About Us at The Gaming Shelf
What Are We?
The Gaming Shelf is a site that is a database of all things video game merch that is fueled by community engagement. We want to document all the official merchandise that we can for all the collector's or historians out there. We here believe even the most common of merch is meaningful to someone and we want to document its existence.
Let's face it, especially these days, there's a whole lot of merchandise hitting shelves and unfortunately, too much of it is sold and then wiped forever from storefronts. Even if it is no longer on sale, we want to act as a place to not only mark its existence, but provide all the details we can about it. Whether it be an old highly-sought after collectible from the 80's to something more generic from the present, it all matters when it comes to a database, so please consider helping us! By submitting, you will be aiding us in this endeavor and will be helping those who peruse in the future.
How It Started?
This site was started years ago as a pet project from a single individual who worked on it here and there, but was later cast to the wayside. It was revived a few years ago with a new name and facelift, though it was a bit rough around the edges. It's gone through one more overhaul since, though we are still in the process of converting older pages to the new code. There is a few more of us working on it these days, but none of us are well-versed in website design or coding, but we are working with what we have, so please be patient.
Even though the name of the site changed in time, the meaning behind it did not. The Gaming Shelf as a name was chosen because at one point in time, that is what all of us collectors started with: a single shelf. Every collector has a starting point and even if you find other people's collections to be far more abundant and unique, we all start somewhere. Keep collecting what you like and do it for yourself.
What Are Our Future Plans?
Our first priority would probably be to find a new site host, or at least drop the Weebly name. We chose Weebly due to our lack of knowledge coding and because it was the only free website builder we saw that had no data limit when it came to the storage used, so of course we jumped on that. Ideally, we would like to bring someone on who knows how to actually make a proper website and implement some more features, like a user collection list, forums, and an estimated value to each item. Also, we would eventually to make an app that allows users to make a proper list of their collection, but at this time, these are more of a wish-list.
Until we can find help in that department, our plans are to just keep adding merch and fixing the site as we go! We are a tiny team at this time and we are relatively unknown to the larger community, but we hope you consider sharing this site with people who might be interested and perhaps help us document some merch of your own!
Thank you to all of those reading and the gaming community itself! Keep on collecting!