Soapbox: I sort of bought over $ 800 worth of crossbreed crap in a year

© Alan Lopez

The features of Soapbox allow our individual editors to express their own opinions on hot topics, opinions that are not necessarily the voice of the site. Today Alan grabs his accountant visor and grabs how much money he wasted wisely invested in Bank of Nook over the past year.

On the corner of my desk, there’s a little plastic trinket still sitting near my stack of business cards, next to a basin stuffed with discarded pens: it’s a tiny little house, maybe two inches tall, with tiny windows and a tiny door. When you lift this small door, a red otter named “Pascal” slides out. I take it off whenever I’m sad. I love it, it’s cute.

Pascal and the house in which he lives come from the phenomenon of urban construction, Animal Crossing. You may have heard of it. Imported from Japan, her little plastic house has been sitting on my desk for almost a decade now. It was the only Animal Crossing thing I had owned in years.

It was my picturesque life, before March 20, 2020, the day I bought Animal Crossing: New horizons for my Nintendo Switch for $ 59.99.

You know what happened next: the world succumbed to a global pandemic; we all huddled inside; we clung to our imaginary animal friends for comfort. It’s a little painful to realize that it’s been a whole year since my obsession with Animal Crossing started.

And no, I don’t mean to say that I have become obsessed with the game itself. Honestly, I mostly like watching other people play. I don’t care much about the little gameplay details anymore. My villager’s hair often messed up his head, a sign of infrequent connections. Rather, the bright side of my lost year was the opportunity to let out a repressed fanatic for something I didn’t even know I cared so much about.

My year of crossing animals

© Nintendo Life

It all started with collectible cards. Why does it always start with collectible cards?

A slight revision: I did in fact, buy something else from Animal Crossing besides this little plastic chachki. Until recently, virtually the only modern merchandise for the series Nintendo ever released on the state side was four sets of amiibo cards, each card depicting a different animal from the history of the game.

The timing of their release (2015) was certainly shifted. While they have tiny chips inside that let you scan them into games, they certainly didn’t do much back then. Lots of these things were literally spilling out into the aisles soon after they came out. My local stores could hardly give them away, reducing their prices to pennies on the dollar. So yes, of course, I let myself go. I ended up buying enough discounted packs that I almost finished the entire dang collection before I even gave them up.

But when Nintendo announced five whole years later as those random cards were literally the only way to invite animals into your deck, those discarded pieces of paper instantly turned eBay gold; so much so that people who had been out of my life for years sent me a cold message asking me to borrow random animals. Despite all my unnecessary leisure, I had become a god among mortals … except that I was perhaps still fifteen or twenty cards missing.

© Alan Lopez

I’m not exactly proud of this, but I spent the first few weeks of my 40s trading duplicate cards in the mail, on Reddit. But eventually, even trading became too expensive. (“Do you want HOW MANY cards for Pietro ?!” was a real thing I told someone.) After researching trustworthy sellers online, I bought:

• POMPOM # 373 – $ 2.95
• ANCHOVIES # 219 – $ 1.55
• PIETRO # 356 – $ 35

But then another wrinkle: I bought official binders for the first three super cheap series, back on release, yet I never found the series 4 binder. No problem, I got it. found on eBay for a price not quite cheap $ 51, after shipment. I was so close to finishing the set, so why not?

This whole excursion ultimately left me with only four cards needed, unfortunately some of the more popular animals that I didn’t have the chance to randomly get in packs years ago. For the privilege of hooking Rosie, Lucky, Wendell and Ribbot, I haggled from an online seller to a simple $ 86.10. My Animal Crossing collection, finally, was complete …

Nook, Inc.

Except no, it wasn’t, actually. Because then came an official “companion book” to Animal Crossing, an encyclopedia of the minutiae of the game which today sells for outrageous prices well north of $ 100, but which I was able to pre-order as soon as it was released. . I only paid $ 24.40, an absolute theft! (I also put an Animal Crossing sticker pack in my cart, but it was only $ 5).

As Animal Crossing became ubiquitous during quarantine life, that’s when second-hand art became huge online. My friend made an art print she sold for charity so I paid $ 20 for that. Some time later in the year, a whole slew of ridiculously cute pins popped up on my Twitter feed, and in all the hype of a low stock alert, I decided to buy all of the ones still available. This totaled $ 110.50. (Hey, it’s important to support small businesses during a pandemic!)

I wasn’t fast enough to get them all, although. Don’t worry, I picked up the ones I missed a few months later when restocking for $ 43.

And then came the loadout of all Animal Crossing memorabilia, at least in terms of price: designer clothes. Following a presumably successful run of other clothing based on the Nintendo franchise, trendy Australian store BlackMilk has jumped on the Animal Crossing bandwagon with a dazzling array of outfits.

It was my lifelong dream – or so I decided just when my phone finished loading the newsletter I had previously signed up for – to see my partner in a Timmy and Tommy dress. Two of them, in fact. She would also look great in a neon blue t-shirt with a tie in the front, I played.

Sure i knew what i was getting into when i paid $ 197 for all that. And the other Animal Crossing outfit that I bought a day later for $ 114.32? It was a gift.

This is your itemized bill! Yes Yes.

© Nintendo Life

You can read all of this and think I’m just a rich man. I mean, I have a job. But no, I am not. I’m normally pretty good at money, actually. Except maybe for this time a month or two ago when Nintendo finally re-released the Animal Crossing collectible cards – the ones that got me in this mess in the first place – and made them available online for (and fix (me if I’m wrong, fanatics in the comments) only a few hours, at the top. I bought nine packs for $ 45.75 just for have them, unopened.

I played Animal Crossing a lot, but most of all, I played myself.

This is an uplifting account of what happens when one of your favorite things hits a cultural vein – in this case, against all odds, a digital meditation not on life, but on life, expressed through animals. anthropomorphic. By the time I picked up some panic Animal Crossing Makeup for $ 24, I had arrived at New Horizons’ one-year anniversary with a $ 820.56 tongue. It is money expressed in real currency, not bells.

The good word from Animal Crossing even goes beyond all the bullshit above; since the craze for the New Horizons, where there was once almost nothing, there is now all: stuffed animals, office supplies, stickers, calendars, t-shirts, patches, you name it. I literally got an email trying to sell me Animal Crossing socks while writing this piece. Indulging at the level that marketers claim can only be described as living an ‘Animal Crossing lifestyle’, enveloping yourself in a lifestyle focused on lifestyles – the ultimate ouroboros of fandoms – all bursting into life. only one calendar year. (Thank goodness I didn’t come for the Animal Crossing themed Switch for $ 299.99. Can you imagine?)

And yet, of all the Animal Crossing stuff I own, my favorite thing is my little Pascal, sitting on the corner of my desk. I always open his door and let him out from time to time. In fact, I pulled it out while I was totaling the cost of every video game I had bought in the past year – just the Animal Crossing thing. I certainly won’t tell you how much I spent other video game things.

I am not crazy.

© Alan Lopez