As a lifelong game fan and a strategy game collector, I had probably the weekend of my life this last weekend.

It all started simply enough.

I was wrapping up what I was doing at work at about 7 PM on Friday, and I thought I’d drop in on the games section of Craigslist. I look at Craigslist off and on to see if anything decent is posted for sale, and generally there is nothing of interest to me: copies of Scene It! or Trivial Pursuit or old Playstation games.

I gave the page, displaying in gallery mode, a quick glance- and there it was, right away, sitting top left. The listing of a lifetime. The motherlode.

In the listing photo before me were a big cluster of games, most of which I was familiar with- and many of which I had wished to own at one time or another.

“GAMES, GAMES, GAMES”, the ad declared, and as I clicked through to the posting, more pictures showed more games for sale. More games I had always wanted to own or play. And some I had never seen before.

42 games, the post said- and all for the taking at $130 dollars!

My pulse raised as I clicked on the Reply link to find the seller’s phone number to make the call. When was the post made? 8 HOURS AGO? Certainly some, or many of these were gone.

The phone dialed for a few, and then the voice of a older man on the other side said hello.

“Jim?”

“This is Jim.”

“My name is Bruce- I was calling about your post on Craigslist.”

“Which one? I have a few up there.”

“The games? You had a post with a number of games in it.”

“Oh yes- the games. You are interested?”

“Do you have many left?”

“I have them all! You are my first caller on that.”

Inside, I screamed in triumphant disbelief. No way. This doesn’t happen for me.

In a snap decision, after seeing a few titles in the lot of unmistakable value, I heard myself say “I’ll take the lot.”

“I’ll hold them for you.”

After a little conversation, we determined a Sunday morning pickup would suffice, and then Jim said goodbye.

As I went back and reviewed the titles in the ad, a shadow of doubt creeped into my head. In moments, I picked up the phone to call him back.

“Jim- hi- it’s Bruce. I talked to you earlier about the games?… Yeah- it would be no problem for me to come down tonight and pick them up…”

“I still need to get them back out of storage. Tonight isn’t good for me. Let’s stick to Sunday morning. Don’t worry- you are the first caller- I’ll hold them for you.”

“Okay, thanks.” With a little reassurance, I hung up the phone while sitting in a daze.

Did that just happen?

I went home on Friday and tried not to think about it.

—

Waking on Saturday morning, I felt like a kid waiting to go out to the living room and the tree on Christmas morning- except the tree was in Belen, New Mexico, and Christmas was on Sunday.

I tried to keep myself distracted on Saturday, and reminded myself that something could happen. A great buyer or two could swoop in and offer more cash for a few titles, and the lot is dissolved, like that. His house could burn down, or get hit by a meteor. With such thoughts I tried to decrease my anticipation. We’ll see. We’ll see.

And then early Saturday night, Albuquerque was wrapped up in a good snow.

I watched the Lobo basketball game Saturday night in distraction. Morning was coming. Would the roads be bad?

We’ll see.

—

On Sunday, the sun rose, and despite the abnormal depth of white stuff on the ground and the early chill in the air, blue patches opened in the sky early, and with them, the snow-banishing power of the southwest sun.

After an hour of sitting in the barcolounger in the front room by the fire trying to wake up and chilling with the cats, it was time to make the call. I dialed the Belen number, and- behold- Jim was still using it, and he answered the phone. “Come on out”, he said. I drove over to my folks’ house and swapped my truck for their RAV so I could transport 42 games inside a vehicle. And then I was off.

With the mountain span along my left dusted in white and low patchy clouds hovering over the freeway near me, I drove the hour south to Belen in smiling sunlight, on merely wet roads. In no time, I took the second exit and navigated a few turns to bring me before his abode- a mobile home at the end of a quiet cul de sac.

I parked, approached the front door, knocked, and a younger man- Jim’s son- greeted me and let me in. There on a low table before me in the main room was the pile. And to my right, an older man came towards me from a back room. “Hello- I am Jim, and here they are” he said, nodding at the pile. Here they are, indeed.

After a bit of small talk, Jim mentioned he had received a few calls after mine. “Are these valuable?”, he asked me. “To the ones who know what they are and play them they are”, I answered. I paid him $130, and then his son volunteered to help me load them into the back of the car. I went out and pulled the vehicle in backwards on their little dirt driveway to let the hatch open toward the front door, and soon, a bunch of colorful boxes filled the back.

“I thank you much, Jim.”

“Enjoy them.”

Still stunned, I drove down the road a bit, and then pulled off into the parking lot of a sleepy store to get another look at the cache. Opening the hatch, I just paused and soaked it in.

Wow.

And then I closed the hatch and headed home.

—

It’s not always easy to know what you are getting when you get a bunch of boxes that you haven’t opened- but I thought it was worth a gamble.

Most of the games were produced by the Avalon Hill Game Company, or its spinoff Victory Games, who both produced strategy and military simulation games in the early 80’s, when I became enamored by the games, and those companies. I figured if I spent $130 and I received 40 games, each box would cost me $3.25. And knowing a little of the market for these such games, if I could find 8 or 9 complete games I could resell for the modest price of $15 (way under the market value for a complete and playable game, especially if it is rarer and of collector quality), I’d recoup the cost and probably have a number that were keepers I could also enjoy myself.

After I got home from Belen and unloaded the boxes onto a table in my garage, I thought, well, it’s time to see what we got here.

Viewing the titles, it was clear the games were at the heart of another game fanatic’s collection at one time. This collector was a World War II buff, with a keen interest in naval and carrier warfare. 8 of the games were naval engagement recreations, all in the Pacific theater. Most of the rest were focused on the ground war in Europe.

Choosing one of the clearly lesser known games from a stack, Pacific War, I removed the box top to find the insides like new. The rules were crisp and unwrinkled, and the game counters were unpunched from the counter sheets, and I was stunned.

Most of the boxes appeared a little worn by age- most understandable considering most of the games were from either the late 70’s or some time in the 80’s. But I opened other games, and a pattern developed. Many of them were like new. Or in great condition. And a number of them were clearly collectibles. And there were 40-some of them in my garage.

Christmas came early this year for me.

I’m still going through each box one by one, and know that over half of them are qualified for decent resell. A handful of them I will keep for various reasons: B-17, because it is in great shape, playable, and a game I always wanted. The Russian Campaign, and Battle of the Bulge- two complete and playable titles that are classic Avalon Hill products. And a few others.

And a number of them will not be resalable. One of the first game boxes I opened contained only two boards for the game, and that was it! I will make copies like this available to other people to plunder for the parts.

—

As I review the Pacific War game more closely Sunday evening, I learned indeed that it was a fairly rare and desirable game on the market. On average, it was collecting $70 a sale. Marveling at that amount, I went back to the garage to see what else I could find, and revisiting a pile on the back of the table I hadn’t looked closely at, I reviewed boxes in the stack.

There, on the side of a box near the bottom of the stack, was that familiar image again- a fighter leaving the deck of an aircraft carrier, jumping into the air out over the endless sea.

No way.

A second Pacific War sat there.

What did I do to deserve this, I thought.

Nothing, clearly, but thank you, Father- I’ll accept it.

Most remarkable $130 bucks I’ve ever spent.