Last weekend I spent a lot of time going through my old collections; LEGO and Nintendo collections. A lot of my childhood consisted of playing with both and consequently there’s a ton of stuff that has risen in value over the years, but also never really comes out of our storage. So, I took it upon myself to go through all of it and putting up some very rare and old items up for sale.

Brick by brick

One of the biggest problems with my old LEGO stuff is that all of the bricks and pieces are spread over several containers and boxes, making it quite a time extensive job to try and find certain pieces if I’m trying to rebuild all of the older sets. So far I’ve completed two of the larger Pirates sets, and most of the smaller ones, but I am missing some stuff, still. Minifigures, certain types of bricks, or plates. I really hope most of those will surface at some point or another, because it would be a big shame if I can’t sell the sets complete.

One thing that is fun about this, though, is that in rebuilding most sets, there’s a challenge of finding those bricks and it’s a very mindful activity too! I get to have the fun of rebuilding my childhood memories and hopefully make other collectors happy with that and so far I’ve found it very fulfilling. I also found out that the older sets’ instructions are quite a bit harder to figure out. You have to compare the images and see the differences and figure out which pieces are needed.

Further sorting

Besides going through all of my old LEGO, I’m also going through my old Nintendo collection. The part that’s been inside a box so long that I barely even knew I had some of it. Yesterday we put up the biggest find on sale: A Nintendo 64, Pikachu Edition. I was really glad that it sold for the price I had in mind and that it’s going to a fellow collector. The thing is, the Nintendo 64 was never really my thing and I bought it after the release of the GameCube, so I barely even touched it. All in all, it took me the entire afternoon yesterday to sort through all of it and take pictures. I’m hoping to sell the rest as swiftly as I did the console and that those games will reach the right people.

Sorting life

Going through all of my childhood “junk” I came to a realisation that although I’m still a collector, I find it easier to let go of those items that no longer “spark joy”, as Marie Kondo says so aptly. I think it has to do with a few things. The first is perspective. I’ve realised for years that joy and happiness don’t come from the stuff you own, or get. The other is that it only really matters if there’s a significant amount of memories attached to the things I’m putting up for sale. In the case of my N64 collection it’s simply that I never really cared that much for the system as some other Nintendo fans do. On the other hand, I am unlikely to part with my Game Boy Advance collection, because I loved that handheld to bits and even have a functional Game Boy Advance SP NES edition in my collection.

Last week I also wrote an article about not waiting for change to happen. After I wrote it, I signed up for the local gym and I’ve visited three times already! So it looks like I am sorting my life. Now this week I’ll probably need to take care of some other stuff I put off for some time now. The fact of the matter is that I’m getting the sense that everything is getting back on track and that this week would be great to finish some stuff I need to do for Stempels, while also starting writing on my new scifi story. I just need to stop feeling like I should do so much stuff and just take everything one step at a time.

Have a great week!

~Jeffrey