Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Jan Jaap van Poelgeest aka nevermelt jjp@******.nl
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 00:47:25 +0200
> There already sort of is. There aren't that many that have gone out of
> print all together or were run in very limited print runs but those
few
> can be quite valuable. For example last I heard a mint condition copy
of
> the AD&D Deities and Demigods from the first printing (the one that
had
> the Cthullu and Menlebonian Mythos in it) was worth over $200 and
there
> are a few others I have heard of as selling at auction for more than
the
> original list price. Also I'm Sure BABY's are going for a pretty good
> price on E-Bay.

Hey, UB and Harlequin can run up to $40-50 each on Ebay, as well as that
it isn't unheard of that several of the older (and more interesting) OOP
sourcebooks (paranormal animals, TirTang, some others) sometimes hit the
$30 mark.
The oddest SR item with a more than 100% over listprice markup I saw was
the Sprawl Maps one, though. It's hardly ever offered, which often
results in heated bidding and this particular one ended up at $40, IIRC,
which I found rather amusing as I had snapped one up from a local gaming
store's bargain bin for $5 just a week before. Anyway, what this shows
is that in less than 10 years some SR books have already doubled in
value, which isn't a bad return on your investment at all.... :)

Basically all you need for RPG items to become valuable is a good (or
well-marketed ;) RPG: this will result in lots of people playing the
game for a long time, among them a certain amount of collectors (and as
pack rat types seem to be attracted to RPG's this number will be high :)
this will result in out of print items from the genesis of the game
being demanded by the new collectors who are continuously attracted to
the "good RPG" which is where the good ol' mar-ket meg-a-neezm takes
over.


Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, Perpetually Searching For A Cheap UB To Snap Up
Message no. 2
From: Simon and Fiona sfuller@******.com.au
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 10:16:16 +1000
-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Jaap van Poelgeest aka nevermelt <jjp@******.nl>
To: shadowrn@*********.com <shadowrn@*********.com>
Date: Monday, June 26, 2000 8:41 AM
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
>
>Hey, UB and Harlequin can run up to $40-50 each on Ebay, as well as that
>it isn't unheard of that several of the older (and more interesting) OOP
>sourcebooks (paranormal animals, TirTang, some others) sometimes hit the
>$30 mark.
>The oddest SR item with a more than 100% over listprice markup I saw was
>the Sprawl Maps one, though. It's hardly ever offered, which often
>results in heated bidding and this particular one ended up at $40, IIRC,
>which I found rather amusing as I had snapped one up from a local gaming
>store's bargain bin for $5 just a week before. Anyway, what this shows
>is that in less than 10 years some SR books have already doubled in
>value, which isn't a bad return on your investment at all.... :)
>
>Basically all you need for RPG items to become valuable is a good (or
>well-marketed ;) RPG: this will result in lots of people playing the
>game for a long time, among them a certain amount of collectors (and as
>pack rat types seem to be attracted to RPG's this number will be high :)
>this will result in out of print items from the genesis of the game
>being demanded by the new collectors who are continuously attracted to
>the "good RPG" which is where the good ol' mar-ket meg-a-neezm takes
>over.


I read a couple of interesting articles about speculators recently (Not in
Corporate Shadowfiles, either!). In the early 1990's, speculators discovered
comicbooks, and the prices of back issues went through the roof. Already
some original print first editions were valued at over a thousand dollars,
but now all sorts of comics went up above $10000, mostly because of the
Batman movie. Comics started to be printed with five different covers,
holographic pictures, printed on authentic parchment, all sorts of weird
stuff. The stories suffered because the big companies were just churning out
crowd pleasers. Then the speculators dropped comics and moved onto
collectable card games. The comics industry collapsed. Marvel, for decades
the biggest and strongest, was and is on the verge of bankruptcy, because
most of the diehard fans had been driven away by years of shoddy work. Not
only that, but all these geekboys who had bought a thousand Spiderman issue
#300 (or whatever) at $3 each to fund their retirement, found that they
could now only get about 5c a copy, if that. Now the speculators are onto
Internet company shares, which is potentially much more damaging when the
artificially high Internet stock prices plummet, and they almost definitely
will. This pattern goes all the way back through history. In the 1600's
tulips became very popular. The Dutch (and I assume many others in the area)
went tulip mad, and many people became stinking rich. People began investing
enitre life savings on a single bulb, in the theory that one bulb would be
the start of a massive tulip farm. Then the fashion moved on and a lot of
people were left with no money but a lot of pretty flowers.
So, in closing :?) IT would not be a good thing for speculators to trip onto
role playing games. We would end up with tons of substandard material, often
overpriced, and a glut of new players who are more interested in which
alternate cover is on the rulebook than getting into character (remember
Magic: The Gathering? I loved that game, when you never knew what killer
card you'd get, or who would have the best deck that week. Then the craze
caught on, and there were stacks of people with the entire collection and
all of the expansion sets, each more overpowered than the last, and small
time play-for-the-fun-of-it people like me couldn't get a decent game. My
Magic cards are at the bottom of a box somewhere now). Then we would have
masses of very cheap sourcebooks, but they are likely to be crap anyway,
less proper players since the good ones all moved on to something else in
annoyance, and a lot less role playing game companies.
Message no. 3
From: SyphonAC@***.com SyphonAC@***.com
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 21:28:56 EDT
I really have to agree here....much the same trend happened with baseball
cards....not too many years ago, when I was about 10, my dad might get me a
pack of say, Donruss cards (or Topps, etc.) They were maybe a buck for 30
cards, and though they weren't and aren't neccesarily collector's items, it
was fun to find my favorite players, and relatively cheap, too. Then inserts
became all the rage, and a five dollar pack of 6 cards wasn't worth anything
unless you got that really rare insert. People like me who just wanted their
favorite ball players couldn't afford to stay in, and I think the industry
took a big hit for that same reason.

RPG's, on the other hand, might be safer from speculators becuase where comic
books and baseball (or Magic) cards are cheap by comparison, and more prone
to fluctuate in price, RPG books are already somewhat expensive. I highly
doubt some kid will put down thirty dollars just to get that alternate cover
art and not use the book itself. IMHO, I think RPG books will only generate
the specualtion that antique non-RPG books do now.

Then on the darker side....if WOTC decided to get *really* careless they
could do a pretty nice job of flooding the market with ever-increasing levels
of crap ::cough Magic expansions cough::

Syphon
Message no. 4
From: Josh Harrison mataxes@****.net
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 23:30:00 -0400
----- Original Message -----
From: Jan Jaap van Poelgeest aka nevermelt <jjp@******.nl>
> Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, Perpetually Searching For A Cheap UB To Snap Up

Since thip topic came up, I thought I'd be a minor-league jerk and gloat
over the fact that I made a deal with a guy to get a over twenty first ed.
SR sourcebooks in near mint condition (including UB!). And my own personal
collection of RPG material is sizable, with a value (based purely on book
cover price) of over $5000. If I were to actually account for the
collector's value of some of the stuff, I could probably add another 50% to
that total.

Of course, I don't know if I'd actually part with it for any price in the
world... but there was some bad early 90s TSR stuff I unloaded a couple of
years ago... I'm sure it's much the same for other people around here.

-- Josh
Message no. 5
From: Simon and Fiona sfuller@******.com.au
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:44:58 +1000
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Harrison <mataxes@****.net>
To: shadowrn@*********.com <shadowrn@*********.com>
Date: Monday, June 26, 2000 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)


>----- Original Message -----
>From: Jan Jaap van Poelgeest aka nevermelt <jjp@******.nl>
>> Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, Perpetually Searching For A Cheap UB To Snap Up
>
>Since thip topic came up, I thought I'd be a minor-league jerk and gloat
>over the fact that I made a deal with a guy to get a over twenty first ed.
>SR sourcebooks in near mint condition (including UB!). And my own personal
>collection of RPG material is sizable, with a value (based purely on book
>cover price) of over $5000. If I were to actually account for the
>collector's value of some of the stuff, I could probably add another 50% to
>that total.
>
>Of course, I don't know if I'd actually part with it for any price in the
>world... but there was some bad early 90s TSR stuff I unloaded a couple of
>years ago... I'm sure it's much the same for other people around here.
>
>-- Josh
>


I find it hard to get rid of any book, no matter how bad. Most of my role
playing books have been bouncing around in travel bags for much of this
decade, and wouldn't be worth much anyway. (Soon as my SR rulebook's cover
comes off completely, I will have a legitimate excuse to buy the 3rd edition
:?))
I was sorely tempted to buy the 1st edition rulebook when MilSims had it for
$5 though. My original disappeared.
Message no. 6
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 11:43:12 +0200
According to SyphonAC@***.com, at 21:28 on 25 Jun 00, the word on the
street was...

> RPG's, on the other hand, might be safer from speculators becuase where comic
> books and baseball (or Magic) cards are cheap by comparison, and more prone
> to fluctuate in price, RPG books are already somewhat expensive. I highly
> doubt some kid will put down thirty dollars just to get that alternate cover
> art and not use the book itself. IMHO, I think RPG books will only generate
> the specualtion that antique non-RPG books do now.

There will always be some small group of people who will collect any given
type of item, whether it's stamps, baseball cards, RPG books, or whatever.
Those collectors will usually pay large sums of money (at least compared
to the original prices) for items that get them closer to completing their
collection, even if the rest of the world thinks it's junk that's not
worth the materials it's made of. The alternate covers scheme (which
plenty of us have fallen for, with the SR3 hardcover) is basically a way
of making some money off these people.

> Then on the darker side....if WOTC decided to get *really* careless they
> could do a pretty nice job of flooding the market with ever-increasing levels
> of crap ::cough Magic expansions cough::

Whether that would succeed depends on the question if your audience is
mostly collectors, or mostly users. If they're users (i.e. those who buy
the products to actually use them) it will likely fail, because these
people will only buy a new copy of a game book when the old one wears out.
If the audience is mainly collectors (which I doubt), though, it might
just work.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Yes, I am broadcasting myself!
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 7
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 11:43:12 +0200
According to Josh Harrison, at 23:30 on 25 Jun 00, the word on the street
was...

> Since thip topic came up, I thought I'd be a minor-league jerk and gloat
> over the fact that I made a deal with a guy to get a over twenty first ed.
> SR sourcebooks in near mint condition (including UB!). And my own personal
> collection of RPG material is sizable, with a value (based purely on book
> cover price) of over $5000.

I didn't know there were SR books with a $250 cover price... Inflation
must have struck hard recently :)

> Of course, I don't know if I'd actually part with it for any price in the
> world... but there was some bad early 90s TSR stuff I unloaded a couple of
> years ago... I'm sure it's much the same for other people around here.

You wouldn't sell them because you like SR; somebody who's bought a couple
of books and thinks the game sucks will sell them cheaply. I bought an SR1
hardcover cheaply a few years ago which looked like it had been used
precisely once, for example -- the character sheets had been removed from
the back of the book, and a few things had been scribbled in in pencil
(mainly crosses on condition monitors). My guess is somebody bought it in
'89, played the game for one or two sessions, and put the book on a shelf.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Yes, I am broadcasting myself!
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 8
From: Sommers sommers@*****.umich.edu
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 08:19:00 -0400
Around 11:44 PM 6/25/00, Simon and Fiona was thinking about:
>I find it hard to get rid of any book, no matter how bad. Most of my role
>playing books have been bouncing around in travel bags for much of this
>decade, and wouldn't be worth much anyway. (Soon as my SR rulebook's cover
>comes off completely, I will have a legitimate excuse to buy the 3rd edition

There's a gaming store right up the street from me that is closing out a
lot of their stock. Half off on all books, most of them in pretty good
condition. They have both SR, BT and Earthdawn stuff. Underworld
Sourcebook, The blood Wood, The Theran Empire, Cybertechnology, NAGRL and a
few others. If someone is looking for some stuff (sorry, no rare ones like
UB, Lone Star or Shadowbeat), email me privately and I'll see if I can help
you get them.

Sommers
Aerospace engineers build weapon systems. Civil engineers build targets.
Message no. 9
From: Steve Collins einan@*********.net
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 00 10:05:09 -0500
On 6/25/00 10:30 pm, Josh Harrison said:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: Jan Jaap van Poelgeest aka nevermelt <jjp@******.nl>
>> Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, Perpetually Searching For A Cheap UB To Snap Up
>
>Since thip topic came up, I thought I'd be a minor-league jerk and gloat
>over the fact that I made a deal with a guy to get a over twenty first ed.
>SR sourcebooks in near mint condition (including UB!). And my own personal
>collection of RPG material is sizable, with a value (based purely on book
>cover price) of over $5000. If I were to actually account for the
>collector's value of some of the stuff, I could probably add another 50% to
>that total.
>


If the Book Cover Price is equal to $5000 You would be lucky to sell them
for $2000. A rare book or two may have more Value than it's cover price
but overall most of them have little to no value left and you'd be lucky
to get 10% of list for them. Remember just because a book is old does not
make it valuable, it must also be scarce and in demand. Take for example
the Comic Book Industry, there are issues from the 1950's of popular
titles which are worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars, yet there
are other titles from the same storyline and time period which are
scarcely worth more than the cover price because for whatever reason
there are more existing copies than there is demand for them. With RPG
books most of them will fall in to the second category and not the first.


Steve
Message no. 10
From: Josh Harrison mataxes@****.net
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 23:30:19 -0400
----- Original Message -----
From: Gurth <gurth@******.nl>
> > ...And my own personal
> > collection of RPG material is sizable, with a value (based purely on
book
> > cover price) of over $5000.
>
> I didn't know there were SR books with a $250 cover price... Inflation
> must have struck hard recently :)

Perhaps I should have made clear that this was the estimated value of my
*entire* RPG collection -- the SR part of it only takes up a portion of that
(the second largest part, but still...). I moved recently, and took an
inventory of my collection for insurance purposes during shipping -- that's
the only reason I have a ballpark figure on it in the fiirst place.

> You wouldn't sell them because you like SR; somebody who's bought a couple
> of books and thinks the game sucks will sell them cheaply. I bought an SR1
> hardcover cheaply a few years ago which looked like it had been used
> precisely once, for example -- the character sheets had been removed from
> the back of the book, and a few things had been scribbled in in pencil
> (mainly crosses on condition monitors). My guess is somebody bought it in
> '89, played the game for one or two sessions, and put the book on a shelf.

I'm such a packrat though, I won't even sell a game I don't like and never
intend to play -- after all, there is probably no better place to scavenge
ideas from than otherwise worthless game material. I own quite a few books
from WW's "Trinity" game, and I don't ever intend to play it. It makes good
inspiration for some SR related ideas, though. My AD&D collection did time
as ED inspiration in recent years, and some of the other games I have are
great for short story ideas.

-- Josh Harrison -- mataxes@****.net
"When Fate taps you on the shoulder, you'd best pay attention.
Unfortunately, she has the blasted habit of tapping you on the
opposite shoulder, so that when you turn around she's actually
on your other side, giggling like a schoolgirl. I hate that."
Message no. 11
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media)
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 12:19:06 +0200
According to Josh Harrison, at 23:30 on 27 Jun 00, the word on the street
was...

> Perhaps I should have made clear that this was the estimated value of my
> *entire* RPG collection

It was me reading too fast again :(

> I'm such a packrat though, I won't even sell a game I don't like and never
> intend to play

Same here. I've got plenty of games I've never played, and probably never
will because the majority of my group doesn't like the idea of them.

> I own quite a few books from WW's "Trinity" game, and I don't ever
> intend to play it.

I might want to give it a try sometime, but I must say the history
described in the book didn't appeal to me at all.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Yes, I am broadcasting myself!
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about [OT] RPG antiques (was: Gaming in the Media), you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!