Celebrated this year's Traveller ttRPG birthday by assembling a collection of limited edition hardbacks! Together with some other stuff on top.
The Mongoose Publishing house in charge of modern Traveller edition claims there are only 300 or 250 copies of each (depends on a particular book). Hopefully there won't be any "collector's edition" release soon, and I can consider this set complete, for now.
This mini-collection consists of:
(MgT) Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022: Collector's Edition. Wanted to put the publisher's page link as well, but alas - it's gone! Guess that means this one has become a valuable asset already :)
(MgT) High Guard Update 2022: Collector's Edition. Been around for awhile (since this winter I guess). The link is alive, meaning it's still in stock.
(MgT) Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023: Collector's Edition. Fresh from under the printing press.
(FFE) Traveller5 Dice Set. The dice from one of the original designers of Traveller, Marc Miller himself! These heavy epoxy randomization tools can still be purchased from his Far Future Enterprises company, though one has to launch a whole social media expedition to find the proper store webpage, yet alone to fight with PayPal. It wasn't easy. So I don't give away more hints.
And the personal attitude about the collection explained follows.
I don't like hoarding, in general. Huge collections of good stuff make me sad because most of that stuff is accumulating dust. The recent listing shows that I'm more into assembling a DIY toolset, however obscure, than a bunch of mainstream end products. To be honest, storage space and expenses are also limiting factor for me, at this point.
The set above, however, is made of mainstream and quite popular titles. Even more, their shiny limited editions. How comes?
Well, first, turns out I love the game itself! I want to bring to the table various flavors of it many, many times.
Second, these hardbacks alone put together make a solid framework for sandbox SciFi without a necessary focus on the official default setting. I think that's a key feature of their design, and a reason to why they were selected for limited editions: they essentially form a DIY toolkit with high replay-ability.
To sum up, I try to follow what I call a "smart wine investing" scheme, only with RPG rulebooks. I'll either sell them for an X times they cost me, or eventually bring them to the table - and use beyond any recognition. It is a win either way.