On ebay and Mortality...

Misaka-san is just too cute for words, imo. ^^;

For about 8 months now I've been on and off heavily selling things on ebay. Now all of these have been personal possessions, nothing retailed to me and resold by me, no flea market trawling and reselling, etc. At first I was really resistant to selling certain things -- my videogame collection for one was something that two, three years ago I couldn't even fathom selling. As time marched forward though, even stuff I thought of as "out of the question" when I started up in August of last year has come into play as fair game (even that aforementioned videogame collection).

And then I thought about it as I was going to post my "NES and 56 games" for sale today. My rationalization behind hoarding games and DVDs and anime and movies and whatever else to this point has always been either: "What if I want to watch/play this again someday?" or, "This is in my backlog, I can't get rid of it!" I don't know if I'm beginning to lose that "invincible youth" feeling or recognizing that I don't have all the time in the world or whatever, but certainly some part of me has recognized some degree of mortality in this world. i.e. - If I haven't even opened up Silent Hill 4 from xmas of 2005, I doubt I will ever get around to playing it. Same with playing the classics. Chances are, if I want to play Zelda 1 or 2 again, I will play it on an emulator, or digitally get it for the Wii (should I ever get a Wii). I do have a limited amount of time on this earth, and I never really thought about it in such a measurement as having games stockpiled, having 2-3 seasons worth of anime to watch at a time, etc. I want to experience a lot of things, and there simply won't ever be enough time to do so with every little thing that I want to.

That said, even things that I once considered "sacred" and therefore unsalable are even making way for more dosh in the wallet and more space in the drawer. I don't see a point in keeping my Castlevania games, of which 3 DS titles were sold last week. I like aesthetically pleasing things, don't get me wrong, but the days of me liking seeing a wall of games is kinda gone. Just like manga, I sold all of my manga off last year since I had read most of it and it was just taking up space. Perhaps when/if I ever move to Japan I'll replenish what I bought with sleeker Japanese language volumes. The funny thing is, I used to be a TOTAL packrat. I'd find the smallest reason to keep anything and everything. I kept the manga because I liked looking at all of those similar spines lined up side-by-side. But just like that *snap*, I changed directions. I look at the stuff I collect now, and how much more aesthetically pleasing it is than a gray cartridge with a sticker and title on it, but then I think, "Will I want to get rid of this someday?" I have not even the slightest idea, because a lot of the stuff I had was from childhood/being a teenager is what I'm selling off now, and I've leveled off as far as impulse purchases for the most part. So who knows, in 20-30 years I will probably have returned Robocco/Beerbot to his native shores, should I fulfill my heart's desire. ^^; Even now, it's sorta funny that I'm thinking about 20-30 years down the road and my possessions, but as I said above, I guess that's how people contemplate their mortality. Through odd channels because the don't want to deal with the fact of getting older in any "real" sort of way.

Honestly and moreover ironically, I would probably still be packratting away all of the shit I sold, had I not dug deeper into my Japan fetish. If there existed a machine that would take the plastic and materials of an NES cartridge and made it into a Shana figure for instance, it would just be cutting out the middle man here. I've saved quite a bit of money, but I've recycled a lot of stuff that I was packratting away into more hobby-oriented stuff. Basically, I took stuff I merely was okay with having around, turned it into cash, and then bought items of better taste with it, and socked the rest away for a rainy day. And bought an XBox 360. =P