From vinyl to furniture, to clothes, retro is in, and the same applies to video games. Once the domain of only the most dedicated gamers, retro video game collecting is slowly but surely transforming into a mainstream hobby. Hell, you might have considered starting up a classic video game collection of your own, but where does one start? Which are the best consoles to focus on? What should be avoided?

Here’s a quick list of which classic consoles you should be focusing on, and a few other things to know before getting your retro game hoard started.

Note #1: For the sake of this article, I’m defining retro gaming as anything that came before the advent of polygons and 3-D gaming.

Note # 2: All the prices listed in this article are taken from Price Charting, a truly invaluable resource if you want to get into game collecting.

The first video-game console, or at least the first one that actually mattered. The Atari 2600 brought video games home and was host to a lot of classics like Pitfall, Adventure and a handful of okay arcade ports. Be forewarned though, the Atari 2600 is Retro with a capital “R”. This was an era where graphics were mostly symbolic (you’ll be looking at a lot of squares, circles, and other basic shapes), the background music was largely unheard of and the d-pad hadn’t been invented yet. Set your expectations accordingly.

If you decide to get into Atari 2600 collecting, systems and games are cheap and plentiful. Of course, the Atari 2600 is nearly 40 years old at this point, so finding a console and controllers that work properly can be mildly challenging – it may be worth paying a minor premium to get a console that’s been well taken care of. As for games, you can often convince game stores to sell you their Atari stock in bulk, and only pay pennies for each game. That said, there was a lot of weird, random stuff released for 2600 (Atari wasn’t so big on quality control) so if you want to snatch up some of the rare Atari games, you’ll be paying a pretty penny.

It’s unlikely you or any of your friends had one, but there was actually a third player in the 16-bit Wars. The TurboGrafx-16, made by NEC and backed by Hudson Soft, was crushed by the Super NES and Sega Genesis, but it actually had some really solid games, particularly if you like space shooters, pinball or platformers starring big-headed cavemen.