Video game collectors come in all shapes and sizes. Some people want all the games from their childhood or they want to have all games in a series. Going for a full set on a console is not something unique, there are “plenty” collectors out there with a complete collection for the NES, Super Nintendo or any of the other old school systems. For the Playstation 1 however, full sets are very rare because of the enormous amount of games that got released for the system. Jason Dvorak is the only known collector to have a complete NTSC (USA) set for the Playstation 1.
And when we say complete, we mean every game and every variant known to man!

First things first, why did you start collecting for the Playstation 1?
You know, usually there’s what I call a ‘trigger game’ – a game that, for no exact reason, you must now collect something in relation to that one game. For some, it means all the games in a series, for another, maybe all the games by one company, or whatever it is that drives them. That one game ‘triggers’ the collecting gene.

At the time I started, I was actually instead going for a complete NES set – but upon researching, I realized too many others were doing it; that meant competition for finds, a lack of originality, and random other dumb reasons I rationalized inside my head. I wanted to do something unique; at the time it was unheard of to go for everything PlayStation. I loved the system that much, and figured, why the hell not. Besides, sometimes the quest is more important than the destination.

Jason with a part of his collection

Did you immediately go for a full set with all variants, or what was your intentional collection goal?
In all reality, it was SUPPOSED to be just one of every game, boom, done. When I was within about 200 titles of the end, I met my now amazing friend and fellow collector Steve. It was he who showed me that there were Working Designs variations, and said I should go for that mini-set within the full set. I became so enamored with the researching and hunting that it basically snapped me into a collecting frenzy. I now had to track everything variant..

So thanks to your friend you were now a variant hunter. Most collectors are happy to have one copy of a game, why do you want to have all different case variants, art versions etc?
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of it is the quest; the hunt. I live for the hunt. While I love and live for the hunt, my graphic designer side can also be blamed. It’s interesting to see the changes made to a game’s packaging to accommodate new marketing features. Many games don’t just have a Greatest Hits label slapped on them; screenshots could have been removed, descriptors changed, fonts adjusted, typos corrected and then re-corrected, etc. Many variants jump around; the 4th variant may be more like the original release, or if you’re an art lover the work Working Designs put into their releases is second to none. More importantly, I’m building an archive for future collectors, alongside current collectors and gamers alike. I’ve been very, very blessed with Game-Rave.com and all of it’s readers and fans. If it were not for them and you guys, what I do for fun would be a lot more work. Also, I’m a completist freak, so that’s to blame, too.

The Working Designs variants of Alundra

The problem with your style of collecting is of course, that your collection may be complete today and missing an ultra rare variant tomorrow. Do you think you’ll ever be 100% complete with the Playstation 1 set?
Trick question with a trick answer; one day I’ll have every *known* item, but there are always new items being found; I think one week I had gotten 5 reader emails that totaled 7 new variants. Since there’s no actual “here’s what’s out there” list, it’s up to us to get it all set. I just happened to happily volunteer tracking…and buying…it all. I think one day, maybe a year or 2 from now, I may have everything ‘known’, but who knows.

I think this is also a huge hole in the industry – no real company has ever really taken hold of their legacy. Sega and Nintendo were the only companies to ever offer complete lists of their releases (though missing variants, etc) to the public. Even then, the lists were slightly wrong or didn’t follow a proper unified format.

While the frustration will always be there with the unknown, the end result will be and is worth it; the absolutely complete historical documenting of the greatest game system that was and ever will be. I am up to the challenge. I just need to be more active in updating.

In a way that must be both satisfying and annoying, still no completion but reason for another hunt. Have you ever had a moment of “what the hell am i doing” because of this?
All the time. Twice on Sunday. But truth be told, this is one of the few things that keep me sane. I have to give a huge shout out to the community and my fellow collectors. Without those to share your passion with, it becomes meaningless. Or in other words, it’s nice to know there are others out there as crazy as you (laughs).

Do you see your collecting as a hobby or an addiction?
Both. Game-rave is the hobby that justifies the collecting addiction. Truth be told, it was a lot worse years ago, when I was trying to collect everything, for everything. Now that I have sold off the collections and libraries that were either redundant or would never be played, there’s a much better focus and purpose for the PlayStation and my other “fan boy” systems. What was once a huge (but enjoyable) burden, has become a refined, focused, and re-energized hunt for the things I truly want. PlayStation One may be my first love, but the Neo Geo, Turbo Grafx-16 and several Sega Systems will always have a home in my game room.

The Jewel Case Playstation 1 Games

What is your most recent “finished hunt” ?
The Parappa the Rapper US demo disc. 4 years for one level of a short game. I think NBA 2 Ball has longer game play in a shorter amount of hunting.

I know this is probably too outrageous to even ask, but have you ever considered selling your collection?
No question is ever outrageous, and I’ve been asked this a lot, actually. My PlayStation stuff would never, ever, ever be for sale. It’ll either be buried with me or willed away. I’ve sold off a LOT of my other collections though. I’ve sold off more libraries and decks then most people would own their entire life. With the PlayStation though, so much of my life (both privately and publicly) has been affected by it that it would be soul crushing to sell it all off.

For someone with such an immense collection it must be hard to pick your favorite item, but we’re still going to ask you!
The whole collection, in it’s entirety. Not for the games themselves; but for the journey they have provided. There are stories in every game case; either how I acquired it, where it was in the path to completion, or the memory of playing it and more. When you stand among it, you really never focus on one aspect. You just kind of take it all in, and smile.

The Playstation 1 games in long boxes or special box sets

Ok you got away easy there, two other aspects that are always important in the collecting business, what are your rarest and most valuable items?
Rare is a loose term. If we’re judging based on actual how hard it is to find something, it would most likely be a variant. The Mortal Kombat 3 jewel case variant has only been seen 3 times in my hunting over the years; on the flip side, we now know of at least 7 NBA 2 Balls and plenty of Assassins’ Cases. If we’re discussing a cash value – that’s all arbitrary. Something is only worth what someone wants to pay for it.

As for most valuable, it’s the same as with rarity. If you base it off eBay, the NBA 2 Ball and the Assassin’s Case are the most likely winners. Both are crucial lessons in the grounding of one’s self. I more or less set the bar for the NBA 2 Ball pricing, as I was desperate to get one when it was first being tracked down. Now, thanks to overzealous sellers, the price for it has sky rocketed for no reason. Someone paid $700 for an NBA 2 Ball – that’s $11 for every 1 second of game play on the disc! I don’t even think they played it. With the Assassin’s Case, it averaged about $500 when I got mine. However, after posting my Game-Rave article, people started taking my enthusiasm out of context, or just copied my whole page over to their auction. This resulted in the Case blowing up to $1200+. That’s insane; ludicrous even. It’s a painted gun with a custom brief case – there’s no reason for that price amount. Because of this, I now tend to keep my fan boy admissions in check, and downplay any type of hype; I refuse to let those hungry only for money ruin the hobby and the hunt for everyone else.

The infamous Assassins Case, the NBA 2-Ball demo, Syphon Filter 3 9-11 version and a rare Spider Man 2 variant

Most of the times you get stuff in as a collector, you’re happy with them because they are an addition to your collection. However we’ve all had our bad experiences with incomplete, damaged or missing items. What has been your worst experience as a collector?
The first NBA 2 Ball I received as a gift was cracked – at the time it was the only known copy of the game outside of the programmer’s. While the disc was cracked, the crack was relatively small; if I could access the disc content and just snag the files (not even an ISO) there might have been a chance to rescue the info and finally play the game. I placed it in my tower’s CD tray, and as I opened the settings to set the tray speed to the slowest possible, the tray auto-ran, and spun the disc so fast it snapped an insanely huge sized chunk of the disc off. When you hear an ‘only known copy’ CD snap and feel the pieces bouncing around your drive…no amount of alcohol can fix that. I still own the Disc, and have it framed as a reminder.

I also unintentionally ruined two PlayStation debugging units; in the process of restoring one, I accidentally ripped the CD Laser plug port off with the ribbon. The other, it was so fragile that upon picking the mother board up, one of the chips literally fell off the board. Neither could be repaired.

You’ve been a collector for over a decade now, do you have any tips for the collectors who’ve only just picked up this hobby?
A warning, if not a very passionate plea. Gaming, specifically the collecting side, is beginning to boil in all the wrong pots. We are beginning to see the rise of hobby-breaking trends like game grading, get-rich-quick price gouging, the slapping of the word “Rare” on anything that didn’t come out that week, and worse. I’ve watched whole forums crumble beneath this bizarre and twisted belief that games themselves are some form of currency; that they are something to be looked at from afar and not actually enjoyed. I say this not in a ‘Chicken Little‘ voice either; this comes from personal experience. Twice, I have been the target of a 5-figure extortion attempt – both I laughed off and acquired said objects for the original asking price I offered. Worse, this need to remove each other from the picture or steal from each other is childish and immature. In the last 5 years, I have been hit with a Trojan virus through e-mail (with the e-mail being written by someone who obviously knew me), and lost everything. Game-Rave itself has been hacked into twice, and stolen from hundreds of times. I’ve had to send a cease and desist letter to stop the theft of over 100 pages of images; I’ve had various auctions and random bloggers steal whole pages of content with no acknowledgment of my source material.

Gaming, from the very beginning, has been about friendly competition and a hobby that requires passion in play, acquirement, and every other facet of it. If we are to survive as a species, especially where a future is looking completely digital, we must remember where we came from. Collecting is not a financial institution, and should never become one. Collect for the love; for the thrill of the hunt, and most importantly, play your games.   I spent 3 years tracking down NBA 2 Ball – and it ended up being a factory sealed copy. The first thing I did was open it and play it. It was the best feeling in the world.

You’ve mentioned your site Game-Rave.com a few times now, can you tell us a little more about it?
Game-Rave started out as a fanzine during the 16-Bit era, transformed various times over the years, and is now one of the leading sites for PlayStation fans and collectors. Over the years I have done a lot of soul searching in regards to how to handle the site. Overall, I want it to be the place for people to come to for all their questions and needs, but never lose that ‘fan’ vibe. There were some dark periods in where I didn’t know what to do, how I wanted to progress, and felt myself trying to ‘sell out’, so to speak. There are also the thefts, hacks, and attacks on me and my site, but I keep moving. I want to be the guy anyone can turn to for questions and discoveries. Our FaceBook community has really kept me grounded in that regard. I love you guys!

The other issue, one that I’ve been wrestling with and still do to a degree, is content addition. Other sites will throw up everything they have at once; all this standard info, a couple quickie screenshots, and call it a day. That leads to stagnation; I don’t ever want game playing and collecting to feel stagnant. I instead add games as I go, I mean, I have all of them so no rush, right? It also provides a nice buffer between updates to actually play the games. Just because you post a game’s information, doesn’t mean anything. You need to play it, to feel it, to lose yourself in it, and to come out with your own view on what the developers intended. It’s why I try and have discussions about the game rather than a review. My Final Fantasy VIII rant brought out the readers, both for and against it, and it got more discussion going. I love that banter between gamers – not the chest thumping, or size comparing, but that honest-to-god good old conversations about games.

A cabinet full of demo's and variants

As a final question, we’d love to know what a collector such as yourself thinks about PlaystationCollecting.com?
It’s a good little community. It’s obviously more PAL focused, which is great since every region needs their collectors. It’s also a fairly heavy PSP group, which you rarely see. It’s fun to peek in on other collectors’ ambitions and gaming ideals, especially the newer generation collectors. Some of the PlayStation 3 people have my complete and absolute respect with the variant and Limited Editions they need to track down.

One of my own faults with Game-Rave’s web-site was not setting up a true community vibe (mostly links to other sites and the like), which I’ll be fixing this year once I finish some behind-the-scenes adjustments and rebuilding. If we all stick together and help each other out, regardless of what drives us in gaming and collecting, there’s nothing all of us can’t do!

If you want to know more about collecting for the Playstation consoles, be sure to become a member of our community!
Forum: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/
The topic to discuss this interview: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3791
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Interview with the only collector to have a full sealed NTSC (USA) Playstation 2 set: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/the-king-of-collectors-full-playstation-2-ntsc-library-sealed/