By popular demand... Gemini-Phoenix's 'Treasure!'

striker wrote:yea collecting sealed DVDs is a bit pointless to me, I do have a DVD collection but of movies I've actually watched.

It's not so much collecting, but rather buying and never having enough time to spare, thus they stay sealed by default. Although I will admit the Steelbook's are a bit of a guilty pleasure and do have their collectable appeal

part one wrote:Out of curiosity: Why would you collect DVD's? I have to admit I got some steelbooks myself (had to grab iron man) but there are 3 points that keep me immune from the urge to collect:

1.: DVDs are all over the place..you can get them everywhere and they throw them after you now that bluray is coming (not for a while though but still all the retailers are hyperventilating).

Why would anyone collect games? Or used stamps for that matter? Dvd's are as good as anything else.

Yes, they are everywhere, but then so are games. So are newspapers and bottles of Coca Cola. Most of the Dvd's I own are not your usual standard vanilla one-disc Amaray cased standard editions though, and many are first print versions.

part one wrote:2. There are as good as no rare DVDs. At the moment there are more steelbooks being produced than regular DVD-cases. That's because some marketing-brain found that the only way to stop the vast decrease of pricelevel is to reproduce every last f*cking flick that has already been released a hundred times in a hundred different cases and boxes in steelboks..another bitchslap to the customers is, that in order to keep the prices competitive while keeping producion expenses at a low rate, there's absolutely nothing inside the tin but the DVD..no manuals, flyers whatsoever, which leads to point

Collector's would beg to differ. There are plenty of rare Dvd's available, albeit mostly Collector's Edition's, but they're there. And at last count, there were roughly 130-140 Steelbook Dvd's available for the UK, so they're not really all that common. Plus there is a huge Steelbook collector's community, and some are very collectable and sought after!

part one wrote:3. There will never be any value growth on DVDs..they will go down the same road as MCs, Laserdiscs, Minidiscs etc.

..so I wanted to know your personal reasons for collecting

I will agree with you there to some point. I believe the market isn't ready for Blu-Ray so soon after Dvd, and yes Blu-Ray will be a specialist medium much like Mini Disc's. Dvd appeals to the masses, and the majority of people are content with the medium just like they are content with Cd's. Blu-Ray's cost a lot to produce, and a lot of people don't want to abandon their entire Dvd libraries and switch.

My personal reasons... Is not for financial gain, but predominantly because I like the packaging of many Collector's Edition's and first print releases, and despise standard Amaray cases. A vast majority of my collection is made up of DigiPak's, slipcases, and box-set's. Steelbook's being the only Dvd's I purposefully 'collect'

nice displays! make me want to design some also!

What impresses me the most is the fact that you have a huge collection, but don't do it for financial gain. It's very hard to find people who collect purely for enjoyment, without being motivated by money.

I try not to get preoccupied with the $$$ myself. Whenever I do sell stuff, it's usually to free up space or cash to buy something else.

Obviously I am always aware of things such as rarity; Demand; Value etc, but I collect purely for the enjoyment of collecting, and not to make a profit sometime in the future. The thrill is in the hunt, not the capture so they say.

I have always said that I would not sell any of my collection, and if I did then I would sell it as a whole to another collector who I know would expand on it rather than split it for profitable gain. If I do sell anything it's usually because I can spare it (Ie, I have a duplicate copy in better condition) or simply because it doesn't meet my standards and would rather sell an item to someone else who might appreciate it more or make better use of it. I know there are collector's here who buy sealed NES / SNES games as an investment with the sole intention of selling them on at some point at a higher price. That is not why I collect, but if the value of certain items does increase then that's just a bonus.

I also wouldn't consider my collection 'Huge'! Compared to some classic collections seen on ASSEMbler or DP, mine is miniscule! In comparison though, mine is just a random selection of games I like, rather than an entire set of this or entire set of that (With the exception of my N-Gage and Dreamcast games which I did start to collect with the aim of a complete set). I have various sub-collections simply because they are games I like and it's just coincidence that inevitably they form a sub-set, but I wouldn't actively seek out duplicate copies or different versions from other regions to expand the sub-collection, although that would be nice given the time

In some instances, certain games are playable via various forms of emulation (Ie, DS games), but I will still seek out and buy the games for the console because I enjoy the collecting more than the actual playing. If anything, emulation has forced me to seek out more games as I have played some that I enjoyed and want to add it to my collection! So a plus point there in favour of emulation actually doing some good to the industry!