How Do You Manage All This Stuff, Anyway?

I was staring at my gaming shelf the other day, and I thought, "My younger self would probably have fainted or spontaneously combusted if he knew he'd have this many games someday." When I was younger my parents didn't really think much of video games, so each one that I added to my collection was like a tiny victory. That got me thinking about something: How do you guys manage and pay for all this stuff. If you answered "with money," congrats, you're hilarious.

I probably buy 40, maybe 50 or so games a year. That sounds like a lot because, well, it is. Aside from games, I don't really have any expensive hobbies, so I can justify the cost to myself that way. Anyway, here's how I typically do it:

If there's a big game that I cannot absolutely wait to get my hands on, I'll preorder it. I think it's dumb that you have to do this if you want to guarantee a copy on the day of release, but what are you going to do. For those games, I'll pay full price and not sweat it. I'll usually wait a few weeks for games that fall into the "Oh, I've got to play this, but I don't want to pay full price." My patience usually pays off, because games get marked down pretty quickly--particularly when they're a month or so old. After that, I'm completely impulsive. If I see a good deal, I'll just pick up a game. That leads to an embarrassingly large backlog, but I can live with that kind of problem.

That's how I do it now. When I was younger, I basically had three or four windows of opportunity for games. I'd get something on my birthday, maybe Christmas, and then with whatever money I didn't squander on gum/other dumb kid crap. I regrettably sold a ton of my stuff when I was a kid, too, including a massive NES collection and a stack of SNES stuff that breaks my heart just thinking about it.

We have a ridiculously diverse readership, so there are people who are beyond both ends of my examples. How do you guys manage your games? Do you play one at a time before picking up new ones? Do you jump at the chance at a great deal, or do you only stick with games that you're certain are going to be good? Do you trade games with friends? Once you're done with a game, do you add it to your collection or do you sell it somewhere? Finally, how many games do you typically play throughout the year?

Reading through that last bit made me sound like an annoying marketing survey. Don't worry, I'm too lazy to do anything with this information, other than read it and post a few comments.

Talk to me, people!