RPGs in the Secondary Market.

I have been spending a lot of time on Ebay in the last week, both as a buyer and as a Seller. It should come as no surprise to anyone what most of what I am buying and selling are RPG books, primarily 1st and 2nd edition AD&D books. There are a few things that I would like to point out to the general populace about AD&D books in the secondary market.

1) Not Every book is "Rare!". It makes me laugh every time I see this denotation on a book like the 2nd edition players handbook, particularly when there are at least ten other auctions for the exact same book. There are truly some rare AD&D books out there, but you should really do some research about which ones are, before you begin throwing that particular descriptor around.

2) Gamers, in general, have an amazing amount of discretionary income. You will have your auction sniped, and see books that you want go for many times what you think they are worth. If you are hunting for one specific book, you are most likely going to have to be patient, or be willing to throw the kind of money down that the other fanboys are, which can be a very expensive process depending on the kind of books you are hunting.

3) The best auctions are done by people who are not gamers. Often people will be selling a book collection they found in someone's attic or as part of some sort of estate sale. These people will usually know nothing of what they are actually selling, and will typically sell things in a big lot. You may have to purchase things that you already own to get that one special book that is in the lot, but you can always sell the ones you don't want yourself and make some of the money back.

4) The best time to purchase items, is when an edition change is made. I can remember when 3.0 came out, I was able to buy some peoples entire 2nd edition collections from them for less than $100. People tend to gravitate to the next new thing, and generally make decisions about getting rid of their old stuff in a very impulsive manner. I recommend taking advantage of those impulses and shear the sheep for whatever they let you. :)

The sad thing about continuing to play old school games, is knowing that the days of being able to walk into a book or game store and simply purchase your gaming books is long past. We have no real choice than to depend on sites like ebay and amazon to help build our collections and to replace books that have been ravaged by time. It is heartening to me, however, to see that auctions for these games is still active. This may be the biggest sign of the life of the old school games.