Puzzled Reflections: Clearing My Puzzle Backlog

Someone else's puzzle hoard
(from Reddit)

Hi, my name is Gigi and I'm a puzzlaholic (yes, it's a thing).

Seriously. It's a thing. And I'm not the only one!

I follow some jigsaw puzzle groups on Facebook and you would not believe how many puzzles people have stashed away in their homes.

Dozens... no... hundreds!!!

Some people have an entire ROOM devoted to jigsaw puzzles (be still my beating heart). They post pictures of how they have organized their puzzle hoard... by brand... by number of pieces... by box size...

People share different storage options for their puzzles - wire shelving, book cases, etc. (N.B. IKEA bookshelves are a big favourite).

Puzzling Hunting is Half the Fun

Now... I also see a LOT of people selling puzzles... brand new... unopened... never done. There was a post today which shared that puzzling is actually two separate hobbies: (1) finding and buying puzzles and (2) doing puzzles. It is very true.

Hunting for puzzles is a LOT of fun. I'm pretty laid back about it. I don't go out there, actively hunting for a specific puzzle. But some people do that. They have "Puzzle Collections" - they are collecting puzzles like some people collect stamps. They might specialize in Ravensburger, the Van Life series... or the Curiosity Cabinet series... or whatever. 

Me? I'm just happy if I find a "good" puzzle - nice brand, nice pic, box in decent shape and... if I shake it... it sounds like it's bagged inside. Because here's a PPP - Puzzlers Pet Peeve... people who put the pieces back in the box... loose... and then the puzzle gets donated to a thrift store and is NOT taped shut. I don't know if you've walked through the puzzle section at Value Village but... they only rubber band the puzzle boxes... which is not enough. The number of orphaned puzzle pieces on the floor is enough to make a puzzler weep.

Anyhow... I'm not THAT bad, I don't "collect" puzzles. I'm not a snooty puzzle collector. I buy all of my puzzles second-hand at thrift stores. I then do them, take a pic of them, bag the pieces in a ziploc, put them back in the box and sell them... if they are complete.

If they are missing a piece or two, I throw a hissy fit and then donate the puzzle back to the thrift store, with the box clearly marked that a piece is missing! (Grumble... Here's another PPP - there is nothing worse than buying a puzzle, opening the box (which is often taped shut) and finding a little note from the previous puzzler that says "one piece missing". GAH!!! Write it on the box!)

Covid Puzzling

Some of my puzzle stash...

Puzzling, as a hobby, really seemed to take off during Covid... and I bought a LOT of excellent puzzles at the thrift stores during Covid.

And squirreled them away in various closets, pantry shelves and in baskets on top of the kitchen cabinets. (I puzzle in the dining room... hence the puzzles in the pantry).

Because, you see... there are always new puzzles showing up in thrift stores.... "Ooooohhh... I love that one!!!" So I buy these newer ones and do them and the older ones languish.

To be honest... some of the ones I bought during Covid... well, they looked good on the shelf but, they are HARD! And so I skitter away and work on the easier ones... the newer, easier ones.

A brutal 1000 pc Heye puzzle... all those little people and little bits of rigging
a nightmare to sort... took me forever!

Until January 1... at which point I decided that somebody (me) needed to get a grip. I committed to clearing the puzzle backlog... first!

Enough is Enough

So I went through the house and did an inventory of all of my To-Do puzzles... there were "only" 41. Which isn't bad. I mean... come-on... some people have hundreds! I only have a few dozen... **cough**

Some of my completed puzzles

Then I told my partner the rules. I can't buy any puzzles until I clear the backlog. All of it. If I DO buy a puzzle, then I am paying her a penalty of twice the sticker price of the puzzle. Cause I'm a sucker for 30% off days at Value Village and the thrift stores. If a puzzle is $10 and I get 30% off... that is a done deal! But if I have to pay a $20 penalty on that $10 puzzle (bought for $7)... then it's really a $27 puzzle and that is NOT a done deal.

By January 19, I had churned through a dozen puzzles, which isn't bad! By then, I also knew why I had procrastinated on so many of them. They are almost all 1000 piece puzzles which take me a good 3 to 6 hours to complete. There are also a lot of Cobble Hill puzzles which have the weirdest randomly shaped pieces meaning the puzzling is much harder.  And... silly me... I had bought a few 1500 piece puzzles AND even a couple 2000 piece puzzles. Ugh...

But... as long as there is a backlog... I can't get any more puzzles. There's incentive for you!

With one caveat... if I find a still-new puzzle (shrink-wrapped)... I can buy that if the price is reasonable, cause I can just turn around and sell that. I saw a $2.95 shrink-wrapped Cobble Hill in a thrift store the other day and passed on it (oh the pain!)... and when I told my partner, she said I should have bought it! Buy it for $3 and sell for $10... that's a deal!

My Learnings

I have learned a few things during this process:

1. Bigger is not Better - I am a 500 to 1000 piece puzzler. Anything bigger and it gets tedious and I lose interest. 500 piece puzzles also sell the best!
2. Ravensburger is Best - I am a Ravensburger puzzle person. My favourite brand, hands-down. Plus they are easier to sell.
3. Diversity is not Better - I am done with experimenting with other puzzle brands: no more Cobble Hill (I am not a masochist), Heye (ugh), Jumbo, Pomegranate, Bits 'n' Pieces, Wasgij (maybe)... I know what I like and I'll stick with it.
4. More is not Better - let's go for quality and puzzling joy over quantity and puzzle slogging...
5. Don't buy at Value Village - they try to sell a 1000 piece Cobble Hill for $14.99!!! That is a second-hand puzzle with NO guarantee that all the pieces are there. Plus, it's ridiculously over-priced. 1000 piece puzzles typically go for $10 on Facebook Marketplace. Sometimes, very rarely, on a 30%-off day, I will find a deal at Value Village, but those are getting few and far between.
6. How Much is Enough? - I am not a puzzle hoarder. Or maybe I am a reformed puzzle hoarder? My hoard is small... OK... smaller... than others. But I have no desire to hoard puzzles. They nag at me. I am going to limit myself to a hoard of... 5? Max 10? No... 5. That's it. Maybe just one shelf of To-Do puzzles?? That would be more like 10... 

The Big Leap: My First Time Attempting a 2000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

I am a bit of a mad puzzler. I love doing jigsaw puzzles, as anyone who has read some of my previous posts will know! I recently did a post about how puzzling is full of life lessons - get organized, one small step at a time, it's OK to say "No", etc.

Charles Wysocki - 2000 piece puzzle

Usually I do 500 or 1000 piece puzzles. They are a good size and I can do them in a timely fashion (usually). But... a few weeks back, I decided to step up my game and try my hand at a 2000 piece puzzle. I chose a Charles Wysocki (Americana style) puzzle for my first attempt.

Well... let me tell you... the stack of pieces at the beginning was a bit overwhelming! And sorting them took a lonnnngggg time.

But... one group of pieces at a time and it got done. As I was sorting, I noticed a few slightly chewed puzzle pieces go by (perhaps a cat or a dog). I always find this annoying. I bought the puzzle at Value Village for $10 and had hoped to do it and resell it for $20 or $15 (the going rate for a 2000 piece puzzle). But... with slightly chewed pieces, it loses quite a bit of its value. Why not just say that on the box! Ugh. Anyhow... side rant over.

The starting pile of unsorted pieces

There were so many pieces, that some of my sort piles ended up being quite large. I put all houses together, for example. And all greenery. Just to start. Otherwise, I would have had two dozen piles and nowhere to work!

Half of the sorted piles

Soooo... I started working on the sky and then the river... then started the various houses by resorting the big house pile. Ya gotta start with what looks doable! But as all of these pieces started to come together, it quickly became apparent that the table was not going to be big enough. At least not big enough for me to work on it easily. It would have fit width-wise in the middle of the table, but that makes it really hard to reach over and access it.

Halfway done?

Soooo... this was our round oak table with one leaf in it. Time for the second leaf. When we bought this table (second-hand), it came with two leaves... and I never really thought we'd have any use for the second one. Over the years, we have schlepped the second leaf along with us and stored it under beds, in a corner. It's never really been a contender for a declutter list... cause what if we need it "some day"! Well... that "some day" finally came!

I had to break apart bits of the puzzle, and clear a space for the table to be split open but... once we had the leaf in and securely in place... what a difference! Finally, I could finish the bottom edge and start to place things where they belonged in the bottom half! That second leaf makes it soooo much easier to do a puzzle like this. I also have some space to spread out my remaining piles.

Soooo... sometimes those "I might need this some day" items actually do get to be used "some day". Which doesn't meant that a few "some day" items can be let go of safely. But I guess I wonder... how do I know which can be safely let go of? And which can't?

Well... a table leaf is a pretty unique item and kind of hard to replace. It's not like I could have popped onto Marketplace or Amazon and found a leaf that would have fit. Whereas... with that Camino book... if I let that go... it would be super easy to just pop on Amazon and order another one for a minimal amount of money. Sooo... that might be the key... how hard (and expensive) would it be to replace the "some day" item.

As for the puzzle... I did get it finished in a timely fashion!

Completed puzzle (sans a few pieces)

And... on top of about half a dozen slightly chewed pieces, there was one piece missing. At first I thought there were 5 pieces missing, a clump of 4 along the bottom edge... but they turned up stuck on the side of the box. But the single piece... never did show up.

The missing piece

And that is OK. I will release the puzzle back into the wild (thrift stores or give it away for free on Marketplace) and let someone else enjoy it.  But I'll be sure to mark the box and let future puzzlers know that there is a piece missing!

8 Life Lessons I Learn from Jigsaw Puzzles

My Mom calls me the "mad puzzler". When I get started on a jigsaw puzzle, I go totally into the zone and I'm moving fast. Other people puzzling with me often get frustrated because my hands are flying in front of their faces as I'm grabbing pieces to fit into place. It's always a good idea to split up the areas of the puzzle to minimize that! You work on that section... I'll work on this section... and later we can combine our sections!

The last few years, as the pandemic has kept a lot of us cooped inside, I've done a TONNE of puzzles, hundreds. I usually buy them for cheap in thrift stores and then, if they are complete, I'll sell them for a profit on Marketplace. Some are easy. Some are darn hard! In the process, I continually learn, or am reminded of, key life lessons.

The Mad Puzzler - Flipping Puzzles for a Profit

My family calls me the "mad puzzler". Set a puzzle in front of me and get out of the way. I'll have a 500 piece done in an hour and a half and a 1000 piece done in three hours. Growing up, my Mom would do puzzles with my sister and I and we had a very specific way of doing puzzles. Sorting things of course... sky pieces here, water pieces here, edge pieces here (duh), house pieces here, horse pieces here, etc. Once it was all sorted, then the puzzling would begin in earnest. Usually the edge first and then various components with sky and water left for last because those are often brutally hard!

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster from StockSnap

My Dad and partner were/are not "mad puzzlers". I would try to engage them in doing a puzzle and give them the edge to do while I would work on some of the "guts". Alas, I'd have the guts done before they even completed the edge. It was no fun for them!

But even I can run aground on some puzzles. I don't like anything bigger than 1000 pieces as it just gets too big and unwieldy to work on. Did you know there are 18,000 piece puzzles??? Good grief... No, wait... Ravensburger makes a 40,000 piece puzzle but it has 10 distinct zones in it... No thank you.

Anyhow, what with Covid-19, I've been doing a fair few puzzles, mostly my stash of ten puzzles that I keep in the cupboard. Just a nice little 500 piece to while a way a bit of time in these long, dark winter evenings. I like to redo puzzles over and over again, they never seem to get old. But, I always look in the thrift stores to see what new puzzles they might have in stock.

The other day, I found a Cobble Hill Puzzle in Sally Ann. There's a little community near Victoria, BC, called Cobble Hill... Hmm... related? As it turns out, Cobble Hill Puzzles is a Canadian company! Based in Victoria. They have a very good reputation, scoring a 9/10 on some puzzler sites. They come in sturdy, well-designed boxes, have a nice thickness and a random cut with good variety. They fit together snugly and have an anti-glare finish. Quite nice. And... the puzzles are not manufactured in China but in Canada or the USA . If that's not enough, they are made from recycled cardboard and are printed with vegetable-based inks. Nice!

Anyhow, I bought this puzzle... Nice little candy puzzle, I thought.

Hah!! It was hideous and I eventually gave up on it. Waaayyyyy too many red and green jelly beans. I had bought it for $4 and, what with my recent discovery of Facebook Marketplace, thought I would sell it onwards. I checked prices and while some people try to sell Cobble Hill puzzles for $20... generally speaking a 1000 piece puzzle goes for $10 and a 500 piece goes for $5. I toyed with the idea of trying to get $15 or $20 for it but... these puzzles sell new for $24, so that seemed a bit ridiculous. Plus, the people selling the 1000 piece puzzle for $20 were still sitting on it a week later with no takers.

So, I posted the puzzle online and... within two hours it was sold. Huh. Go figure. Bought for $4... sold for $10. That's not a bad little profit. And... the lady who bought it later turned around and re-listed it on FB Marketplace for $10.  A nice little circular economy! All of the mad puzzlers know what the going rate is for puzzles and stick to that. It's only the entrepreneurs who are trying to make a killing in the puzzle marketplace. Although... the lady who bought the candy puzzle didn't post a picture of it completed (to show that there are no pieces missing) sooo... I'm wondering if she actually gave up on it too! Like I said... it was fiendishly hideously difficult.

Now, any time I go into a thrift store, I head straight for the puzzle section. They are a hot commodity you know... what with Covid and all. I scored big time in a couple of thrift stores a few weekends ago. I found another Cobble Hill Puzzle. Hooray! It was actually not bad and I managed to finish this one!

But... the pièce de résistance was finding three Ravensburger puzzles. They are the highest quality puzzles out there, manufactured in Germany. Excellent box, nice thickness, beautiful fit, nice image reproduction and anti-glare finish.

This puzzle wasn't actually all that bad to work on. Finished it... posted it on FB Marketplace... sold within a few hours. I had a look and some people are selling Ravensburger puzzles on eBay for $30 or more... But that involves a whole extra layer of complexity... Although turning a $4 puzzle into a $30 sale isn't a bad return on investment.

Then there was this one of Times Square in NY... it was also brutal, but it got done...

There are a tonne of puzzles out in the thrift stores on some days but a lot of them are the cheap dollar store puzzles... or ridiculously difficult ones. I'm aiming for the sweet spot of good quality and good do-ability. I get to enjoy them and then turn around and sell them for $10 (or $5 for a 500 piece). So far they've all been snapped up within a day of posting, which is nice.

I like the high quality ones because I know that they can go through many hands and be enjoyed many times before they finally die a sad puzzle death. Kudos to Cobble Hill and Ravensburger for sticking with quality!