Vintage Board Games

What to Know Before Buying Vintage Board Games

Vintage board games continue to provide nostalgia for people who remember playing them years ago while providing collectors an endless assortment of valuable cultural and historic artifacts to add to their collections. You can find plenty of preowned vintage board games for sale on eBay.

Which vintage games you choose to buy depends significantly on your reasons for buying them. If you're buying them as a collector, then you could use eBay's Completed Items search to see how much value other buyers have placed on various vintage board games for sale on eBay that have already been purchased. If, on the other hand, you're looking to buy old board games to play, and assuming you don't already have personal nostalgia for particular old games, you may want to consider certain factors about the game and how it's played including:

• Number of players and their recommended age range
• Difficulty of learning and complexity of gameplay
• Length of an average game

Another way to choose which vintage board games to buy is to consider the type of game. Some vintage board game types are brand-specific, such as Operation, Chutes & Ladders, and Monopoly, while others are classic board games that are made and remade endlessly by countless manufacturers, such as chess, checkers, and backgammon. In both cases, some of the most common types of vintage and antique board games include the following:

• Family games
• Games of chance
• Educational games
• Strategy games
• Memory games

Whether you're buying it to play or display, and unless it's being sold new and unopened in the original, sealed box, when looking for vintage games for sale, there are certain key qualities and elements to look for before you buy one. These include:

• The instructions - Make sure the rules or instructions for the game are included.
• No missing pieces - Make sure a vintage game has all its pieces. You can find it next to impossible to replace a missing piece for a game no longer in production.You can use the instructions as a guide to ensure you don't overlook any game item that should be contained in the box as well.
• No damage - Make sure the board, player pieces and any cards or other accessories are free of tears, stains, writing, or other damage.