Starting a Boardgame Collection

You love board games. Each room of your house has its own featured board game and people go to you house to play those games. You constantly visit your local park to play chess in one of their permanent chess boards. Online, your membership to a community is solely based on the board games. Everyday you participate in a competition online and you constantly take care of your reputation. A game of scrabble, chess, monopoly and snakes and ladders are a daily routine in your life. The phrase “board game enthusiast” is an understatement if people want to describe you.

Yet playing the game is not anymore sufficient for you. You want to have more than just the excitement of playing the game. Slowly, you wanted to have more pieces to choose from. You might think yourself different but you are not the only one. There are many enthusiasts out there who are on a mission to have one of the best collection of board pieces in their area, if not the whole country.

In order for you to start collecting you must understand that board games have existed thousand of years before Christ was born. One of the oldest board games called the Senet were played by the Egyptians, both the royalty and commoners during the 3500BC. In the Brooklyn Museum, you can find one of the oldest artifacts of board games. Displayed there is the personal board of Senet of the late Egyptian Pharaoh, Amenhotep III who lived approximately from 1388 to 1351BC. It was only during the 20th century that people in U.S. became more aware of board games. After the 2nd World War, people had more time on their hands, and they decided to do something with their time that didn't require physical exertion. Board games were created and people soon became entangled to the hobby, just like you. The culmination of America's contribution to the board game is Bobby Fischer, who became the world chess champion in 1972.

Starting your board game collection is quite easy. If you like board games based on cartoon or comic book characters, you can find numerous sources online about it. There you can directly buy something from various online stores or bid through auction. Make sure these are authentic and don’t try to purchase anything without a complete description of the vintage board game you want to buy. On your end, you might want to build a shelf dedicated to board games. Make sure it’s a clean dry place to avoid degradation of materials, especially on board games that uses only hard cartons as boards.

Collect also classic board game materials such as checkers, scrabble, Chinese checkers, and of course chess. This may be pricey, and there is a great demand for these but with time and patience you can always get what you want. These pieces can come in rare and fragile materials such as crystals, ivories or hand carved wood. Make sure to purchase these from a reputable company if you don’t want to be ripped off for thousands of dollars.

You might also be interested in these articles:

• Collecting Board Games
• Starting a Board Game Collection
• History of Board Games
• Economics and the History of Board Games
• Board Game Tournaments in History
• Benefits of Board Games