Category: Collecting

My Collections: PS3 and PS4

March 30, 2023

The Playstation 3 (PS3) was released in November 2006 and it would be 10 months before I finally bought one early in September of 2007. The system was very expensive ($500), had a slow start, and even almost a year into release there was a lack of games that caught my eye. Indeed, for the first couple of weeks I owned it, I didn’t even buy any games for it and instead used it to watch blu-rays and play PS2 games!

Looking back on the PS3 I remember it as the console that ushered in – for me – the era of downloading games. Sony introduced the PlayStation shop with the PS3 and there was a lot of interesting and inexpensive games available, and during the life of the console I probably bought a couple of dozen games online. Of course I also bought disc games – 98 in total – and my PS3 library ended up being one of my top 10 biggest game collections.

That’s the bulk of them above, and notable titles included the first of the Souls series, the immersive RPG Dragons Dogma and Diablo 3 which featured couch co-op that KLS used to play together endlessly. In fact we played the PS3 often enough that not one, but two of them died, with the laser failing on one and the disc tray on the other! We played them both to death 🙂

The PS3 era of games is unremarkable from a collector’s perspective. They’re not old enough to be retro, and not new enough to be appealing to modern gamers. Furthermore, many of the landmark titles have been rereleased or ‘remastered’ for newer consoles. There is very little value in PS3 games today, and it’s probably the least collected console. The vast majority of my games – which are of course all in pristine condition – are only ‘worth’ only a few dollars. I have a couple of ‘rare’ games (shown above) but even then they’d sell for less what I paid for them. Maybe one day PS3 games will gain value, but I don’t think that day is anytime soon.

The life of the PS3 extended all the way into 2017, but long before it was retired it had already been surpassed by its followup, the PlayStation 4 (PS4). This was released in late 2013, but I didn’t get mine until Christmas 2014 (in response to the death of our second PS3).

In some ways the PS4 is still a current-era console, in that it has yet to be officially retired and you can still buy them new in stores. For many years ours was our primary console, and both KLS and myself played it extensively. And then, about 2 years ago, it died as well, and we didn’t replace it (although not for lack of trying).

I loved the PS4. It has a great controller, a good OS and it was successful enough that the market supported lots of fantastic games (such as Monster Hunter World, Nioh and several Vanillaware games). It had easy and fast online play, and if you didn’t absolutely need them upon launch the games were reasonably priced after a few months as well.

In the 7+ years we owned one I bought 123 PS4 games. I think – since many of them were $30 or less – this was also the console with the lowest average game price of any I have ever owned. That’s not to say I didn’t over time pick up a few games that are a little more collectible (such as the limited edition of Odin Sphere) shown above, but most of my PS4 library is as unremarkable (as collectibles) as my PS3 games.

This post is because – as with the Wii and Wii U collections – I’m also selling my PS3 and PS4 games. Look closely at the above pics and you may note that there are four games that I bought for both the PS3 and PS4 and one of them – Dragon’s Crown – I also own for the Vita! I love that game to death, and it’s one of a few that will be hard to say goodbye to (especially since it’s a collectors metal case edition with an unopened pack of trading cards) but I hold out hope we may get yet another remaster for Switch sometime soon. The bulk of these games I won’t miss though: they were fun to play in their time, but I’ll never play them again and they’re just now taking up space in the house.

Between 1995 and 2021 we had (8 models of) four different PlayStation consoles in our house (not including PSP or Vita) but have yet to buy a PlayStation 5. Right now it doesn’t have many games I’m interested in, it’s very expensive, and the Switch is more than enough for our needs. With the sell off of my PS3/PS4 collections has the sun set on PlayStation in this house? Time will tell…

My Collections: Wii and Wii U

March 23, 2023

Nintendo released the Wii in November of 2006 to followup from the GameCube. It had a revolutionary motion control system and some notable software that was well-engineered to take advantage, and the Wii became a breakout success appealing to players well beyond the traditional demographic. It was a best-seller almost immediately, and would go on to become one of the most successful consoles ever made. When released I had trouble finding one, but Jim used his connections to get me (and himself) one for Christmas that year.

I liked the Wii, but I always felt it was a back step compared to the GameCube and during its lifetime I vastly preferred games for the Nintendo handheld systems. That said I’m happy for the great success of the Wii: it made Nintendo a lot of money and paved the way for the Switch which I feel is one of the best consoles ever made.

During the eight year lifetime of the Wii I bought 59 games, and here are most of them:

My favourites are the first party Mario games, Monster Hunter Tri and Hyrule Warriors (which I would rebuy for Switch years later). But the system lacks nostalgic appeal, the controls these days are clumsy and the graphics on a HD screen are fuzzy. The Wii was a system of it’s time, and I think best left there.

At the end of 2012 Nintendo released a followup console called the Wii U, and it was a disaster!

Even from the first reveal this thing confused customers: was it a new console or an add-on? What was that weird controller with a screen? Did it even connect to the TV at all? Nintendo’s marketing was poor, and the console was struggling even before release.

When it did come out things didn’t get much better. The Wii U suffered from a critical shortage of software (the strange controller made porting games difficult and development costly) and sales were poor. It would go on to be Nintendo’s worst-selling console ever, and a financial disaster.

I bought only 15 games for the Wii U, which is the least I’ve ever bought for any console. While a few of these were incredibly good (Xenoblade Chronicles X, MH Tri Ultimate, Zelda: Breath Of The Wild), many of the others struggled with weird controls or excessive load times. The Wii U may have had a (very) few great games, but it wasn’t a fun or comfortable device to use, and it was inevitable it would be replaced.

In retrospect we can see the Wii U was a stepping-stone on the path to the Switch, so for that I suppose we can excuse it. But it’s now a footnote in Nintendo history, almost forgotten only a few years after it was retired.

I’ll soon be selling my entire Wii and Wii U collections (including hardware and even original boxes). Neither the hardware nor most of the games have any great value these days, and even in good condition – as mine all are – rarely fetch a quarter of what they sold for back in the day. I do have two somewhat collectible Wii games (shown above), but the value of these is dwarfed by some of the NES/SNES games I have already sold (and Gameboy/GBA games still in my collection).

I won’t miss any of this once it is gone, and am happy for my once-loved games to pass to a new collector. I enjoyed the Wii in its time – and less so the Wii U – but as I said that time has passed, and I’m ok with just the memories from now on 🙂

The Magnet-Mages

February 16, 2023

It’s time for the second installment in my magnet series! Sure it’s been almost five years since the last, but there’s been a development.

For the first time ever, I sorted through our voluminous abundance of magnets, discarding and rearranging them, and clearing some space on our fridge for new additions. In doing this – which took much longer than expected – I thought it a good time to showcase a few.

Some of the oldest magnets we own are Pokémon and Digimon ones bought almost 30 years ago. I’m surprised they’ve lasted so long since they’re so cheaply made: just a sticker on a plastic base. Even though they’re a little low-rent, now we’ve had them for so long they’ve endeared themselves to us.

Back in 2019 when I was in Tokyo with Bernard I picked up the above magnet of ‘Someity’, one of the two Olympic mascots. She was supposed to evoke a cherry blossom, and merchandise of her (and her brother) was abundant. She looks a bit like a Pokémon doesn’t she? The Rey is a large static cling we’ve had for about a decade but I no longer remember where I got it.

A few years back I visited Forster with Sue and picked up this magnet. Thermometer magnets like this are trash of course, and questionably accurate, but there’s a lot of good in a bad magnet! Apparently it is possible to take whale cruises from Forster… maybe I should investigate that more one day?

A recent purchase! I got this striking metal embossed magnet (it’s about 10 cm wide) from the Ultra shop/exhibition in Nakano. This is a wonderful magnet, but it was a tad expensive. I wish I’d bought more though.

Not a magnet, but the above is our first ever ‘digital photo print’. This photo of Daisy was taken and printed on a dot-matrix printer when she was a little kitten. Its wonderfully low-tech and quaint, and since it is over 25 years old now I recently embossed so it lasts forever 🙂

Can you guess where we bought this? I’ve read that tourists can’t get very close to Stonehenge anymore, since they’ve moved the barrier back even farther than when we visited twelve years ago. I’ll always remember that as a special day.

A few years ago Florence texted me a photo of the above magnet, so naturally I had to buy it. I laughed aloud when it arrived and was about five times the size I thought from the pic. There were two to choose from, the other being Putin. I made the right choice.

I don’t recall exactly where I bought the above, but they feel like they’ve been on the fridge forever. The Luke is permanently attached to the base, but the other two can be replaced with any minifig. I recently had a look in the LEGO shop to see if you can still purchase these magnetic bases and they’re no longer made. A shame, since I think they’re great.

One of my all-time favourite magnets! This was purchased in Nara (Japan) back in 1997. Nara is the city with all the deer oft visited by school groups hence the design (the deer is wearing a school backpack). It’s only about an inch high, and its smile is infectious! I want to return to Nara one day…

Two ‘home made’ magnets. The bottom I made, and the top was bought on Etsy. It’s a 3D printed skull painted black with gold accents. I bought this as a gift for Bernard but liked it so much I kept it 🙂

I wonder if these sort of magnets – funny ones with jokes on them – are made in other countries? This is one of the better ones I’ve got, and for a long while lived on the whiteboard in my office at school.

The traditional ‘lake monster’ magnet, displayed alongside a couple of others also from Inverness. I bought all these the day we went to see the loch. That was another great day, since it was a place I had wanted to visit since childhood.

These are extremely high-quality mini Star Wars magnets. These were a series of blind-box items from over a decade ago, and I first bought them in Japan and then at Target when they were (surprisingly!) released here. I’ve got lots, and they’re now all together on the fridge. Can you name all these characters?

The above are our front doors, now covered in magnets from all over the world. There’s still space though, but I’ve probably got another twenty or so years before I need to sort them again…

Robot Claw