This Christmas vacation, like the ones before it, has had a lot of fun surprises in store for me once I drove up to see my family. I’ve been to a cool Pittsburgh museum, had lunch at a church converted into a restaurant, saw a University of Pitt basketball game, and have gotten some much needed R&R in the process. One of the coolest surprises, however, came in the form of a large box my Grandfather handed to me my first day in PA. This box contained a large number of games for me to add to my collection.

For some background on this: my Grandpa recently sold his condo in Florida and was working hard packing everything up to take to his house in PA for Christmas. A lot of unneeded items were donated, and unusable ones were discarded, but he was always keeping an eye out for useful things he could give his relatives. He also was aware that I write this blog, so one day in November he called me up and asked if I had any use for his old board games. As I’ve discussed before in my post about old school vs. new school games, I have always enjoyed older games and like the idea of owning originals of some of the more popular ones. Remembering that I used to play original versions of Monopoly and the Game of Life at his condo when I was young, I told him that I would be happy to take those games off of his hands.

Fast forward to the present, and the box I was given was much larger and heavier than I originally expected. I open it up and to my surprise, it’s a large stack of older and newer games in all shapes and sizes! Grandpa gave me over a dozen different games, including some staples of the gaming industry as well as some games from my childhood. I’ve been delving into the games periodically throughout the trip and have found some gems, including but not limited to:

• An original copy of Monopoly
• An original copy of The Game of Life
• An original copy of Battleship
• An original copy of Parcheesi
• Block-building games such as Blockhead!, Ta-Ka-Radi tiles, and Lincoln Logs
• Slightly newer games like Hoopla and Tiddley Winks
• Games I don’t remember and haven’t seen before, but am looking forward to trying out!

I’ve already gotten a chance to play a few rounds of Battleship with my sister’s fiancée, and plan on trying out some more along with newer additions to my collection the rest of the week. Needless to say, I’m extremely thankful to have such a kind-hearted Grandpa, and I can’t wait to put these games to good use!