Category: Collecting

Our DVD Collection

September 24, 2026

I don’t believe I’ve ever posted about this before, so now seems like a good time. This is our DVD and Blu-ray collection:

It’s on a bookshelf built into our downstairs room, and the shelves are big enough that the discs are stacked two-deep. There’s a lot of them. I tried to count and gave up on the second shelf from the top when I passed 500. It’s very easily over 1000 items, maybe closer to 1500.

KLS and I got into anime in a big way during its VHS boom in the early to mid 90s, and – after a brief stint with Laserdisc – got our first DVD player when the first anime discs came out in 1997. Anime in those days was released with 3 or 4 episodes per disc and we bought loads of them. It remains a large chunk of our collection today, filling most of the top two shelves.

The above photo is representative of the range of anime in our collection. Cobra is the film version from 1982 (which is fantastic). Evangelion and Bebop are single discs with a few episodes on each (we bought the entire series of discs for each). Tower of Druaga is one of many low-priced multi-disc collections I bought about a decade ago. The middle one in the bottom is a series never released in English that I bought at a Korean bootleg shop in Sydney. And the last Blu-ray – Plus-Sized Elf – was bought a couple of weeks ago!

In preparing this entry I had fun looking through many of these. As you can see we have four of the five different Cutey Honey series released since 1973 (only Cutey Honey Flash eludes me, and the discs are hellishly expensive these days). We’ve also got all the live action versions as well!

The same is true for many other series: both anime and other. If I like something I’ll usually hunt down other versions or series to get more. The biggest example in the collection is surely Doctor Who:

I don’t know how many different Doctor Who DVDs I own, but it’s probably over 200. In fact as far as I know I own all of them, and for many years my happy place was getting the latest disc of classic Who and watching it multiple times with each audio track. I have convinced myself the discs will be watched again one day. And I’ll start with all of Jon Pertwee’s episodes in order.

In front of the Who discs (which are double stacked) you can see box sets of other series from the 80s or 90s. The above is only a portion of these; We have enough we could probably broadcast our own retro TV station!

Incidentally many of the discs have been repacked into thinner cases. I began this years ago to save space and last year when we had the bathroom done I finished the job. I’d say about half our collection is packed this way, which wasn’t cheap since although the cases individually are inexpensive, buying hundreds of them wasn’t! I’ll spare you my criteria for what got repacked and what didn’t, but suffice to say anything I consider ‘special’ remained in its original case.

Second to Doctor Who is my Ultraman collection, which now contains box sets for 35 different series and about 20 other discs of movies, specials and animated series. I’ve watched them all.

In fact I’ve watched all these discs! KLS has watched most of them, but a thousand hours of Ultraman, endless classic Doctor Who and hundreds of hours of Inspector Morse series weren’t exactly her thing 🙂

I like watching quirky Japanese films, and they’re so infrequently localized I usually buy them whenever they are. There’s dozens in the collection, most of which are horror and/or tokusatsu (or sometimes both). I’ll admit many of these are objectively bad films, but something about low budget Japanese trash appeals to me, so I enjoy them!

The collection includes lots of recent movies as well. Specifically titles you may ask “Why did you buy that?” The answer is the Walmart cheap movie bin! During Covid Walmart used to have big bins full of $3 DVDs and I plundered them every time I shopped there. Will we ever watch these again? Doubtful. But they were absolutely worth the $3 I paid for them!

Speaking of Covid, during that time we watched loads of movies since our workdays ended early. It was the first time we browsed our collection and rewatched movies we’d had for years.

If you look closely at the first pic you may wonder about other titles you glimpse. I haven’t shown all the Star Wars stuff, the Hammer horror films, the TV horror anthology series, non-Ultraman tokusatsu series, the vast collection of 1980s films we loved as kids, or the bottom shelf which is entirely music video collections or concert films! If there’s ever been a show or film I have fond memories of, chances are it’s in the collection.

The above is a treasure. This was the only set of this Japanese TV show ever localized and I bought the disc from a dubious website set up by the company. It’s incredibly funny and watchable, and I always looked forward to the second set which never came. The English set is now rare and expensive but it’s never leaving my collection.

Many years ago I used to have an account on a DVD collectors website. I did this simply because it had a feature where it would track which anime series you had and inform you when the next disc would be released. Even then – and this was over 20 years ago – some of our discs were getting a bit pricey, and I’m sure these days we’ve got a fair amount of ‘collectible’ ones in the collection. I don’t care; I have no interest in ever selling any of this.

And yes, the collection continues to grow. You may have read recent reports about various companies cutting back on physical disc production, with Blu-rays in particular nearing the end of their life. As a response – and because I recently wanted to get into Jess Franco and 70s horror films – I bought nearly 50 new discs on Amazon in one frenzied binge. The ranged from under $5 (Sucker the Vanpire) to $80 (a Kamen Rider set). You can see them all in the above ‘watch’ pile, in front of 65+ unplayed Switch games!

With streaming services becoming increasingly expensive and discs becoming less available some have been talking recently about a ‘return to physical’. You won’t hear that from me, since I never left physical! And I hope I never do.

Finally, a 2DS!

August 13, 2026

Several years into the lifetime of the Nintendo 3DS, they released a new version called the Nintendo 2DS. Apparently marketed at children (for whom the size of the 3DS was a liability) it was a lower cost and more robust version of the console that would play all games but lack the stereoscopic 3D feature. It also dropped the clamshell form-factor and became flat:

It launched (in the USA, Europe and Australia) in 2013 at $130, then the price was cut in 2015 to $100, then again the next year to only $80. I had multiple different 3DS versions during these years, and when the 2DS reached its lowest price the (exceptionally good) New 2DS XL was imminent. So I never purchased a 2DS, something I’d regretted for a decade.

About five years ago I wanted to remedy this situation, so kept my eyes peeled in retro game stores and during trips to Japan. I didn’t just want one, I wanted one in good condition. Even more so, I wanted one boxed, which proved to be a mighty challenge. And then during my trip this past summer, I purchased this:

The system wasn’t actually launched in Japan until 2016 – three years after the USA. The above is a boxed example of the final colour released in Japan – translucent black – which came out in 2018 at a price of ¥9980. I bought it at a Suruga-ya in Osaka for ¥39000 ($245), or 391% of the launch price!

I was apprehensive about this purchase not because of the price – it was the only boxed version I’d seen in five years – but because they wouldn’t let me inspect before buying. I had to do my very best to charm the manager into letting me check the quality of the screen before buying, and he only relented because I was ‘polite’ (he said so!) and the store wasn’t too busy!

I had nothing to worry about. Not only is the system pristine, but it may have also been brand new since the bag containing the system was still sealed when he opened it.

I had never held a 2DS, so I was surprised how comfortable and lightweight it is. I never used the 3D feature of the 3DS, so I don’t miss it at all, and looking back I think the only reason I never bought one of these was because I feared the screen would more easily be damaged. That was me being a fool!

The 3DS is infamously region-locked, and buying this now gives me the opportunity to purchase and play Japanese 3DS games. I didn’t find anything I wanted in the few remaining days after I purchased the system, but I’ll surely pick up a few on my next visit. The above is me using the system to play a Japanese DS game, which of course work on this system.

It has all the normal features of other 3DS systems, including two cameras, a microphone, internet support, backup memory etc. In short, it’s a fully functional 3DS albeit with a new form factor and no stereo screens.

I’m extremely happy I finally completed my DS collection (this is my sixth DS), and that I now have a way to play Japanese 3DS games. Another grail checked off the list 🙂

This One’s For Adam (And Maybe Bernard)

July 12, 2026

We’re in NYC for two days, and I will blog about it in a day or two, but I had a fascinating experience today that I knew Adam would be interested in so this post is just about that.

There’s a store here called The Compleat Strategist that’s been selling RPG and board game products for many decades. I’ve shopped there many times over the two-plus decades I’ve been visiting the city but it was very obvious in recent years the store had seen better days.

So today when I walked in and found it revamped and rearranged and clean it was obvious a change had occurred.

The first thing I noticed was a big glass case containing lots of vintage Games Worshop Warhammer items. Books, games, models: all mint condition and most still shrink wrapped.

I don’t know much about this stuff but I do know how unusual it is to see so much brand new stock of products released over thirty years ago. It was a bit like visiting a museum, especially since it was all clearly labeled as ‘not for sale’.

And then I walked to the back and saw the three larger cases of TSR products! This is just one of them:

Dozens and dozens of Dungeons and Dragons books, as well as other games released by TSR over the years. I’ve got a good D&D collection myself, but not close to what I saw here. Take this for instance:

And many modules, some still sealed:

And obscure TSR games, like these:

Or this (still sealed) board game from 1982:

The manager saw me taking these photos and wandered over. He was younger than the guys I used to see here and I didn’t recognize him. I immediately asked “You bought this store didn’t you?” to which he laughed and confirmed.

We talked about this amazing collection of relics he now owned – some of which he wasn’t very knowledgeable about (I educated him) – and he was quite interested in my gamebook collection so I told him a bit about that.

And then he said out of the blue: “Want to see the basement?” Of course I instantly said yes, and he took me through two doors to a large metal staircase we descended down into a games room they use for events, then through another door into a large room filled with tall shelves stuffed with boxes of game materials collected by the previous owners over decades.

To say I was amazed is an understatement. The above photo shows boxes of Spellfire – the failed D&D card game from thirty years ago. Those boxes in the back? Sealed cases of the same game. He’s got dozens of boxes of each expansion, up to the 7th which almost no stores stocked since the game was already dead:

In the blurry background you can see boxes and boxes of other dead TCGs, including many I’d never heard of. These were stacked three or four shelves high up to ceilings well above my head!

As incredible as this was, we then turned to the D&D material, and he showed me this:

That’s a box of sealed copies of a D&D solo module from 1985. I’d estimate 30 or more, untouched for decades. And this was one of many boxes of sealed modules for TSR games, including D&D, Star Traveler, Top Secret, Gamma World, Indiana Jones, Marvel Super Heroes and probably more.

I took the above photo since I’d never seen a GURPS board game (which is still sealed and would sell for $300+ based on a quick internet search) but there was so much to see in this basement I barely noticed the stack of MSH modules behind and below the board game, or the pile of a couple of dozen Gamma World GM screens to the left.

I’ve read in the past about people stumbling on a cache of ‘new old stock’ in a warehouse somewhere, but it was quite an experience to see it. It’s all for sale too, although since TSR products are very collectible now it’s hardly cheap, and he’ll make a nice profit if he can sell it all. (I purchased a Blizzard Pass module, which I’ll keep sealed.)

There was some advertising material as well, including the above board for the 1976 (I think) edition of TSR’s Dungeon board game. This was heavy and may have been printed on or at least stuck to a wooden back! This is a true grail for a collector somewhere.

I regret not taking more photos, but I was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was seeing 🙂

He told me they’re slowly going through everything, including 25 long boxes of 1980s comics, many more sealed cases of RPG books and modules, and even “a box of novels signed by Gary Gygax” (!) and continuing to find treasures he didn’t know about when he bought the store. His goal is apparently to open a museum and if he ever does I’d certainly love to visit it!

Robot Claw