod it and get the files online and back up my physical games.
I'll sometimes buy for the novelty. I have a VHS player and a Cassette player for this reason. Despite being objectively the worst medium for music and movies, there's a sort of charm to it that I can't quite describe.
My collection is bigger now than it was even in my first golden age. 2 full bookshelves of physical media and tons of digitally archived media. The collection keeps growing, and I love it.
It's bittersweet actually, because I look back at where I started and almost, almost, want to sell most of it and start over. There's a certain enjoyment in going into physical stores and looking through it like finding a buried treasure, that's how I ended up finding some of my favorite pieces in my collection.
I love my collection, and will continue to keep growing it for the foreseeable future.
Pirate is wearingall-black converse, a baggy pair light-blue levi 501s, and a red hoodie
Pirate is feeling very... very stoned
Pirate is listening to Smile Dog | CreepCast
Pirate is going to go to a little family gathering later today.
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