And how to you keep track of your spending? (And how do you hide it from the wife!)

Alot Probably more than I should have already lol. If it wasn't for the fact that I like to pay top dollar for everything, I would probably already have a complete NTSC set :-/ That and the fact that I collect mainly only complete and sealed games.

Keeping track of my spending? What's that mean?

I keep track of what I spend in my spreadsheet, though there are some items I'm missing information for. That's one of the features I'm adding in the collection tool (visible only by you). You'll be able to track what you spent, and what you made, if the item was sold. I do this all the time -- I'll get a good deal on a game, then later sell it or trade it, and I try to keep track of what the profit (if any) was or the value I received in trade vs. the price I paid.

But, to answer your question, um.... a whole lot of $$.

-Dain

Haha. Dain and I were talking about this a month or two ago actually. We both agreed that this is one of those questions you just don't ask people. It is like asking a women how much she weighs, or how old she is. I don't even want to fathom a guess on my stuff, way up in the 1000's.
~~NGD

I like the sound of that feature Dain! I'm also keeping track of my expenditures and revenue through spreadsheets. I haven't linked anything yet to calculate any profit, but at least I have a record of all of the data, so that if I ever want to know how much I bought or sold something for (and potential profits from resale items), I just have to check the spreadsheets.

As for how much I spent on my collection, I'm not sure. I don't know if I can quantify the amount right now, especially if you consider the time investment which has been tremendous. The good thing is that I buy a lot of stuff at really good prices, so if you look at this as an investment (which is a great excuse to make yourself feel better for spending the money on this stuff), it's really not that bad

Im probally in the over 10.000.00 catageory but the way I see it its is a fun hobby and investment..Video games you can play and get good use out of compared to stamps or cards. When people gripe about what i spend on video games I point out the fact I can always sale my games and get my money back ..that coke or two people buy daily thats gone .If someone buys 1 coke a day thats 467.00 dollars and 2 is almost 1.000.00 dollars a year. The biggest thing my wife does that I use in aurgumets is she.ll by outfits hang them in the closet and never wear them. Actually if you have the time and patiences you could buy a large lot and start buy reselling everything til you made a little profit then continue the process picking the games you want out of the lots until you build a collection. But you would have a lot of time invested.

I wish I had been keeping track of how much I've spent, but in some ways I don't want to know , you know what I mean!

Too much man. Multi-platform collecting over the course of around 8 years...it adds up. I think nothing of dropping $20 on a Genesis with games, just to get a couple games I don't have. Or $200 on a box of games that I only need one or two games out of. I've probably spent around 30 or 40 grand, although I blatantly overpaid on alot of things.

I've spend at least a couple thousand of dollars so far. I'll probably spend multiple thousands more.

I haven't gotten too intense into it. The most I've spent on a single item thus far is about $250. I try to keep my expenditures down as much a possible. I've spent less than $2,000 so far. Not too bad, and I don't expect it to go much higher than double that by the time I'm done. But then, I'm not looking for a complete NTSC set or anything, just the game I like, not even boxed or anything. I have an addiction to pirates, though, and that might get costly in the end, because there's a lot out there.

I've spent a bit over 7k, but that's on multiple platforms, though the NES stands for the majority of the games. Whenever I decide to focus more on the NES, something interesting shows up for another console, and I put my money there instead of trying to complete any sub-set for the NES. I quite often buy things that I don't know very much about and that looks interesting. Sometimes you wind up paying to much for something, sometimes you wind up with a SNES-Campus Challenge in your hand .

See I wasn't even counting other systems. I have like 10 systems with 20-50 games for each. I just count NES, cause that is what I really care about. Thinking about price hurts my head. . . . .
~~NGD

Yeah, I was going through a bunch of SNES games in one shop, and they had a few sealed games for $7.50 Canadian each...one of which ended up being the Titus version of SOS, which is apparently really tough to find...and I nabbed it brand spanking new! Also landed a CIB near mint Ren & Stimpy: Fire Dogs, although I knew the game was pretty uncommon complete. But to get it almost like new, with just a bit of wear on the box...I consider that one of my non-NES grails, and I didn't realize just how rare the game was in that condition for some time...cost me $10 at a pawn shop Although I've also spent $120 Canadian on Final Fantasy II back when I was a newb, so it all balances out in the end

When I started to collect, my curiosity resulted in many multicarts. My first one was a quite common 31 in 1. I thought it was so damn cool, and of course I overpaid for it. Or 50 bucks for Zelda LttP cart-only, that was before I discovered the world of on-line auctions. But I actually had a couple of good finds from back then as well, the best being the Little Samson prototype I got for 3 bucks at the same store that sold me the Zelda-cart for 50.

One thing I've done to offset the costs of my collection is to buy out other people's collections, pull what I need, then sell back the rest. Early this year, I did just that -- I purchased an entire collection, and then re-sold the extras. From that purchase alone, I profited around $3,000. Before that, I had an ebay store for about 4 months, and I made another few thousand to help offset even more. In all, I'm nowhere near as much in the negative as I could be, but to be sure, I've spent a considerable amount of money so far.

-Dain