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frugal living

Charity shop board games – Ingenious, Set and Retsami

18th October 2021 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

I have mentioned regularly on social media how dedicated I am to charity shops. We’re fortunate to have around 10 in relatively easy walking distance, and I visit them a couple of times a week. As well as books and clothing, I look carefully at their games, craft and kids sections. Recently I’ve picked up several good board games, and I thought it might be worth sharing a quick review to try to get me back into blogging.

Most recent purchase was Ingenious from Green Board Games. Bought for the princely sum of £2 in Basic Life Charity, and available for your delight and delectation from a number of sellers on Ebay (affiliate link).

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this played before, possibly at a home ed camp? We didn’t have it though, so I was very happy to see it. My experience with board games is that Green Board Games are a good brand, and I don’t think we’ve had any from there we’ve strongly disliked.

Ingenious board game on stack with books

In play, it borrows from dominos. But the pieces are two hexagons on a tile, and the board has hexagon places. You score by counting up the straight lines leading from where you’ve laid your tile, and across the different colours or shapes as the game continues. A nice twist is that your finishing score is actually taken from your weakest score across the shapes, meaning that you have to strategise to play all the colours as you go. Game is for 2-4 players and there’s a team variant, so plenty of ways to involve the whole family.

ingenious tiles close up with board game in background

At some point recently also picked up a new copy of an old favourite. Many years ago I set up a coop to buy Set in the US and distribute it to families around the country. I think now you can probably buy it on Amazon, though this was the first time I’ve ever seen it in a charity shop. As I’ve no idea where our old copy went, I was pleased to grab a new one, and it’s been played several times since, including at a home ed group session. Again on Ebay, although most of the copies are in the US I’m afraid.

Set, The family game of visual perception

This can be played as a group or as a patience game, and the idea is you have to find the sets. Each attribute must be either all the same, or all different, so you could have all cards with one shape on them, all purple, all solid, but then they’d have to be one of each of the three different shapes. It’s a lot harder to explain than it is to demonstrate.

set game in action

The final game of this review was one completely new to me. Retsami appears to have been designed by someone relatively local to us, but I couldn’t find out much about it. It’s played on a chequered playing board, with pieces not dissimilar to draughts. But there’s also a square spiral that marks the board, and you’re trying to get a piece to the centre. You can be taken by opponents pieces that are behind you, along any straight line, horizontal, vertical or diagonal. There are a few copies of this one on Ebay.

Retsami pieces and board

I might go find the game and get a picture and add it in, as I’m not sure that explanation is doing it much justice.

I think it’s a game with definite potential, but Tigerboy didn’t really cotton on, and didn’t want to play again, so I’ll have to find another opponent. Or bribe him. Whichever.

So there you go, three charity shop games that have been varying success. Do you use charity shops and have any games you’d recommend I should keep an eye out for?

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Filed Under: frugal living, how we do it, Jonny had two apples, review Tagged With: board games, charity shop board games, charity shops

Making money for old phones with CEX

3rd January 2019 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

Before anyone gets excited, this isn’t a sponsored post. (I’m very open to working with phone brands or recycling /decluttering folks if anyone is offering mind.)

A little while before Christmas I won a new Huawei P20 Pro mobile phone, I may have enthused about it at the time. Which meant that my trusty Samsung S4 was surplus to requirements. Tim had made noises about stashing it as a backup phone, but when I was in CEX with the kids a couple days ago I noticed they were selling phones off that age for a fair bit of money. Sure enough when I checked online, it looked like they might offer me around 50, or more in vouchers and *that* could go towards the camera lens I want for taking gig pictures. (Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 thank you for asking and no, I’ve no idea what that means. Yet.)

I factory reset the phone after checking everything was backed up and retrieving the SD card and trotted down to CEX. The process is fairly straightforward – you do need id if it’s the first time you’ve done it, but I have a membership card from when we streamlined the DVDs a couple of years ago. They give you a preliminary offer and it takes around 40 minutes to test the phone. I used my time wisely with a trip to the library where I paid off my library fines and got them to reset my email address so that I should get reminders and not fines from now on.

Back to CEX and I got a voucher for £69. Would have got slightly more if I’d thought to find the charger and cable too, but as the lens I want is £88 online for the STM version I’m quite happy. Particularly when you think I bought the phone on ebay for £115 vs have had several years use out of it.

So when you get around to upgrading your phone, do think carefully about what you do with the old handset, it could be worth more than you think. Particularly if you’ve looked after it with a decent case and a screen protector too ?

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Filed Under: frugal living, Phones and kit Tagged With: CEX, decluttering, frugality, money making, money saving, recycling, Samsung galaxy s4

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