© Alan LopezSoapbox features allow our individual writers to express their own views on current topics, opinions that are not necessarily the voice of the site. Today Alan grabs his accountant’s sights and adds how much money he has wasted invested wisely in the Bank of Nook over the past year.
On the corner of my desk is always a small plastic knick-knack next to my stack of business cards, next to an overflowing bin of discarded pens: it’s a tiny little house maybe two inches long, with tiny windows and an overflowing bin of discarded pens. tiny door. If you pry open that door, a red otter named “Pascal” slides out. I pull it out when I’m sad. I love it, it’s cute.
Pascal and the house he lives in come from the urban building phenomenon, Animal Crossing. You may have heard of it. Imported entirely from Japan, his little plastic house has been on my desk for nearly a decade. It was the only Animal Crossing thing I owned for years.
That was my peculiar life, before March 20, 2020, the day I bought it Animal Crossing: New Horizons for my Nintendo Switch for $ 59.99.
You know what happened next: the world succumbed to a global pandemic; we were all huddled indoors; we clung to our imaginary animal friends for comfort. It’s kind of painful to realize it’s been a whole year since my Animal Crossing obsession started.
And no, I don’t mean that I became obsessed with the game itself. To be honest, I especially like to see how others play it. I don’t worry much about the small details of the gameplay anymore. My villager’s hair was often a mess on his head, a sign of irregular login. Rather, the silver lining of my lost year was the opportunity to show off some pent-up fandom for something I didn’t even know I cared so much about.
My year of Animal Crossing
© Nintendo LifeIt all started with the trading cards. Why does it always start with trading cards?
A little revision: i did actually buy another Animal Crossing thing aside from that little plastic chachki. Until recently, pretty much the only modern merchandise for the series Nintendo ever released on the state side were four sets of amiibo cards, with each card featuring a different animal from the game’s history.
The timing of their release (2015) was certainly not right. Despite having small chips in them that you can use to scan them in games, they certainly didn’t do much at the time. Piles of these things literally came out of the aisles not long after their release. My local stores could barely give them away, dropping their prices to pennies of the dollar. So yes, of course, I surrendered. I ended up buying enough discounted packs that I completed almost the entire dang collection before giving up.
But when Nintendo announced five whole years later that these random cards were literally the only means of inviting the animals into your game, these discarded scraps of paper instantly became eBay gold; so much so that people who had been out of my life for years made me cold and asked me to borrow random animals. Despite all my pointless hobbies, I had become a god among mortals … except for the fact that I was still missing maybe fifteen or twenty cards.
© Alan LopezI’m not exactly proud of this, but I spent the first few weeks of my quarantine exchanging duplicate cards in the mail, through Reddit. But in the end, even trade became too expensive.“You want HOW MANY tickets for Pietro ?!” was really what I told someone.) After researching online for reputable sellers, I bought:
- POMPOM # 373 $ 2.95
- ANCHOVY # 219 $ 1.55
- PIETRO # 356 $ 35
But then, another wrinkle: I bought official map folders for the first three series super cheap, back at release, but never found the Series 4 map. No problem, I found it on eBay for not exactly cheap $ 51, after shipment. I was so close to finishing the set, so why not?
Throughout this entire excursion, I ended up only needing four cards, unfortunately some of the most popular animals I couldn’t get randomly in packs years ago. For the privilege of harassing Rosie, Lucky, Wendell, and Ribbot, I have an online seller to just $ 86.10My Animal Crossing collection was finally complete …
Nook, Inc.
Except no, it actually wasn’t. Because then came an official “companion book” from Animal Crossing, an encyclopedia of in-game details that is being resold today for outrageous prices well north of $ 100, but which I was able to reserve at release. I only paid $ 24.40, an absolute bargain! (I also put a pack of Animal Crossing stickers in my cart, but that was on my own $ 5
While Animal Crossing grew in ubiquity while living in quarantine, secondhand art became huge online. My girlfriend made an art print that she sold for charity, so I paid $ 20 before. Sometime later in the year, a slew of ridiculously cute pins popped up on my Twitter feed, and despite the hype of a low stock warning, I decided to buy all of them that were still available. That was in total $ 110.50. Hey, it’s important to support small businesses during a pandemic!
I wasn’t fast enough to get to them all, however. Don’t worry, I picked up the one I missed a few months later on a resupply $ 43
And then came the mother load of all Animal Crossing memorabilia, at least price wise: designer clothes. After a supposedly successful line of other Nintendo franchise-based apparel, trendy Australian outlet BlackMilk hopped on the Animal Crossing bandwagon with a dazzling array of outfits.
It had been my lifelong dream – so I decided when my phone finished loading the newsletter I signed up for earlier – to see my partner in a Timmy and Tommy dress. Two of them, actually. She would also look great in a neon blue T-shirt with a tie in the front, I guessed.
Admittedly, I knew what I was getting into when I paid $ 197 for all that stuff. And the other Animal Crossing outfit I bought a day later for $ 114.32That was a gift.
It is your itemized account! Yes Yes.
© Nintendo LifeMaybe you read all of this and you think I’m just a rich man. I mean, I have a job. But no, I am not. I’m actually pretty good with money. Except maybe for that time a month or two ago, when Nintendo finally re-released the Animal Crossing trading cards – the ones that got me into this mess in the first place – and made them available online for (and correct me if I’m wrong. , fanatic people in the comments) just a few hours, tops. I bought nine packs for it $ 45.75 just to to have them, unopened.
I certainly played a lot of Animal Crossing, but most of all I played myself.
This is a cautionary tale of what happens when one of your favorite things hits a cultural vein – in this case, against all odds, a digital meditation on not life, but life, expressed through anthropomorphic animals. By the time I picked up some freaking Animal Crossing Makeup in front of $ 24I had arrived at New Horizons’ one year anniversary with a $ 820.56 tab. That is money expressed in real currency, not clocks.
The good word from Animal Crossing goes even further than all the nonsense above; since the New Horizons craze, where there was once hardly anything, is now everything: stuffed animals, office supplies, stickers, calendars, t-shirts, patches, you name it. I literally got an email trying to sell Animal Crossing socks while writing this piece. Surrendering to the level advocated by the marketers can only be described as a total ‘Animal Crossing lifestyle’ life, enveloping yourself in a lifestyle that revolves around playing lifestyles – the ultimate ouroboros of fandoms – all breaking out in one calendar year . (Thank goodness I didn’t come up with the Animal Crossing themed Switch for $ 299.99. Can you imagine?)
And yet, of all the Animal Crossing gear I own, my favorite thing remains my little Pascal, sitting on the corner of my desk. I still open his door and let him out every now and then. In fact, I pulled it out while adding up the cost of every video game item I bought in the last year – just Animal Crossing’s. I certainly won’t admit to you how much I spent on it Others things from video games.
I’m not crazy.
© Alan Lopez