FAR FROM LIMITED
A collection to dream about
Josh Fairhurst certainly knows the appeal of collecting games. He set up Limited Run Games with Douglas Bogart in 2015 and specialises in releasing physical products of digital-only releases. As you may have guessed, he takes his own personal collecting very seriously.
“I started consciously collecting games when I was 11,” he tells us. “I had just discovered Yahoo! Auctions – this was
1998, I think – and I bought an Atari and Master System along with some games for each. Prior to then, I had held on to all of the games I’d acquired in my life but I don’t think I’d realised that I was collecting games yet.”
When you start looking through his collection, though, it becomes clear that Josh has plenty of interest in Sega. What is it he loves about the Japanese publisher? “Growing up, my older brother was the Nintendo kid,” he explains. “He bought his SNES with his own money and as such, the SNES stayed in his room and he did not allow me to play it. Our grandparents bought us a Genesis for Christmas in 1994, so all of my 16-bit gaming was done there. By 1999, I was pushing Beanie Babies and Pokémon Cards on ebay and I was able to earn enough money to buy my own brandnew Sega Dreamcast when it launched in the US on 9 September 1999. The Dreamcast cemented my love for Sega and turned me into a bona fide Sega fanboy.”
Josh’s love for the Dreamcast has grown stronger over time, and he now has a complete set of US and PAL games. “I hit a point in 2016, I think, where I realised that I already owned the majority of the rare and valuable games,” he says. “I started off slowly buying the common games I was missing with credit card rewards points, and by 2017 I had successfully completed the set. I have ambitions to play every game and catalogue my experiences if I ever find myself retired after Limited Run Games.”
So when you’ve collected all the western releases for a system, going after the Japanese titles seems the next obvious step and it’s something Josh is certainly keen on attempting. “Yes, I am currently in the process of picking up all the Japanese exclusives – even the ones I have zero ability to play – because I am a crazy person that constantly craves more Dreamcast content,” he happily admits to us.
So as a collector and seller of valuable and collectible games does Josh think that the time for collecting classic games has ended? “It depends. I think what is ‘classic’ is subjective,” he explains. “The Wii isn’t classic to me, but the weird reality is that an 18-year-old probably had their first gaming memories on that platform. That thing is as classic to them as the Master System was to me when I picked up mine. It’s affordable for people to acquire Wii stuff right now – but a lot of the earlier stuff is definitely planted in unaffordable territory for most people at this point.”
So with the rising prices of games, what’s Josh’s advice for budding collectors? “Initially, buy the games that matter the most to you,” he concludes. “Save the less exciting stuff for last!”
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