Moving sale
Filed under Love Your Geek on April 2, 2008
Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, eBay, Forgotten Realms
After two years of apartment life, we’re moving back into a house this weekend. We signed a year lease on a 1400sqft, 3 bed, 2 bath ranch with a small yard (but it’s right across from a large green-space park). The thought of just buying outright crossed our minds, but many signs point to next year being more optimal for us.
The larger space is much needed, and the kids are big enough that they’ll really benefit from having someplace outside to play as the weather gets nicer. It’s been tough to watch them stand on the deck (we’re on the second floor) and watch other kids play in the shared grassy area below. They’re too young to go without supervision, so having a private, fenced-in yard will give the parents some peace of mind.
My wife started boxing things up last week, leaving me with the responsibility of sorting through my things this week. I’ve inherited some pack rat tendencies from my folks, but moving is always a motivation for me to decide what I really need to hold on to and what I don’t want to lug around anymore.
With 4E looming on the horizon, my Dungeons & Dragons collection was a prime candidate for such a decision. I spent most of last night sorting through modules from the various editions, boxed sets, and 3E sourcebooks. Nostalgia fought hard, but future use and benefit won as the deciding factor.
What I kept:
- D&D Basic boxed sets (both the Erol Otus and the Larry Elmore covers): okay, these were really kept for nostalgia. In fact, I think I’m going to eventually try to reacquire the Expert sets as well. Or I may go home tonight and list these on eBay.
- D&D Basic modules B1-B6 (missing B5) and Expert modules X1, X5 and X6: while I may try to fill in some holes for nostalgia, I kept these because they are great inspiration for both stories and future campaigns/adventures.
- Various AD&D modules: I kept a mix of AD&D and 2E modules for inspiration and ideas.
- Forgotten Realms: I kept all of my Forgotten Realms books and boxed sets on the off-chance that I’ll ever write another novel for the setting.
- D&D 3.5 Core Rules: I really liked this incarnation of the game. I’m not sure I’ll ever play 3.5 again, but the work I’m doing on my own d00M RPS has me referring back to this material from time to time.
- D&D 3E modules: These include the Sunless Citadel series, Red Hand of Doom, and a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Everything else is for sale on eBay.
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April 2nd, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hey, congrats on getting a house! Everyone makes this sound so easy, but I’m only now just beginning to LEARN about doing that. Going to be a long road.
Digging up my stash of old D&D books is always a happy/sad kind of thing. I don’t think I could let any of it go.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Wow, that’s a ton of stuff. I don’t think I could let it go, I still have 2nd edition source books, as well as all the box sets (basic/expert/etc).
Some of those would help fill out my collection…. hmmm.
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:19 am
Sounds like a good move. I hope you all enjoy the new home and have good luck finding a place to buy when you start looking. We just sort of fell into it, but I really love our new home. Moving is never fun, though. We got rid of a lot of big stuff before we moved, donating some of it and giving some of it to family and friends who could make use of it better than we did. And I tossed every box of crap related to my Ph.D. pursuits, finally. There’s no going back, only forward now. I also culled my book collection for the second time — and you must understand that as a literature and languages academic, I have a lot of books — but I still have ended up with approximately 18-20 boxes of books… and two dinky bookshelves on which to set them up. The laws of physics working the way they do, that ain’t gonna work! I really don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve given up and gotten rid of a lot already.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 am
Heh, I found a box of graphic design books from my first 2.5 years of college. I need to lose those. And between my personal library, my wife’s photo albums and all the kids’ books, our two bookshelves are very crowded. A third is definitely needed.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I have three bookshelves full of books. One just holds all the fiction I’ve collected over the years, and the other is mostly textbooks from college that I can’t really bear to part with (after spending $60 on a book, it’s hard to let it go even if you know you are never going to open it again). The other is a hodgepodge of stuff (Shakespeare, D&D books, photo albums,etc). And those are just *mine*. Each child has a bookshelf, there is a smaller bookshelf in the spare bedroom, there are half a dozen boxes of books in my closet, and the downstairs area has several shelves of books.
Yeah, we have a TON of books. We could probably open a small library. And I’m NOT kidding.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I have never been good at getting rid of books. This tendency is not helped by the fact that every time I do I end up with a question within a month to which the answer is halfway down the right hand side of that page I marked with that purple sticky note in it. It gets even worse when my wife helpfully cleans out old piles or boxes of books and gets rid of said book with the purple sticky note.
I will stay far away from that ebay listing, though, because if I get any more indispensible books they may take my place in the house.
By the way, I have found that you can often get overhead kitchen cabinets for free on Craigslist. Take off the doors and hang them around the garage — VIOLA more bookshelves!
April 4th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
My garage is already full of shelving… for the other boxes of books we have.