by RockyMountainNavy, 25 April 2025
For those of us grognards of a certain, uh, advancing age have seen many game stores come and go. For myself, can still remember walking into a small shop with the interesting name of Fascination Corner in the upper level of Arapaho Mall in southeast Denver and seeing racks of gaming magazines and shelves of wargames. Given that was 1979, the game magazines were monochrome affairs and most wargames were hex & counter. Little could I imagine that 45 years later I would walk into a much different store far away from Denver and be thrown back in time—on a Thursday no less!
In a surprising twist of fate, it actually was a recent Thursday that I had the opportunity to step into McKay’s Used Books in Manassas, VA. While nominally a used book reseller, they do have the words “movies,” “music,” and “games” on their store logo. In the past I have scored a few wargames off McKay’s shelves but it usually is very slim (to no) pickings. Not so this Thursday…
As I walked up to the game shelves I am sure I audibly gasped for there was not only a selection of GDW and Avalon Hill wargames from the 1970’s and 1980’s but (huge gasp) six SPI flat box titles! Fortunately, I had the BGG app on my phone so I was able to confirm that nine of the titles on that top row are already members of my collection.
After browsing that first rack and comparing to my collection I went in search of the roleplaying games area only to discover:
I didn’t have a lot of time to spend browsing so I just did a quick look for lower-numbered issues. For both The Courier and Fire & Movement there were a few low-teen numbered issues on the rack.
One of the oldest arguments in the wargaming space is the question, “What is a wargame?” McKay’s seems to have taken the position that wargames are just another form of role-playing game. In some ways I can see their point: by taking command of a side in a wargame you are in many ways role-playing the commanders of that time.
I have no way of knowing for sure, but judging from the “sudden” appearance of this many titles seemingly focused on the early years of wargaming I sense that somebody dumped their collection at McKays.
I was sorely tempted with many of the naval warfare titles. I found a selection of Harpoon books from the days of Adventure Games (Harpoon II) and GDW (Harpoon III). Fortunately (for my wallet) I already possess dead tree editions of these titles.
Did I successfully complete a tactical withdrawal and make it out of McKay’s unscathed? Of course not! In keeping with my RockyMountainNavy moniker I sailed away with Dreadnought: Surface Combat in the Battleship Era, 1906-45 by designer Ira B. Hardy from SPI in 1975.
I also made way with The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations 1941-77 by the great Jim Dunnigan for SPI also from SPI in 1975.
Both of these games feature on #UnboxingDay here on Armchair Dragoons. (ed note: Fast Carriers already did!)
I freely admit that I was very happy to walk out of McKay’s with a few “new to me” wargames in my hands. This Throwback Thursday gave me the opportunity to reconnect with that awesome feeling from days long past in game stores long gone. I enjoyed those few fleeting moments of the spontaneous joy that occurs when one walks into a game shop with no real idea of what games are there and finding something. It was also highly therapeutic to spend some time browsing and touching a game before it arrives at your house. Given a choice between new age boardgamers with their Kickstarters or pre-order programs that run years behind my potentially changing interests and being able to browse for games in person and in the now; well, I’ll take the throwback approach any day.
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Good scoop!
These days, I think it was maybe not so much someone dumping their collection as, uh, them not needing it anymore.
Last month I was in Value Village and saw a dozen SPI flatbox games, and another dozen or so classic Avalon Hill games (1914, 1965-edition Bulge) and a couple of others e.g. GDW Imperium.
They were all quite battered and done up with green masking tape, so no way to check contents even if I had wanted any of them… I already had those titles, or had had them and didn’t want them back.
This was the first time I had seen anything remotely like a wargame in our local Value Village in ten years.
But they wanted $25 to $29 each for them!
So, pass…
So, why do you say those games were no longer needed, as opposed to being dumped, and what’s the difference anyway?
Rob, my brother-in-law runs a transplant unit in a hospital. His team transplant viable kidneys into very grateful recipients from people who no longer need them.
I live in a warm weather climate in the US, where there a lot of retirees, and occasionally I notice a “dump” of old wargames at one of the local gaming stores. I always ass-u-me some old fart finally expired and one of the relatives was unloading the stuff. Seems like a reasonable assumption.
Thankfully there’s Vassal, so a person wanting to pay one of those old games doesn’t have to resort to using a copy that has been fondled by countless nose-picked fingers for the past 50 years.
The one time I went to a Consimworld Expo convention in Tempe, Az, in 2019, I glanced over their much-hullabalooed flea market tables and it was pathetic. Just a bunch of weird stuff no one would ever want, along with 40-year-old, yellowed, raggedy copies of Third Reich, Wooden Ships, and the like. Some of them actually smelled/stank.
Speaking of stink, at one point I was relaxing at a table when I was overcome by one of the most foul odors I’ve ever experienced. It literally smelled like someone had walked past behind me with a load in their pants. There were several people a few feet behind me, so I couldn’t tell whether any of them were the culprits, but Jesus, that was nasty. I don’t know, maybe someone pulled a prank with some fart spray or something, but it smelled far worse than that.
That was the first day I was there, and I perused some of the new stuff being sold and considered buying something, but decided I would instead order online, despite it costing more.
Long story short, I unexpectedly ended up going back to that convention two days later with a gaming acquaintance who had never been to one.
We weren’t there 20 minutes when Canadian designer Kerry Anderson insinuated that I had stolen the “prototype” copy of his NATO 1961 game. This, despite the fact that I had just purchased a new copy from him. I noticed he frequently left an entire box full of new, ziplocked copies of the game unattended at a table while he left the room for extended periods. Why anyone bent on stealing a game wouldn’t just take one of those instead of an incomplete prototype/test copy is beyond me, but whatever.
Toward evening of that day, they were getting to have their auction. One of the items was a cardboard box full of mystery items, which most likely contained a number of the aforementioned stinky old games. My friend and I didn’t bother to stick around for that.
So, my sole experience at a Consimworld Expo was pretty much a joke. It’s way overrated, in my opinion.
WOW!!! The last time I saw Courier magazine, there wasn’t a white hair on my head! Great find!
Years ago, I used to find wargame magazines or scenario books amid the multi-volume packs of comic books at Goodwill, for like 50 cents or so, I think because at the time they had no clue what they were.