Around a decade or so I finally moved out of my parents house and after fully unpacking I realized that I couldn't find my big binder of Sega discs. I wasn't sure if they'd been loaned out before the move and forgotten, left behind, lost in the act of moving, or purposely stolen by someone that was assisting with the move. I repeatedly asked the family if they'd seen a large tote of my stuff because those games were important and was constantly told that they hadn't seen them but they'd let me know if they turned up...
A few days ago I'm in bed sick and texting my brother about my most recent purchases, a few of the games that were part of my childhood collection and how I've got new labels coming in for an original X-Box I'm collaborating on and he says that he found my old X-Box, at this point I don't really care, I've got 2 original 'Boxes here in my game room, I don't need that one anymore but I mention that what I really want would be my old Saturn and Dreamcast discs, cause I recently bought another copy of House of the Dead on Saturn and it cost and arm and a leg and that copy of Burning Rangers I've been eyeing is nearly $300 fora disc only copy. Then he sends a text that says he found my games. I ask which, he says Saturn and Dreamcast.
Within half an hour I'm at my parent's house loading up dozens of old Sega games (Genesis, 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast), 3 old consoles (each of which I've bought two more of in the last 5 years), my old Samsung GXTV, and an assortment of other random things. Words cannot express how happy I was to get my old dust covered stuff back and squeeze it into my cramped game room. In the last half decade I've spent a couple thousand dollars replacing these items and hadn't purchased a quarter of it. My collection is restored. There's so few retro games I still want to buy because these are the ones I was searching for.
My inner child is overjoyed. I had to reach out to my childhood best friend and offer him a portion of the spoils since some of those games were originally his and others were ones he enjoyed and now I have spares. At this point collecting is going from buying games to purchasing boxes and manuals so everything looks great on display. I switched to ODEs and flash carts for the games I want to play years ago so now my originals can be cleaned and put in boxes so they won't have any additional wear on them.
