(Possibly) The Largest Forgotten Realms Book Collection

      I started reading Forgotten Realms in middle school. I was already playing Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition or AD&D for a few years already, had a subscription to Dragon Magazine, and most of our campaigns were in either the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance settings. Learning about the characters in depth that were already talked about in the modules, was fantasy coming to life for me. As the books were released, I would buy them new for the $3-$5 price from Books-a-million near my house. Oh, a new Drizzt book!? Had to grab it. It got to the point where several were coming out per month and it was hard to keep up with the buying. I realized a long time ago I would not be able to afford hard covers and special editions, and all the modules from the gaming store. If I saw something at a thrift store or paperback exchange, I would just scoop it up, and quickly run home to read it. That I know of, I'm missing some of the later stuff when I stopped buying new, and some rare stuff that I'm working on getting now that everything is in one place. 

     Please enjoy these pictures of the bookcase directly to the left of my desk as of this writing. Not pictured are the tons of hard covers in the garage storage I'll get to finding some day, as well as all the D&D books based on Forgotten Realms across varying editions. 

• 250 books-ish
• I don't sell them unless I have doubles that are not edition or cover differences
• My wife sold some of the special edition stuff without me knowing, but only two books
• Need like 80 more to complete it

Pictures from the 1978 Dune Calendar

Pictures from the 1985 Tolkien Calendar

 

Goodwill Megastore Bins - Don't waste your time

I had to see what was going on.

     I see these videos on Tiktok and Youtube of people finding awesome scores at these giant Goodwill stores with big blue bins, and I had to see it for myself. I often drive by an industrial complex in Orlando that has what seems like 20 giant buildings knitted together, with no entrance or exit that I can see. In the picture above, I thought that was the front door to the Goodwill, but it was a giant empty room with old cubicles, and the lights were off. As a matter of fact, from the road to the third parking lot in, I had no idea where to go. Even when I did find the entrance by following people that were walking, I had to park very far away and get in line with everyone else. The eventual front door had no posted hours, no goodwill sign above the door, and just appeared like all the other doors.

I think I was in a restricted area?

     This place was massive. There was a caution tape fenced in area where there was a ton of people going through bins of clothes. I would say 99% of all the bins are just clothes and shoes. There was a ton of staff standing around talking in spanish, and I went up to one of these ladies to ask if I could look at the other areas behind the tape, and she shook her head no, then yes, then walked away to her friends. When I walked away, she yelled happily at me, and then her friend laughed and they started singing really loud. I'm not making this up, I felt like I was in bizarro world. I watched one Spanish family just walk around the perimeter of the warehouse where I took the picture above looking back. There were bins of books, trash, and broken electronics towards this perimeter, and no one stopped to yell or sing at me, so I called it good. 

All trash.

     Surprise, it was all junk. Anything that looked remotely cool was just in terrible condition. Two bins of books out of the hundreds is this huge building. I could not dig to the bottom because of the sheer weight of everything on top. I again attempted to communicate with an employee and ask if I could go to the other side where the bathrooms were, as I saw more bins over there, and she made some strange gesture and showed me the plastic bag in her pocket. I went up to the front and again, all Spanish and zero english. I can speak a little spanish, so I tried, and was told no, you can't go over there. I asked if anyone knew english and they all shook their head no. One more quick look around and I noticed all the staff were Spanish, and customers as well. Did I go in the wrong door? Was I not supposed to be here? Confused, I left empty handed. 

Takeaways:

• Entrance not clearly marked
• Nothing clearly marked
• Nothing priced that I could tell
• Crippling language barrier that I eventually figured out
• Staff not professional, helpful, and acted strange
• Layout is confusing, and seems to be confusing to everyone else too
• Not sure what I'm supposed to be doing
• Had to park over 1000 feet away
• I'm not sure if there was more store, or different stores, or what