The Cull: Growing Older in a Hobby Built on Hope
I have been playing board games my whole life but have been collecting board games since 2006. I quickly learned there was a distinct difference between the two. There’s a moment in every collector’s life when the floor becomes a confessional, and you have run out of space. Between movies, hats, sunglasses, miniatures, paints, 3D printing/printers, I am busting at the seams with ‘stuff’ and can no longer house it all, and I do not want to give in to a storage unit.
My priorities have shifted; I am not the same player I was when I bought them. I think 20 years of hoarding games like a dragon with gold was a great run. A wise woman once said, “You can’t get new stuff if you ain’t got no room.”
The Hopeful Collector
There was a time when buying a game wasn’t about today. It was about the group I might have and the weekend I might host. Each purchase was optimism wrapped in hope. Every game acquired was a possible opportunity to laugh, learn, and grow as a gamer. Not to toot my own horn, but I am REAL good at finding a deal. New or used, I rarely pay market price, and when I worked at GameStop, I was able to turn the free games they provided me into board games. I spent time staring at my boardgame shelves, and I started dipping into my hopes, dreams, memories, and acquisition achievements. And so began the great cull of 2026. Phase one initiated.
The Shelf Analysis
I stared at the collection. Looking at each shelf, and analyzed and weighed what I knew about each game. A few questions I asked myself:
- Why did I buy this?
- What was the plan?
- Is that plan still real?
- Would this get played in the next 12 months?
- Does this fit who we are now?
And here is the important part: I said it out loud
The Performance
My wife and I carved out time on a Saturday night after running errands all day. We grabbed a beer, some snacks, and I began a thorough presentation of each game I had chosen to possibly get culled. Explaining each game in detail, based on my initial shelf analysis.
Highlights of my pitches:
- “I bought this because it was popular at the time.”
- “I bought this because I wanted to play with my partner.”
- “I bought this because my favorite reviewer raves about it.”
- “I bought this because it came with a big bundle second hand and why pass it up?”
Explaining each game forced honesty. I gave each game their own little eulogy. Letting my wife be the final verdict if she believes we will ever play it.
The Results
I pulled 30 games from the basement. 7 are being kept: a few racing games and super sentimental ones stay. They don’t have the highest ratings, they are not the most complex, not the most prestigious, but the ones that felt like us. Start as a player, then a collector and hopeful, and if you live long enough, you become a curator. I can make this shift from a collector to a curator. I don’t need to represent the top 100 in every genre and every mechanic. I need it to represent my table, my people, my pace of life, and my energy.
“I think it’s for the ‘greater good’ to move them onto the great board game shelf in the sky”
- Matt Miner 2026