Should you sell the past to fund the future: A gaming debate.

I am not sure how many of you will have done this and how many havent but have you ever sold your old games to buy ones for the next big thing? Now I dont mean have you swapped Xbox 360 game A for Xbox 360 game B at your local indy store while throwing in a few quid, what I am talking about is have you sold the games from an older machine to buy games for your latest machine for example did you sell your SNES games to buy either an N64 or N64 games, or did you sell your gamecube games (and maybe machine) to buy a Wii or Wii games.

I would like to say I have never done it but unfortunatly I have. In fact I can think of a few occasions where I did this. I know for a start I sold my first N64 and the about 8 games I had, this wasnt to get games for a newer machine though it was from pure economic needs. What made me decide to write this blog post though was when I looked at my original Xbox Games, the thought hit me, how many do I actually have. Well  just after I had finshed counting how many Xbox Games I have (101) I realised that this number was kind of an important number to me, it was important because it was a new high for how many original Xbox games I have owned at any one time. You see I got up to 100 Xbox games before I began to trade them in towards games for newer systems. At the time I didnt regret this as well I wanted the new stuff, I wasnt using the old and it seemed like a good idea but latter I came to regret my decisions, I then started to purchase original Xbox games again partly just to collect and partly to correct my ''lapse in judgment''. In one of my previous posts I talked about premeptive retro purchasing which I described as buying something which was considerd to old to be considerd hip and new but not old enough to yet be considerd retro. It is kind of the norm that a lot of people will sell there old games (and/or machine) either during the lead up to a new console release to help fund the purchase of this new purchase or just after its release to buy more games for it and when someone is young or just doesnt have much cash its a very understandable tactic, its understandable but its one I have decided I will never do again. I think that most of the time if you hold on to your games sure they will see a big drop in value but for some of them at least this will just be a downwards curve which is at some stage reversed.

So If I started collecting Xbox games again, I think an important question is have I ended up with the exact same games I originally had? No, in all honesty I cant remember exactly what I had in the first place, do I like what I have though Yes. I have a mix of stuff including some games I really adore and thats good enough for me. I did track down particular titles such as Grabbed By the Ghoulies, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, Max Payne, which I know I owned before and regretted selling but I have also gotten ahold of games I never had but wanted originally such as Marvel Vs Capcom 2.

So should you sell your old games from the past generation to help you get games for the next? I can fully see why people do it and I have done so in the past, I cant really knock people for it but in all honesty I really dont think its a good idea at all. I would argue that if you are going to sell your past games that you make sure you do it in a rational way, dont just run to a games shop with everything you own under your arms, stop and think about it. Have a look through what you have. Is anything in that pile likly to end up being worth a fortune in the none to distant future, well if so then dont sell it, is there anything in that pile that your going to either wish you could play again or even wish you just had for sentimental value (did someone get it you or does it in some way mean something to you) then if so dont sell it. If you are comfortable that its value is only going to drop and drop or that your getting such a good deal on it that you can live with it then as long as you know you wont miss it then yeah feel free to get rid of it but even then I would suggest you look at the best way to sell it, look how much several shops will offer you for it and look how much they sell it for, get an idea of its value then either go for the best price quoted or sell it yourself to a friend or through a facebook sales group or something on that sort of line. I suppose it helps if you remember how much you have spent on your games in the first place. I tend to get a lot of games second hand when I can for as little as I can manage and if you do this yourself it helps to ensure that whatever you sell your games for your loosing less because you invested less to start with, heck if your lucky sometimes you might even turn a small profit.