by Justin Bell

I’m a deal hunter.

In part, this is because I have a somewhat limited amount of discretionary spend. I like to joke that “the kids ate all my money”, but this is somewhat aligned with reality…I’m surprised how often I realize that kids cost a LOT more than my imaginary New Parent Handbook told me they would cost. (I still cringe each time I think about how many times I had to buy new shoes for those kids when they were just a few years old. Clothing a child is an expensive endeavor.)

Board games are a leisure item, so beyond the review copies I receive from publishers, I don’t really buy many additional games for myself. I try to cover games that I think would interest me, but for the other half of the year, I like to pick up titles where I don’t have any background on what those games are all about. Coming in fresh is exciting, and offers real opportunity to make a discovery outside my normal swim lanes.

When I do buy new games, I ask a lot of questions before dropping any amount of cash. You can’t blame a guy who enjoys doing the research before making a financial commitment, regardless of the size of that commitment. Does one or more of my groups already have the same game? Am I really going to get enough plays to make this purchase worth it? I’m a reviewer, but I still have a pool of my own media sources who I trust when it comes to their gaming tastes…I always check my sources first.

While I did score the best deal I’ve ever found at a game convention this year—La Granja: Deluxe Master Set for just $45 at Board&Dice’s Gen Con booth, a deal I still can’t believe—I am usually the complete opposite of an impulse buyer. At least, that’s what I tell myself before I go to a show or a brick-and-mortar hobby shop.

Because when I am walking the aisles of a show or a store then spot a deal, I’m all over it…especially when a game is priced to move.

I recently came back from a weeklong trip to Rochester, NY to spend time with family. Part of the reason for that trip was to bury my father, who passed away earlier this summer. A week is a long time, and in between funeral activities, my wife and I still had to find time to entertain the kids and offer a layer of “everything’s gonna be alright” by taking them to Seabreeze, a local theme park, as well as the excellent Strong National Museum of Play downtown.

One day, I decided to take the wife and kids to a local game store near our hotel called Millennium Games. I hadn’t been to Millennium before; usually, my time in Rochester gets eaten up with family activities, holiday naps, and runs to enjoy the local delicacies of places ranging from Pittsford Dairy (the black-and-white) to Wegmans (donuts) to Nick Tahou Hots (the garbage plate). But if I’m in town for a week, I need my board game fix…I always try to eyeball games on shelves if I can fit it in.

I don’t shop at physical stores of any kind—games or not—much any more; online retailers just make it easier for me, and sometimes you can find some filthy deals for games online. But I like strolling the aisles when I do get the chance to go shopping. As a man of a certain age, a leisurely stroll brings calm. And if a store has a sale or used games section, I make a beeline for that section first.

Millennium Games is a veritable gold mine when it comes to used games. It’s actually a pretty sweet location whether you are there to shop for used games or not, with a massive retail area and dedicated play space (there must be room for at least a hundred players, maybe much more) and a wide mix of both hobby tabletop offerings as well as all the fixins any gamer would need, be it TCG/CCG products, RPG goodies, toys, wargaming, card games, or your garden variety board game. Save for maybe the lack of a dedicated 18xx area (hint hint), I think Millennium Games is the only board game store I have ever been to that I really would say has it all, no matter what kind of gamer you are.

The used game area was so large that it was spread across a couple of carts near the front of the store, a nook to the right of the register area, and then spread slowly across a number of additional shelves that border the northwestern outer ring of the retail space.

“Leave me,” I told my family. “Daddy’s gonna need to dig into the crates to find himself some deals!”

My wife, confused by the movie-style voice I had just taken on mixed with my sudden use of that voice in the third person, took the kids to another part of the store. Meanwhile, I got to work.

When I mine a store’s used games area, I look at every single box. Price is important, for the reasons I highlighted earlier. But for me, value is king.

It would be ideal to find games that come in at a price point that is significantly lower than buying something new. Despite my love for a beautifully blinged-out product, the reality is that I’m digging deep in the crates to find a game that will bring me joy for at least a few plays, or a game that I have heard good things about but haven’t tried myself.

On rare occasions, I buy (or math trade for) a game that has left my collection; silly me, I should have never let so-and-so out of my life. (Titles like Lorenzo il Magnifico have gone through that journey; my old copy of La Granja was also like that, before it was replaced by the deluxe edition recently.)

Another big thing with used games: acquiring hard-to-find titles that someone else decided to part with. This is why I love going over every single box in the used games area, especially the older games that people move out of their collection. These days, you’re probably not finding vintage wares tucked onto the bottom shelf at a place like Millennium; savvy investors have gone to the BGG GeekMarket to sell games like that for top dollar, and I don’t blame them. If you’ve got something magical that only got a single print run, and people are fighting for ways to find original copies, I’ll respect you more if you hawk that puppy to the open market.

When I go to a used game store, I’m looking for games that were special to me—or, could become special for me!—and I see something in a title that others didn’t. One man’s trash, so the saying goes. I am always shocked to see games that received nothing more than maybe a single play—in some cases, no plays at all!—and now find themselves in the bargain bin of a local hobby shop.

I scanned every box at Millenium that day, and after going over everything, I did a second pass. That’s when I saw it: a 1995 Avalon Hill edition of the Sid Sackson classic Acquire. For years, I knew I needed to have a copy of the game in my collection…not the many Acquire-adjacent games I have played over the years that use its main mechanics in other, sometimes creative ways. I wanted the OG.

Now, this wasn’t the OG edition; no sensible adult is letting the 1960s-era 3M version of Acquire out of their sight, let alone their collection. But the cover art, the aging box and components, the double-sided one-page “rulebook” (!!!)…it was a match made in heaven.

I flipped the box over to find the used price tag. Ten dollars. Ten dollars for a classic, and when it comes off my shelf once or twice a year, it will create memories just by hitting the table: olden-time paper money (I’m normally a poker chip man, unless money creates the kinds of memories only paper money can), shares in one of seven different companies with hotel brand names like “Festival”, “Continental”, or “Imperial”, and special power tokens that look like bingo chits from an era long gone.

I bought other games that day, but Acquire was the find. I strolled up to the counter like I was a big shot, the king of the castle, to see if the person behind the counter would share in the joy of the find like I did.

Nope. “That’ll be $35 for everything,” he said. The associate was friendly, but very much in the “there’s other customers in line, pal” way a store associate can be friendly.

All good. Millennium made sure that my copy of Acquire was priced to move, so I obliged. I’m already looking forward to my next trip to Rochester…and next time, I won’t bring the kids with me!!