Ran into a guy at a thrift store who rebuilt his whole Settlers of Catan set from scratch

I was digging through the board game section at a Goodwill in Portland last month and this older dude next to me pulls out a beat up copy of Axis and Allies. He starts telling me how he bought a used Settlers of Catan for $3 but half the pieces were missing. Instead of returning it, he spent like 6 weekends making his own tiles and tokens out of polymer clay and wood scraps. He even painted little sheep and wheat fields on them. I asked why not just buy a new one and he said the satisfaction of fixing something broken was better than getting something perfect. That conversation stuck with me because I usually just toss incomplete games. Has anyone else ever bothered to rebuild a game instead of replacing it?

2 comments

2 Comments

sullivan.riley1mo ago

Had a buddy who found a Monopoly set missing half the money and almost all the houses. He spent a weekend cutting cardboard into little green rectangles and printing fake bills on his home printer with different dollar amounts. The thing looked like a ransom note but he swore it played the same and it became his go-to travel set for years.

morganj811mo ago

Actually the $500 bill is the only one that's supposed to be a different color than the rest, so your buddy probably got that part wrong. Otherwise though, a hacked together set beats not playing at all.