This idea was inspired by a game publisher known as Cheap ass games. (You can read the BGG page on them here or check out the wayback machine store page here) (also the designer now works at a new publisher who sells most of the cheapass games [here] (https://crabfragmentlabs.com/shop/cheapass-games ))

Basically what the designer behind cheapass realized is that everyone who owns any boards games has all the pieces they'll ever need to play any other board game. So what he could do is just assume the buyer has the pieces they need and just sell rule books on their own (black and white ones at that) no need to manufacture boxes or parts. Then everyone is happy because cheap cost to make translates to a cheap and accesible product. (later on they begin offering the books as pdfs under a pay what you want model)

And so every rulebook had two sections to it right at the beginning. a "What's included" (sometimes in addition to a rulebook there were boards or even cards) and a "what you need to bring". They also sold pieces if you did need them of particular interest to me were the bit packs.

So with that in mind and with a desire to avoid buying things my plan was to make a list of all common pieces from all my games. Then I could make a card with a "What's Included" and "What you need to bring" section for my games and that would hypothetically allow me to cut down on the amount of pieces I have and allow me to just store boards and rulebooks without boxes. and then have one container that stores my "gaming kit" with all the pieces I would need to play a game.

And of course I could pair this with my "briefcase" for portability depending on the boards that are needed.

Part of the reason I didn't really attempt this is my intuition tells me that many of my games have necessary and unique pieces but maybe if I sat down and took a look I'd be surprised.

There was one product though that I did end up buying for this that actually helped me maximise game storage and that was the Everdeck. Not the first of its kind but the one I favored most (that didn't get into "my god why would you pay this much" territory). Basically its a special deck of 120 cards that includes a lot of interesting features to give it the ability to stand in for a lot of different games. Kind of neat. They also have a list going of some games it could stand in for here.