I was talking to a fellow STCer a little while back and thought it might be fun to kinda share images of collections or awesome gaming setups.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v87/D … m%20Setup/

Anyone else interested??

I really have pumped waaaaay to much money into the stuff in my room.

Imagine all of your stuff being replaced by books. That's about what my place looks like. I've got about 500 DVD's and that may seem like a lot, but they are rendered insignificant by the 2,000+ books.

now imagine all your cds, dvds, and books together,, except they're all dolls.. thats what our place looks like.
and its not limited to one room either.

Mine, too. Except imagine instead of dolls, they're Gundam models.

Mine too.

Except instead of Gundam, they're Swedish Bikini-models, a whole damn house full of them.

Honest.

Here's my gaming room:

http://picasaweb.google.com/MisterCrash … 4136610770

i need to clarify,, not my own dolls, but ceiling stacked cartons of our inventory for pullipstyle lining nearly every non-windowed wall. (except for the dining room,, which is filled with a 10' x 3 ' bunny cage) We only bought our condo 3 years ago but we've already been looking at houses (in AZ) for the past 6 months.

jesus crash,, do you get noise complaints from neighbors? that room is definitely not bunny friendly, as it would be cord-nibblin' central...

I don't think I would call 500 DVDs insignificant. Even if you have 2000 books, 500 CDs is 25%, and that's statistically VERY significant. So, what kind of books do you have? Paperbacks? Do you care about quality? I've known bibliophiles who couldn't care less as to the condition of the book, etc. and other bibliophiles that are very picky about their books and publishers.

cheers,

-avatar!

Fury, I'm proud to say I recognize each and every of the games in your collection!

But, man, you need to alphabetize those things, and maybe clean up those beer bottles, man! Maybe do a little dusting? No offense, just sayin'.

I, myself, was at one point, going to make a video tour of my room, and post it on my FB page...I suppose I'll get around to it, if I can ever get my camera to work again...

Hehe too awesome. I actually forgot to photograph my Xbox collection and my Strat but thats ok. Those "beer" bottles are actually Vintage Mountain Dew bottles. The games are actually arranged by series and timeline wise. For instance in my fighting game drawer Art of Fighting, then Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 1, Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 2, Garou Mark of the Wolves etc. Some collections like Megaten in my PS2 RPG drawer aren't complete because I'm lending those games out right now ^___^

Yeah my room needs some good dusting but what room doesn't hah.

Here is actually a list of the games I own in my room.

http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&lid= … &mode=vown

Crash I envy your solid steel setup. I love those freaking posters on your ceiling too. Much class. How much did those speakers set you back?

DUDE, those kinds of things need to be on proper display, like in a glass case, or maybe get those things mounted on a wood plaque base, or something!

Yeah I agree. They also obscure my KoF AST collection.

I do love me some Mountain Dew.

Yeah, one of our cats loves to chew cords too.  She is not allowed in that room unsupervised.

The IIDX posters come from years of collecting them on YJA.  I've got all the arcade posters from 4th Style to Sirius, but my 6th Style poster got a little mangled when I got it laminated.  I've also got all the PS2 posters from 8th Style to DJ Troopers.

As for the speakers...well, they weren't cheap.  I spend WAY too much money on audio gear.  It's so embarrassing, I think I'm going to need the spoiler tag for this.  I paid $13,000 for them used, which is around 60% off the original price.

The scary thing is that I also ordered a CD transport and DAC made by the same company, which should be coming in the next couple weeks.  The retail price for those two items is around $50,000.  Granted, I'm not paying anywhere near that much, but they will still top the price of the speakers.

so crash,, you done with your mortgage? If you tell me you aren't a homeowner yet and you're spending that kinda money on speakers, we're going to be obligated to smack the crap outta you.

I have decided against homeownership for several reasons:

1. I'm permanently nomadic.  I haven't lived at the same address for more than two years since I left high school.  It doesn't make sense for me to buy a home if I'm going to move every year or two.

2. Homes can be very illiquid assets, and if you need to sell your home (say, because of a new job in a different city) at a time when the housing market is in the doldrums, you are hosed.

3. I am anti-leverage.  I just don't like the idea of having small percentage drops in home values resulting in huge losses.  I'm not necessarily against paying for a home in cash and owning it outright, but I do not want a mortgage.

4. My circumstances constantly change, and when they do, I can adjust my housing needs.  If I lose my job, I can easily move someplace cheaper without having to worry about not being able to pay the mortgage.  If I end up needing more space because of an addition to the family, that's not a problem either.  When we last tried looking at homes to buy five years ago, every home that we looked at seemed to be for sale because the owners had another child, and their old home was now too small for them.  Given the high transaction costs of buying and selling a home, it seemed strange that they would buy a home only to have to move a couple years later when their circumstances changed.  I much prefer the flexibility of renting.

5. Where I live, even if you owned a home outright, you would still have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $600-$1,000 per month in property taxes and HOA fees.  Yes, property taxes are tax-deductible, but that only partially offsets those costs.  And yes, rent prices take these costs into account, but you would be surprised at how little money is actually going to the owner once their costs are taken into account.

6. This is going to sound strange, but in my mind, interest rates are too low to get a mortgage right now.  The only reason home prices have stabilized is because interest rates have been kept artificially low, which has not allowed home prices to fall to their true values.  The new homebuyer credit has also led to an artificial inflation in home prices.  At this point, home prices are still too high, and when interest rates start to rise, home prices should fall.

I'm not saying that no one should own a home.  I'm just saying that, in my situation, a home is not the right investment.  I'm more interested in making sure my retirement is well-funded.  I've basically socked away the statutory maximum into my 401(k) for years now, and I expect to continue to do so.  If I want to buy a home once I retire, that shouldn't be a problem.

Sounds like you have a swell time. Yes indeed, a swell time.

Approximately 90% science fiction (mixture of paperbacks and hard covers); the remainder is non-fiction. The most expensive books in my collection are a few by R.A. Lafferty; I actually paid $100 for one of them. The only reason why I paid so much is because most bookstores wanted more than $300. Lafferty's books typically have one printing, which doesn't help people that just want to read them. It's great for bookstores, though.

  A lot of my books were purchased in lots, so the quality is not very good. I'm more of a reader than a collector and if I could trade them in for digital versions, then I would do so. Books are heavy and occupy a lot of space.

  The most prized books in my collection are 'Hello Summer, Goodbye' and 'I Remember Pallahaxi'. I had to special order them from a bookstore in England, at a cost of around $115. There are 200 signed copies and 500 unsigned copies, for 700 total. Although I didn't request them, I got the signed versions. The reason why those books are important to me is because 'Hello Summer, Goodbye' (a.k.a. 'Rax') is one of the first sci-fi books I ever read (around 1994). I badly wanted to know what happened to the characters, but the author died in 2005. In 2007, the sequel 'I Remember Pallahaxi' was posthumously published.

i love your AoF poster.

So you're not going to get an e-reader? I'm sure lots of sci-fi books are available. Myself, I prefer physical books, even if they do take up more room. Even though I'm a scientist, I've read very little sci-fi. I do want to read more classic sci-fi though. I did read Dune a year or two ago and really enjoyed it. Also read Asimov's "The God's Themselves" (also very good, although the ending was too brash).

cheers,

-avatar!

Collections:

DVDs: http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&lid= … &mode=vown
Games: http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&owne … lid=100018
VGM: http://vgmdb.net/db/collection.php?do=view&userid=256

My collection is spread across the globe (most of it in the Netherlands, the rest here in Japan) so taking pictures of the entire thing is not possible, but I DO have a nifty collection page at IGN, like Mr. Winchester above me, which will have to do:

http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&lid=1&owner=Zolbrod

I'm not going to get an e-reader any time soon. If there existed a trade in initiative that consisted of straight swaps of digital downloads for physical books, then I'd sign up. But there exists no such thing. The first book one purchases for an e-reader is the cost of the e-reader plus the cost of the book, which makes e-books fantastically more expensive than physical books. However, I am very interested in an e-reader. This is because I do a pretty good job of remembering what I have read and like to re-read certain passages. Physical books do not provide one with a search function; an e-reader does. I would argue, though, that the lack of an e-reader helps to improve my memory. I can actually walk up to my bookshelf and open certain books to the exact page that interests me. That takes a fairly good memory, which would be atrophied by an e-reader.

Although I haven't read anything yet by Olaf Stapledon, he is apparently the man. The stuff he wrote inspired the authors of the 'Golden Age'. Since you're already familiar with Asimov, I'd recommend picking up his "Before the Golden Age" series of books. That's as classic as it gets. Asimov collects the stories that inspired him as a youngster, mostly from the 1930s, shortly after the phrase science fiction was coined. It can thus be argued that anything written before 1926 or so was not science fiction, even if it fits the definition, simply because the definition did not exist. H.G. Wells probably wasn't consciously writing science fiction when he produced the 'Time Machine', as an example. I'm honestly not sure what science fiction was called before the definition came about in the late 1920s. It would be interesting to question my great grandfather on the subject, because he was reading H.G. Wells before 1926, but he's quite dead.

So it runs in my family. My great grandfather used to read H.G. Wells and my uncle and mom were avid readers, and it has spread to me. My brother ignores it. My dad won't touch it. So it's not for everyone, but if you love it, you seem to love it permanently.

One of the problems with science fiction is that about 50 years ago it became too large for any one person to know entirely. These days, the situation is hopeless. Both of us, we can read science fiction for 30 years and never run across the same book. We can each feel we confidently know the field and not once have ever read the same book. That's how big it is. My cousin often tells me about the sci-fi he reads and I have no idea what he's talking about. He's into many authors I have never even heard of.

My main focus in science fiction is that produced from 1930 to 1980. I will never even start to scratch the surface. The books are very easy to acquire and often ridiculously cheap, but the amount of output from those brief 50 years is staggering.

Some relatively unknown authors you must check out are Daniel Galouye, R.A. Lafferty, Robert Sheckley, and William Tenn. When I think of writing sci-fi myself, I wonder how I can ever begin to compete with what those 4 guys have written. In all seriousness, what can be done? They've already done it. This is how I feel:

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

Threw up a few pictures of my collection.  The pictures didn't turn out nearly as well as I'd hoped (blurry screen on the TV, flash prevents you from reading half the spines of games) but I'm too lazy to redo them.  Will update once I've moved to a new place!

http://www.highlyderivative.net/~joe/Collection/

Is that the Serge statue that Palisade's was working on? I didn't think it was ever released . . . .

Nice setup you have, though.

Edit: Panzer Dragoon Saga and Dragonforce, nice. I look forward to continue never owning those gems. ;_;

All those great Wii games, and Punch-Out!! isn't among any of them.  Angie am cry.

thats what i need,, furniture with glass doors...
so much bunny fur everywhere, a box of swiffer duster refills barely lasts a week...
of course we bought all black ikea shelving and the buns are all white...

I don't have any games in this pic but this is my main setup for gaming and tv/movie watching...

http://twitpic.com/15whvd

It's a Kotobukiya (artfx series, I think) statue - they made Serge, Lynx, and Kidd.  I remember they were SUPER expensive when the game first came out, but I managed to get the Serge for like $45 during that period for merchandise where you're just long enough from release that the interest has kind of died down, but not long enough that everything is super rare and expensive.  There are a couple on ebay now for like $400, which is pretty nuts.  Easily my favorite collectible in my collection, since I LOVE his character design for some reason.

Panzer Dragoon Saga ties with Dracula X for my most expensive game purchase ($100 each - back in like 2001), while Dragon Force was only something like $40 or 50.  Has that spiked in value since?

Yeah, as weird as it may seem from my being such a big Nintendo fan, I've never really liked the Punch-Out series.  Not really sure why.

Just wanted to bump this thread with my new cd shelves

http://dancey.pairsite.com/img/cdShelves

Materials:

4 x Benno CD Shelves (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90133982)
2 x Billy Byom Glass Doors (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00133967) 15 3/4" x  76 3/8"

... cut a little off the bottom of two of them and screw them top to bottom and you have what you're looking at.  I was constantly disappointed by Ikea's lack of proper CD Shelving so I made my own.  The Billy Byom bookshelves with glass doors look really good except they're TOO DEEP for CDs (and buying backing pieces is just a waste of space...), and the Benno CD cases just aren't tall / fancy enough.  Voila.  Perfection. 

Now... Looks like I might have to buy more because I'm running out of space to put new cds. -_-;

I have to thank you Amazingu... I thought my list was nuts at 162 items. I feel a little better now.

So...Is there a reason the SNES gray shell always turned a yellowish tint over the years?  Was it cheap plastic?  I think it's pretty funny when you look at the old Super Famicoms that have turned color specifically due to all the chain smoking that went along with them

The answer:

The ABS plastic used in the casing of some older SNES consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidization on exposure to air, likely due to an incorrect mixture of the stabilizing or flame retarding additives. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a "two-tone" effect results.

Always happy to make people feel better about themselves through my nerdiness

I do have several games twice (English & Japanese) though, and the list also contains all Downloadable PSN/XBLA stuff I have, but at least it doesn't contain any roms or bootlegs.

Bumping this 7-year-old thread with some pictures from my collection.  Most of this is old stuff in nice condition:

https://imgur.com/a/0b0Ng