RPG stuff in Oxfam shop

[ffutures]

The Oxfam book shop in Portobello Road, London, has a lot of RPG material at present - GURPS 2nd edition modules, the Exalted RPG, Traveller modules, some Call of Cthulhu, etc., in a box near the door. Cost seems to be £3.99 or £4.99 for all of the books I looked at. Condition varies from pretty good to well used.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

In all my long years of frequenting charity shops, I have not once seen anything remotely RPG-ish.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's the first time I've seen more than one or two at a time - unfortunately there's nothing I particularly want, it's all either stuff I already have or don't find interesting, and the prices are too high to buy it on spec and sell on ebay.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Always been a problem with Oxfam, their prices for books are just way too high.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I saw an Exalted Referee's Companion in the Exeter Oxfam bookshop the other day, but yes, otherwise my experience is the same as yours.

At some point in the near future, I hope to be launching my own online secondhand RPG shop. In fact, I'm currently entering product details. This will be a long job...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

RPG books just aren't the same in PDF format, I think you need to have paper copies on the table.

Where are you going to get your stock of secondhand rpg stuff from, if you don't mind my asking?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Opening stock will be my own collection. It occurred to me a while back that I really should value it for insurance purposes. I already had everything catalogued, so it took me a long weekend of trawling through eBay and places like Noble Knight to work out replacement costs for each item.

When I added everything up, it came to £35,226.

And then I thought...

That could be £35,226 of collection. Or it could be £35,226 of opening stock. I won't put everything up for sale. There are some things that I couldn't bare to part with (mostly Traveller) and wouldn't be replaceable*. But there are many items that I would sell, or would sell at a certain price and later look for a cheaper replacement.

And since my wife and I run a web development / online marketing company, I'm probably in a better position to easily create an online shop and promote it than most people.




* Probably the one item I'm most proud of is the second copy ever printed (verified and signed by Marc Miller and Loren Wiseman) of the boardgame Imperium, which was the first game to feature the Official Traveller Universe (before the Traveller RPG).

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Crikey, that's impressive.

My old CoC stuff is worth a bit these days, but it's all very used. Handouts cut out. Margins written in. It never crossed my mind back in the day that it might be vaguely collectable one day.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about pdfs. I've got a lot of stuff in pdf format, and it has been useful when, for example, going on holiday and wanting to develop my next campaign. But nothing beats walking into my games library and taking a hard copy down from a shelf to flick through for inspiration.


The collection as it was three and a half years ago (it's grown since then, and I've acquired a few more Traveller noble titles).
http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/158410.html

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Maybe if I had one of those really big tablets, the A4 sized ones. But as it is the formatting of all pdf rpgs is just unsuitable for normal-sized tablet reading.

And being able to swap back and forth between pages whilst playing, also essential.