That smell of a new board game box hit me harder than coffee this morning
Last Tuesday I cracked open a copy of Ark Nova at my kitchen table in Cleveland and just sat there sniffing the insert like a weirdo for five minutes. I got this same rush three years ago when I bought my first heavy euro at a shop in Columbus, and back then I thought it was just the shrink wrap. Do you all get a real feeling from that fresh cardboard and ink smell, or is it just me losing my mind over here?
Did the smell actually change between that first Columbus purchase and the Ark Nova box, or is it more that the memory of the first one makes every new box feel the same? I ask because I had a similar thing with old Magic packs, and after a while I figured out I was chasing the feeling of being new to the hobby, not the cardboard itself. Maybe the sniff test is really a nostalgia test.