While many people love chasing the hottest new board games, many of us love finding hidden gems, quirky games, and great games of the past. Unfortunately, many of these become rare board games, and are out of print or quite difficult to find.

Personally, I am a huge fan of these rare and quirky games. Over the years I have had to utilize numerous methods for tracking down these games. Recently I have had particular difficulty finding a game called Guild Stack. In my search, I have had to pull together many different methods of tracking down rare games. With this combined knowledge, I put together this guide to help others find that elusive game they are looking for.

1. Temper Your Expectations

My first piece of advice for anyone looking for out of print or hard to get board games would be to proceed with the following expectations:

A. It may take a while to find what you are looking for. Some of the methods discussed in this guide may allow you to place an order immediately. However, others will take more time. Remember, you are looking for rare games, and by nature, these are far and few between.

B. You may have to pay above the MSRP price of the game. Following basic principles of economics, as supply goes down price often goes up. In addition, many of the methods I will discuss have some component of shipping, which can get expensive.

C. You will be assuming some amount of risk. Many of these methods involve dealing directly with other individuals or involve complicated shipping methods. Both of which can result in unexpected or undesirable results. I urge everyone to proceed with caution and take appropriate steps to avoid scams. But at the same time understand that sometimes you may end up having spent money, and receive no game. While this has been very very rare in my experience, it is important to understand it is a possibility.

2. Check the BoardGameGeek Market

The first place I check when I am looking for a hard to get game is BoardGameGeek’s GeekMarket. The GeekMarket is a platform that lets anyone buy and sell board games. The best way to use this feature is to go the BoardGameGeek (BGG) page of the game you are looking for, and scrolling to the bottom. Every game on BGG will have a section where listings from other people are shown. If you see a listing that you are interested in, you can click through to see more information about the game and seller, such as quality, location, and shipping cost. If you are satisfied, you can then complete the purchase and fill out your information. Once the seller confirms the sale, you will receive a confirmation message on BGG with a paypal address (usually) where payment can be sent. If you would like to avoid any scams, you can check out the sellers review feedback to help get a better idea of what you can expect. You can also check price history of previous sales of the particular game to get a good idea of what a fair price may be.

3. Check BoardGameGeek Auctions

Another great feature that BGG has is there auction feature. BGG allows users to host auctions where people can bid prices on games others are getting rid of. Recently, BGG released a new feature called “Geek Shopper”. Located under the Market tab, this feature will show you all active auctions for any games on your Wishlist. Checking this page periodically is a good way to see if the game you are searching for becomes available.

4. Buy From Other Amazon Regions

Many of the rare board games I am often looking for are hard to get because they have only been released in other countries. One easy solution to this is to check the amazon pages of other countries. Often time you will find the game you are looking for in stock with reasonable international shipping, especially if you have Amazon Prime. In some cases, such as with Amazon Japan, you may need to create a new account, but most of the time you can use your normal account login. Unfortunately, some retailers will not ship to your specific region, which I will address in my next point. However, the majority of items should be shippable without any issues. One important factor to consider with this method is the language of the copy you are ordering. Many times english editions will be available, but not always. If you are ordering a highly language dependent game, make sure it is an english copy. You can use the following links to access various regions. On most of the sites, you can change it to english at the very bottom.

Amazon USA (.com) Amazon Japan (.co.jp) Amazon Germany (.de) Amazon UK (.co.uk)

5. Utilize Package Forwarding Services

Unfortunately, some games listed on Amazon in other countries, or on completely other sites will not allow direct shipping to your location. One commonly used solution for this is package forwarding services. While this is an effective way of getting packages from foreign countries, it can be fairly pricey ($20+ sometimes). However, if you are willing to pay the money, the process can be fairly easy. For this, there are two Japanese services I will recommend. The first is Buyee. Buyee works exclusively with many retail sites in Japan, and is very easy to use. The second is Tenso. While Tenso works with any packages in Japan, it has a longer verification process. There are also services for non-Japanese locations, but I have less experience with those. Nevertheless, this is a great method to get games to your location from over seas.

Service 1: Buyee Service 2: Tenso

6. Buy From Specialty Stores

While you can make the decision to import hard to find games on your own, there are some companies that will do the hard work for you and go out of their way to intentionally stock hard to find and out of print board games. There may be a number of different sites that do this in your area, but here are several sites that I have used in the past.

NiceGameShop Funagain Games BoardGameGeek Store Nobel Knight Games

7. Buy on Other Resale Sites

While BGG’s GeekMarket is by far the most reliable resale platform for board games, there are several other major resale sites that you may be able to utilize. The most well known of these sites, is likely Ebay. However, you will need to proceed with much more caution on these types of sites, as scams are much more prevalent on them compared to BGG and the like.

8. Buy at Conventions

Conventions are a frequent place for small publishers to release small print runs of rare games. This is obviously an expensive and fairly unreliable method. However, if you are going to a convention where the publisher of a game you are looking for will be attending, it wouldn’t hurt to check out their booth and ask if it is available. Who knows, you might get lucky! Some conventions also have flea markets that often times have old, rare, or out of print games. Finally, conventions are also a great place to engage in trades and math trades, which I will discuss later.

9. Set Restock and Price Alerts

Even if copies of the game become available on the various sites around the internet, they can be snatched up pretty quickly if they are in high demand. To combat this, I set up alerts for most of the sites I use. Many of the major online retailers have restock alerts. So if you are using those, that would be an easy first step. Next, you can download a browser extension to set stock/price notifications for Amazon. I use Keepa, which emails me whenever it the parameters I set for a game are met.

I also have a method of receiving email notifications when desired games are listed on the BGG market. For this, you will need to be a supporting member of BGG, which gives you access to custom subscription RSS feeds. I start by going to the subscription preferences page and toggling “Products For Sale:” under the “items” tab to No. Then I go to each game I am specifically interested in buying, and manually turning on “Products For Sale:” for each game individually. To do this click the drop down menu next to the subscribe button, and select Edit Preferences. Now you should only receive product notifications for games that you want to buy. Next go to your subscriptions page and click on the RSS logo on the Marketplace bar (as depicted below). Then copy that page’s URL to Blogtrottr. Now you will receive emails whenever a your subscribed games are listed on BGG. The emails can sometimes be slightly delayed, but this is a pretty good method to ensure you don’t miss anything.

10. Trade For It

If you can’t find anyone willing to see the game, you may alternatively be able to find someone who is willing to trade the game with you. There are several avenues that may help facilitate a trade. The best platform for trading that I have found is BGG trading. This system takes all the games you have listed “For Trade”, and matches you with people who have games that you have listed as “Want in Trade”. You can even filter it by location to limit the cost of shipping. You can then submit a proposed trade request. My advice though, would be to always message the person separately asking if they are interested before submitting the official trade request.

Another great place to make trades is on the subreddit /r/boardgameexchange. You can post games you have for trade, or post about games you are looking for. This works fairly well for games that are a little more widespread, but is tougher for more rare games because you need that person to be looking at your post in the short window that it is on the front page. The chances of finding a very specific match is just much lower than BGG’s platform.

BGG also facilitates something called math trades. In short, math trades are algorithms that create chains of people who send games to each other. So even if the person who wants your game doesn’t have the one you want, you can still find someone else who might. One of the biggest examples is the month US Math Trade. One great way to see if the game you want is out there is to subscribe to the game’s BGG page, and make sure GeekList notifications are turned on. If the game you want is posted in a math trade, it will show up under your GeekList subscription items.

Finally, you’ll also find a healthy trade culture on facebook in both global and local Facebook groups. Using local Facebook groups is also a great way to reduce or remove shipping costs.

One tip for trading that has really expanded my trade “matches”, is to list all of your replaceable games as “For Trade”. Most people will only list games that they are wanting to get rid of. But the way I see it, if I can replace a game on Amazon with free shipping, instead of paying $60 for a game someone has, if they want one of my games even more, why not just trade it and replace it with a brand new copy. It will maximize your ability to make more trades for the games you are looking for, will increase the value you get from your games, and will let you replace you used games with new copies. So, instead of just listing the games you want to get rid of, list all of your games that can easily be replaced.

11. Contact the Designer or Publisher Directly

Often times if you aren’t able to find any copies of a game out in the wild, the publisher or designer may have a few left over copies of games that they may be willing to sell to someone who really wants to get a particular game. I have had luck with this method, a couple of times. However, if you decide to do this though, please do so with the understanding that you should be paying full price for the game. Designers and Publishers sometimes give handouts, but if they are going out of the way to accommodate you specifically show them that you really value their efforts, and make them a fair offer.

12. Message Game Owners Directly

Finally, if all else fails, you can head over to the BGG page of a game and click on its owners list. From this list of current owners, you can send private messages asking them if they may be willing to part with it. However, I do not fully endorse this method, as it is often seen as spammy and disrespectful. If you do end up sending such messages, please do so selectively and sparingly. Looking at individuals who have the game marked “For Trade” can help narrow it down to people who are not as attached to the game. As with the previous point, please be respectful and make more than fair offers, considering you are asking people to go out of their way to accommodate you.

Conclusions

I hope that these pointers will help you find the great rare board game you have been looking for. Unfortunately, as I said in point #1, these methods are not always fruitful, and you may end up empty handed like I have with Guild Stack. Therefore, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a cheeky bonus tip.

Bonus Tip: Make a blog post about hard to get games, hoping that one of its readers has a copy of Guild Stack they are willing to part with. If that said person exists, they can email me at snackablegames@gmail.com, and we can set up a deal!

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