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The Great Sale Remembered
Jan. 12th, 2019 03:53 pmNeither Kirsten nor I are hoarders. You can walk into our apartment and it will be a little cluttered, sure, but you can navigate the space without resorting to tunnels, having to clamber over furniture, or dodging unstable towers of junk. But there is clutter, and I've been in a years-long battle with it.
The problem stems from our hobbies. We are both avid readers, so books pile up and we are torn by the thought of getting rid of them. We are both passionate about music, so we have stacks and stacks of CDs. Same goes for the DVDs of our "must-have" movies and TV shows. Kirsten knits and crochets so there is yarn everywhere and she also makes candles, requires another set of supplies that need to be stored.
Me? I play role-playing games. I've been playing, running, and writing for games since 1977 when my brother Craig bout the science-fiction RPG Traveller home from a convention. His gaming group didn't want to play it, so I became his test subject and was hooked from the start. I started collecting materials for RPGs and playing at every opportunity.
But here's the thing about gaming. Unlike a traditional board game like Monopoly, where you buy a set and are done, the money in RPGs comes from selling more and more books, adventures and accessories to the customer. Traveller, as an example, came in a black box with three little black books, each measuring 5½ x 8¾ inches and each having 48 pages. That was enough to get a game going, but the players wanted more and Game Designers Workshop, the publisher - wanted our money. So a stream of books followed that over time established an official setting. Licesened third-party designers added to the mix.
By the time I was sixteen I had three cardboard bank boxes filled with nothing but Traveller material. That wasn't counting my other games. That stuff followed me through my life until I took a look around my apartment one day in late 2009 and realized that we had far too much for our living space. I bought a book titled "It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff" by Peter Walsh, and began studying.
One of the most important things I learned is holding onto things because "I have good memories attached to the item" or "Someday I might use it again" were toxic. I looked at my RPG collection - which at that point filled about ten feet of bookshelves - and decided that if I was going to get serious about reducing the clutter in my life, I had to cut where it would hurt the most: my game collection.
But how to do it? Trying to sell everything on eBay would be long and involved, and could end up being more hassle than it was worth. Renting a table at the local game store for one of their flea market days might work, but I've been to those and see that most stuff doesn't move. I sat down to think through the problem logically. What was my goal here? Remove most of my collection. Not making a tone of money. After that, it was clear.
In January 2010 I announced The Great Sale on my social media and on several RPG mailing lists. The rules were simple. I posted a list of everything that was for sale, and interested parties were to mail me with a list of what they wanted and an offer. I set no prices and made it clear that I wanted this stuff gone, so no even slightly reasonable offer would be refused. Name your price plus shipping. Then I sat back and waited.
Before I knew it I was getting inundated with offers. Som,e were quite reasonable, offering close to the expected price of the items. Some were bold, claiming a dozen things or more for a very low price. A few were amazing, offering $70 or more for a single copy of an old gaming book or magazine. In the end, I accepted every offer with a smile. Because along with achieving my goal of decluttering, I was helping others fill in their collections at their own price.
There were a couple of people who couldn't handle the concept of telling me what they wanted to pay, and one guy who got angry that I wasn't selling this stuff on eBay where he could "bid on it honestly" which gave me a few laughs, but in a few short weeks, I reduced the pile of stuff drastically, made a few hundred bucks, and felt ready to tackle the rest of the problem.
Be decluttering is an on-going process. Since 2010 I've held two more Great Sales, further winnowing the RPG collection down to size. Today, I keep games I play, run, wrote for, and anything I have credit in or I feel is an exemplary bit of writing that I can use in my own work.
The apartment is still cluttered, but the clutter is under control.
The problem stems from our hobbies. We are both avid readers, so books pile up and we are torn by the thought of getting rid of them. We are both passionate about music, so we have stacks and stacks of CDs. Same goes for the DVDs of our "must-have" movies and TV shows. Kirsten knits and crochets so there is yarn everywhere and she also makes candles, requires another set of supplies that need to be stored.
Me? I play role-playing games. I've been playing, running, and writing for games since 1977 when my brother Craig bout the science-fiction RPG Traveller home from a convention. His gaming group didn't want to play it, so I became his test subject and was hooked from the start. I started collecting materials for RPGs and playing at every opportunity.
But here's the thing about gaming. Unlike a traditional board game like Monopoly, where you buy a set and are done, the money in RPGs comes from selling more and more books, adventures and accessories to the customer. Traveller, as an example, came in a black box with three little black books, each measuring 5½ x 8¾ inches and each having 48 pages. That was enough to get a game going, but the players wanted more and Game Designers Workshop, the publisher - wanted our money. So a stream of books followed that over time established an official setting. Licesened third-party designers added to the mix.
By the time I was sixteen I had three cardboard bank boxes filled with nothing but Traveller material. That wasn't counting my other games. That stuff followed me through my life until I took a look around my apartment one day in late 2009 and realized that we had far too much for our living space. I bought a book titled "It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff" by Peter Walsh, and began studying.
One of the most important things I learned is holding onto things because "I have good memories attached to the item" or "Someday I might use it again" were toxic. I looked at my RPG collection - which at that point filled about ten feet of bookshelves - and decided that if I was going to get serious about reducing the clutter in my life, I had to cut where it would hurt the most: my game collection.
But how to do it? Trying to sell everything on eBay would be long and involved, and could end up being more hassle than it was worth. Renting a table at the local game store for one of their flea market days might work, but I've been to those and see that most stuff doesn't move. I sat down to think through the problem logically. What was my goal here? Remove most of my collection. Not making a tone of money. After that, it was clear.
In January 2010 I announced The Great Sale on my social media and on several RPG mailing lists. The rules were simple. I posted a list of everything that was for sale, and interested parties were to mail me with a list of what they wanted and an offer. I set no prices and made it clear that I wanted this stuff gone, so no even slightly reasonable offer would be refused. Name your price plus shipping. Then I sat back and waited.
Before I knew it I was getting inundated with offers. Som,e were quite reasonable, offering close to the expected price of the items. Some were bold, claiming a dozen things or more for a very low price. A few were amazing, offering $70 or more for a single copy of an old gaming book or magazine. In the end, I accepted every offer with a smile. Because along with achieving my goal of decluttering, I was helping others fill in their collections at their own price.
There were a couple of people who couldn't handle the concept of telling me what they wanted to pay, and one guy who got angry that I wasn't selling this stuff on eBay where he could "bid on it honestly" which gave me a few laughs, but in a few short weeks, I reduced the pile of stuff drastically, made a few hundred bucks, and felt ready to tackle the rest of the problem.
Be decluttering is an on-going process. Since 2010 I've held two more Great Sales, further winnowing the RPG collection down to size. Today, I keep games I play, run, wrote for, and anything I have credit in or I feel is an exemplary bit of writing that I can use in my own work.
The apartment is still cluttered, but the clutter is under control.
