I used to own 13 Nintendo Gamecubes. Now I own nine. I think I should own four, a ridiculous statement to anyone not into retro video game collecting or, weirdly enough, perhaps Magic: The Gathering. We are trained to seek after and hold onto ridiculous things. They gain power over us as our identity becomes tied to them, creating a vicious cycle.
Historically, I’m someone who simply loves to own excellent (by my own definition) objects. Records, books, Magic: The Gathering cards, lamps & things pertaining to the Nintendo Gamecube (and other retro video game consoles) to name a few. In all realms, save lamps, I’ve watched and felt the communities around these collections somehow get even more consumerist over time. Is it strange to feel as if collecting shouldn’t actually be that consumerist? Maybe it is thus by definition, my frustration is more with the monetization of it all.
Breathless influencers telling me all about their latest retro gaming finds and what they’ll be able to sell them for. More and more Actually Popular nerd celebrities are jumping into Magic not to play but to talk about cracking packs & chasing Black Traveling Chocobos. Have I mentioned the thought of grading a card for grading’s sake makes me want to throw up in my mouth, just a little bit?
At some point, the allure fades. I could only see so many things change about my lifestyle hobby before my brain was forced to realize I couldn’t care that much anymore. I was making myself miserable. Of course, like anyone who’s been around for a long time, I still deeply love playing Magic: The Gathering, doing my best to invest in the people around me who I’ve met through it. That is, after all, how they get you. Magic: The Gathering is Cal and Cal is Magic: the Gathering. Writing about it, playing it, streaming it, recording it, podcasting it, traveling for it, brewing decks for it, spending money on it, spending money on it, spending money on it.
Somehow, finally letting go of my Gamecube Console Collection, something I’ve become known for, is freeing. It was difficult to begin because I assumed it would be painful to no longer own a thing I had enjoyed owning, but didn’t actually have a physical use for. I’m less saddened by it than I thought I would be. It was nothing short of a joy every day to see the collection all together, in its specially-lit glass case as I entered my office to begin work.
It started off in a relatively innocuous place. I was already working on my Gamecube game collection and had always loved the color of the Tales of Symphonia special edition – a delightful teal. I saw one for the right price on eBay one day and the rest was history. Next thing I knew, I looked up and had spent a lot of time and effort building out something cool for, admittedly, largely screaming deals of prices. I was proud of that too.
The work of collecting is often more of a reward than the actual having.
Why sell? The inflection point was as boring as any other: I always recognized that having thousands of dollars worth of the same video game console, albeit in entirely unique special editions mostly from Japan, is an extremely silly thing to have. At some point, a deal was struck within my mind. If we have a kid or are looking to upgrade beyond our starter home, I’ll add to the baby war chest or house search downpayment. Jokes on me, we’re currently staring down both at once. The kid in October and the house… hopefully before then. Greater perspective, as always, makes things a little bit easier. I made $3,000 on the ones I’ve sold so far & have more to go. It’s not really about the money but there is a point to be made in there somewhere. In part, the hyper commercialization of retro video gaming as hobby in a post-lockdown world created most of that money for me. In escaping the trap, I somehow still benefit from it.
I think there is potentially something beautiful about giving something a second life as an object of desire that is unique to yourself, your interests and your own lived experience. There’s no other reason I would ever want to own a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Nintendo Gamecube besides the fact that I owned it as a kid and was way more entertained by it than I had any right to be. I just played it again recently: holy shit it’s awful. I think it’s hilarious. One day, I will release it from an open hand.
If I could impart one part of wisdom on someone trapped in these hobby spaces with me, it’s this: the hobby has to serve you. It’s becoming more and more trite perhaps, and I’m ruining the potential mystique writing can hold. But apparently people need to hear it. As I look around our hyper-captalist society full of companies floundering for ways to extract more and more dollars from us, they’ve realized the hobbyists and collectors and obsessives are the last remaining bastion. This is no secret – whales have upheld the most predatory of hobby industries for some time now. It was inevitable that the shark would wake up and sniff out things like retro video game collecting and Magic: The Gathering. Hyper premium collectibles to chase, creating artificial scarcity, introducing grading to communities that never interacted with them before are just a few ways one can scope creep the “prestige” of a hobby that used to be about something else. Make sure it’s serving you, that you’re getting what you want out of it. A Silver Scroll Force of Will won’t make your life better than having $1,100 in a savings account.
The joy of the chase is better than the reward of owning—it is this philosophy that keeps the capitalization of collecting alive. The trading card model recognized this from the very beginning, getting people to crack packs in hopes of glimpsing the perfect Baseball Boy for their collection. Magic took it one step further—amping up the appeal of ownership through pure utility. What if something is made specifically desirable, artificially rare, to incentivize people to have a fear of missing out from the experience of owning it? So much so that they are willing to skip the chase, be mad they weren’t allowed to avoid this laborious step, and hand the money directly to the original producer of a thing exploiting their interests and loves? It’s a miracle that Secret Lair took 25 years to come into being. It’s the first time I’ve seen Wizards of the Coast purposefully make the same “mistake” over and over again because the complainers return to the well continually, praying for their chance to spew $30 to $400 for the right to expand their collection sorting backlog. This is not to say that cracking packs is some kind of higher calling—I’ve been buying singles in person and online like everyone else for over 15 years. But at least those are cards I specifically chose for specific aims rather than feeling compelled to click “purchase” on a product created For Me.
In my last Hipsters piece, I closed by asking myself why I purchased The Forgetful Fish Secret Lair. Was it the incredible new art? Was it really just because I wanted to own the two foil Vision Charms without having to buy them as singles? They were $50 a pop before the deck got in everyone’s hands. Jokes on me, they cost $5 now. Did I want to abstractly support the idea of a Forgetful Fish deck existing? Realistically, I think I just wanted to not be left out. A guy known for his love of DanDan should have this, or something dumb like that. I still do regret participating in this system that I personally greatly dislike. It’s the third Secret Lair I ever picked up. I took out the Vision Charms and now it lives in my cabinet with all the other too-many Magic cards collecting dust.
I’ve been working on downsizing the size of my wife and I’s Magic collection for some time. Years, really. There is just so much of it and I’m personally a bit too value-obsessed to let it all go at once. The process has excavated plenty of memories along the way. Draft chaff from Dragons of Tarkir which I opened well over a case of in high school. Playset of Game Day promo Languishes that I loved to cast in a Pro-Tour-meta-only deck that I insisted on trying to use at the LGS. Dynavolt Towers, well over 50 extra Sol Rings (how does that happen?), Rampant Growths, uncountable Dismal Backwaters. Somehow I convinced myself at some point that it was worth it for me to stash these away rather than sell them or hand them off to someone else or, gasp, dump them in the trash like the printed cardboard they are. So sell them I have, slowly but surely. There’s plenty of random $20 cards somehow mixed into the mulch. It’s unspeakably freeing to look at a card that for one reason or another I’ve looked at several times before and decided to keep, only to throw it away. I am free of its clutches now. I no longer am taking up space in my life with an arbitrary piece of paper that for some reason had a grip on me. I was serving them, not the other way around. I’m finally adjusting.
Of course, this is all relatively minor. My Magic collection, once comically huge, had already been whittled down to a few long boxes, something like 12 Commander decks, and a weird trade binder I hadn’t broken out in public since the COVID shutdown. Another pass to clean out the stuff that I’ve realized that, while I may in theory care about, it no longer serves me. I would rather have the buck in my pocket, another two foot square spot under my sofa opened up, and one less box to carry to the next house. The memories I had with them will live on just fine within my head. I can always buy another Game Day promo Languish if the mood strikes.
It is shockingly hard on my mental health to do this. In learning to let go the things that have in many ways defined me in the strange new world I found myself in after the COVID lockdowns came to an unceremonious halt, it feels as if I hold myself in an open hand rather than the tight and controlled fist that has been the norm for so long. “I was consumerist before it was cool.” What a baby.
Barnes & Noble has a special edition of every single fantasy book I’ve ever loved or hated. The “Secret Lair x Marvel’s Deadpool: I Fixed It (You’re Welcome) Pool Party Foil Edition” is still in stock two months after release. Marvel’s Spider-Man, one of the “best selling sets of all time” rots on LGS shelves. I receive $1,300 from an online buylisting service, liquidating around 500 “EDH-playable” cards I’ve been holding onto for years for no good reason. Goblin Storm, a Secret Lair Commander deck with art by the ever-popular Wizard of Barge sells out instantly. The artist, Dakota, mentions he’d rather people bootleg the deck than pay scalpers. He doesn’t know what he’s done. I’m gonna spend some of that $1,300 on the perfect lamp to better illuminate my shelf of 124 Gamecube games. It will bump a fifth lighting fixture to the garage collection.
If you help me move them, the DanDan Secret Lair is yours to keep.
Callahan Jones (he/him) is not a content creator. He’s a Gamecube collector, Dandân fanatic and occasionally, very occasionally, has a thought to share about Magic: The Gathering. Follow his pursuits on Bluesky or on his personal Substack.