#rpgaday Twenty Two

Best Secondhand RPG Purchase

I am an expert level used game shopper.  It used to be easier to hit hidden gems and cheap treasures, but now I find stuff priced for the collectors’ market (and sometimes, very

incorrectly; the Half-Price Books near me has the 4^th edition D&D Red Box priced like it’s the Mentzer version).  When I lived in San Antonio, there was a privately-owned used bookstore near my office that had an entire wall of old RPG stuff.  From them, I managed to complete my collection of Avalon Hill RuneQuest stuff and Stormbringer supplements.  At the old HPB in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, I found pretty much everything except the main rules (which I already had) for FASA’s Star Trek, and on another day at that same store, a copy of The Book of Ebon Bindings, a hard to find grimoire supplement for Empire of the Petal Throne.

My most recent bit of particularly good fortune was probably finding a copy of Chaosium’s Trollpack, at HPB in Austin.  I paid more than half cover price for it, but I was happy to add it to the collection