Board Games

Bancopoly, the Guatemalan answer to Monopoly:

runs on the same dice, rent and bankruptcy, with the country’s departments and state companies standing in for the streets of Atlantic City. Metta makes it in classic, compact and anniversary editions, and the compact board suits a small shelf. It shares the cupboard with Monopoly itself, Clue, Scrabble and Jenga, and with the games that never needed a brand at all: a wooden chess set, checkers and a box of dominoes.

Catan and the strategy games that followed it:

ask more of the table and give more back. In Catan players trade wood, brick and wheat to build roads and towns; Carcassonne grows its map one tile at a time. Party games such as Dixit, Codenames and Telestrations take minutes to explain and work best with a crowd, while cooperative games like Pandemic set everyone against the board instead of each other. The side of every box carries the three facts that decide a purchase: how many players, how long a game lasts and the minimum age, which is a fair guide to how heavy the rules are. Carcassonne and Dixit have almost no text on their pieces, so an English copy plays fine once someone has read the rules out, but Codenames is a word game and only works in the language its cards are printed in. An expansion cannot be played without its base game. Pokémon and Magic cards have their own place under trading card games, and jigsaws and speedcubes sit with puzzles.

The gap between a Bancopoly and a Catan box:

is wide, and it shapes what a used game is worth. Bancopoly and Monopoly sit around Q100 to Q200 new, so a second-hand family classic is cheap whatever its state and sells mainly on being complete. Strategy and party games in Spanish run roughly Q300 to Q600 new, and each expansion adds to that. A complete used copy of a game that is still on the shelves has to come in clearly under the new price, because the buyer can always go and get a fresh one. An expansion or edition that is no longer printed can hold close to what it first cost, since there is no new box to compare it with.

A second-hand Catan, counted piece by piece:

is the only way to know what you are paying for, and the component list at the back of the rulebook is the checklist. A missing road or resource card hides well in a full box and only shows halfway through the first game. Tiles still in their punch-out sheets mean a copy that was barely played. Cards gone white at the edges or creased have seen heavy use, while cards kept in plastic sleeves usually look untouched. On an older Bancopoly, the paper money and the property deeds tear and go missing first, and box corners split after years under a stack of other games. Popular titles such as Catan, Dixit and Pandemic are also counterfeited from scans of the real thing: blurry text, colours that do not match photos of the genuine game, thin card and plastic pieces with sharp scraps of moulding still attached give a copy away.

A Bancopoly listed with every banknote in the photo:

shows a buyer the one thing they cannot check through a screen, that nothing is missing. Lay the contents out beside the open rulebook and photograph them, then say which edition it is, which language, which expansions come with it and whether the cards are sleeved. Own up to any piece borrowed from another set, since a stray pawn gets noticed on the first turn. Someone travelling from San Marcos or Jutiapa for a heavy box of Catan expansions will want to count the contents with you before paying, so bag each player colour separately and the count takes minutes rather than a whole game.