The year was 1999... Prince (or, at that point, the Artist Formerly Known As Prince) was still telling to party like it was that chronological year. Y2K was the all the rage - many people were stockpiling water, food & medical supplies in preparation for The End of the World As We Know It (glancing R.E.M. reference). I, on the other hand, was stockpiling games.

And game statistics. You see, my practice of collecting "five & dime" gameplay lists began early that spring, as a post from Steve Zanini on the rec.games.board newsgroup set me off:

Anyone familiar with SUMO magazine, would also be familiar with the 5 & 10 list. This is a listing of the games you have played either 5 or more times or 10 or more times. Think this would be a good way to re-cap what you played frequently in 1998.

I found the posts that followed to be intriguing and compiled them to produce a "Most Played" list of 1998. Then I did it again the next year... and the next... and it slowly but surely took on a life of it's own.

From the miniscule number of gamers in 1998 (16) to the huge response this year (100+), the Five & Dime lists have snowballed into a very interesting way to track gaming trends, albeit only in the online community of "designer" game players & collectors.

What follows in these pages is my first attempt to put a chunk of this data up on the Web. Please keep in mind that I'm not an expert at web design and/or statistics... this project is labor of love. (And sheer inertia - but we won't get into that right now.) I'll be using the format I went to for 2003 to report on all the years of Five & Dime reports... and you'll even get to see the long buried report from 1998!

Humble Beginnings: 1998

This Time, It's Real: 1999

And Then He Started Talking: 2000

Carc & Crok: 2001

The 900 Pound Gorilla Appears: 2002

The Year of the Big Mistake: 2003

It's Not The Beatles: 2004

Wide Angle Lens: 2004