What would you do if you had to start over?

[Gailbraithe]

Something kind of like this actually happened to me.  About five years ago I was moving and I accidentally left a box with all of my paints, brushes, green stuff, sculpting tools, clippers, etc. in the back seat of my car.  My painting log, which included extensive notes on the color formulas for all my armies, was also in the box.  The box had "PAINTS" written on the side, and I'm assuming whoever grabbed it thought it had spray paints.

It was a true gutpunch.  I worked out that box was worth at least $1650 in paint alone (I had a complete set of Reaper's MSP, the PP3 line, and the Vallejo Color line, plus 80% of GW's line, plus a lot of random stuff like Secret Weapon, etc.), plus another $300 in tools, plus the journal which was essentially priceless.  I have yet to figure out what I used for the green skin of my 40k Orks, and so half my Ork army is one nice consistent green, and the rest are failed attempts to recapture that green.  Even worse, I couldn't replace any of my W&N Series 7 brushes for years after they were stolen due to the embargo.

I almost quit the hobby.  I just couldn't imagine rebuilding my collection.  Luckily I happened to drop by the now defunct Gary's Games in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood (if you're a Seattle gamer of any years, you know the place) and told my tale of woe to Tim, the manager, and he took pity on me.  Reaper was discontinuing the Reaper Pro Paints line and Gary's was going to get rid of the wall display, and Tim told me to just take one of everything.  It was about 30 bottles of paint in all.  Pretty useless assortment of colors, really, but the psychological effect was profound.  I bought some of the primary shades I needed (black, white, chainmail,. etc.) and produced some pretty odd looking models.

Now, five years later, I've replaced the entire Reaper MSP series, 50% of the Reaper HD series, everything Army Painter has put out (love them bunches), and a wide range of purples from GW (for my genestealers, naturally).

Now, if some how someone stole the entire mountain of lead, resin and plastic in my house I'd...probably be okay with it.  I'd be pissed that my most recent acquisitions -- mostly 7TV stuff -- was gone while I was still playing with it, but it would really solve my W40k problem.  Which is mostly that I have five fairly decent size armies taking up huge amounts of space and have utterly hated the game for the last two or three generations of rules and no longer play.

[matiec]

Interesting thread....it actually makes me feel slightly uncomfortable thinking about it. I have been in the game on an off for 45 years. Much more 'on' in the last 15. I have quite a lot of stuff and like collecting, painting and playing. Some stuff I wouldn't replace...some stuff I would feel very sad to loose, mainly those lucky finds at shows which were just what you were looking for and cheap as well. The lead mountain could go ....I'd just buy another one. I would eventually get back into it but like many I would mentally have to start at the skirmish end.

[6milPhil]

If I were starting over I'd buy a big pile of storage boxes, those plastic sealable ones, and limit collecting and building to those - by period or type per box. And have it all clearly labelled...

If I were to give up entirely I'd go back to either rock climbing or shooting again.