The Last Goodbye?

After much reflecting I’ve come to the conclusion that I will likely sell all my MESBG-related miniatures and terrain.

This is of course not a decision I’ll take lightly.

I have been collecting, painting and playing since the start of the BGIME magazines, back in 2002. So that is almost 25 years.

I’ve spend a lot of time buying, assembling and painting these mini’s. Recently, I ‘finished’ my collection in the sense that I bought the final miniatures I wanted for playing through an Epic Full Campaign of Middle-earth that I have been fantasizing about for a long time. That would include playing through all published scenarios, using the most recent (or fun!) iteration for scenarios with multiple versions.

I sketched the outline and wrote down some house-rules, tweaks and ideas. I’ve sold all my gaming mats and bought DIY materials to make my own custom gaming boards. That means I am pretty far in the process of starting. But at the same time, there is still a lot of work to do to actually start. While I have all the materials, the gaming boards would still need to be constructed and painted. The required mini’s are assembled, but not yet primed or painted.

But I just don’t feel like putting any more hours towards this project. It just feels like too much, and that I’d rather do other things. To tell the truth, spare time has become quite scarce recently. And I’m not really expecting that to change in the future.

Why sell it?

So why would I want to sell it? I don’t need the money currently (not that I have it in abundance, but I also have no urgent need for it).

As for time, I could just leave everything as is and pick up whenever I have more time available.

It does take up a not insignificant amount of space, however. In fact my room is filled mostly with MESBG-related things. This does bother me, because it means there is less space available for other things. And I might move house within a couple of years. But, that house will likely be smaller than my current one. And I’d rather focus on other aspects than ‘Where will I store all my MESBG-related stuff?’.

So that is one important reason why I want to sell my collection. Another reason is along the lines of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. If I don’t have MESBG anymore, it will not occupy my mind as much and I can focus more freely on other things. I am already far in the process of selling all my Star Wars: Legion stuff. At first that felt stingy at times, like I was making a possible mistake. But now I just want to get rid of it and it feels good whenever I sell stuff.

So will MESBG feel the same, or will I regret my decision and try to rebuy it all some years down the road?

Why keep it?

Of course MESBG has been part of my identity for a long time. I am a huge fan of Middle-earth and still am. I have spend an enormous amount of time and money on this hobby. Sometimes at the expense of other things such as self-care, as well as quality time with my wife. If I sell everything it kind of feels like a lot of wasted hours and money.

But that itself is not convincing for me to hold on to it. This is simply the ‘sunken cost fallacy’.

A more convincing reason to keep it is that I might change my mind in the future. A lot of miniatures are rare and out of production. They will likely never be made again. Perhaps when my children grow older, they might have an interest in playing MESBG with me. That would be a (previous) dream come true.

However, they might also not. And even if they did… Is it really worth it to hold on to all this stuff for so long? Are there not plenty of other things we could do together, that I would enjoy as much or even more than playing MESBG? And if it really has to be MESBG, couldn’t we just start over again – together – and buy just those things that we would actually need. Instead of my current huge collection where I have pretty much everything to play everything, while in reality I play only once every couple of months, if that.

An honest assessment

Reflecting honestly on the almost 25 years of collecting, painting and playing, I have to admit that the amount of joy it has given me for the amount of time I have sunk into it, is not optimal. Now of course things don’t need to be optimal. It has been a FUN hobby, and I’ve immensely enjoyed a lot of moments. But it has also felt like WORK, for a lot of the time. Particularly the endless assembling, building and painting, which is generally something I tolerate, sometimes like, but also something I often kind of start to dislike at some point. If I approached the hobby more intuitively – do and play what’s fun, instead of what’s optimal in a hypothetical completionist scenario – I’d have likely enjoyed things a lot more.

I painted over 100 Uruk-hai in one weekend, because that was the most time efficient way to do it. Was it fun? No. Did I enjoy the end result? Briefly. Did I enjoy using those mini’s in games? Yes. But to be truly frank, some of my best memories of this game was when I was much younger, playing what I thought would be fun, even with badly painted or even unpainted mini’s. Literal pieces of paper as terrain. It doesn’t take much to have fun.

So I’m kind of excited to see what will happen if I decide to sell it all. Thinking about it feels liberating – which is one of the reasons why I think it is a good idea to pursue. I’ve enjoyed the hobby and learned a lot of things, but I think it is now time for me to move on to other things. And who knows? Maybe I’ll return at some point. I am not getting rid of all my miniature games, as I’ll keep War of the Ring the boardgame, as well as other boardgames with mini’s. So I’ll keep my painting supplies, and keep painting. But not in the same enormous volumes as my approach to MESBG demanded.

Your thoughts and the future

I haven’t 100% decided yet. That is one of the reasons why I wanted to write this post. I’d love to get your input. Should I sell it, keep it or something else? What has been your experience? What are your feelings reading this?

If I do decide to sell, are there pieces I should keep? Which ones?

Even if I do sell it all, I’m not planning on taking this site down anytime soon. Maybe I’ll post other hobby-related stuff at some point. But what exactly the future will bring, I do not yet know.